The Catalog of Good Deeds

Question: Visiting a couple of your parishes, I noticed that the women cover their heads in church. I asked Father N. when I visited him. He explained that the women cover their heads in church, don’t cut their hair short and don’t wear pants or tight clothes even outside church....The men he said usually have moustaches and dress with long sleeves....I do not mean to be disrespectful, but what does this have to do with Orthodoxy? There aren’t any church teachings about these matters of personal choice, as far as I know. I am a woman and have short hair and wear pants almost always (not in church). But this sounds a little fanatic and strange to me. My priest says that it is quaint and borrowed from Protestant fundamentalists, which surprised me. Perhaps you could say something about this in Orthodox Tradition. (M.I., CA)

Answer: This question is one which comes up very often in the Church. It is not easy to answer, since correct Christian behavior is predicated on the good intention of the Christian and his desire to adhere to and follow the precepts of the Fathers of the Church. Church rules never force a Christian to fulfill empty rules, but serve as guides to those who intuitively grasp the fullness of the Faith, which leads us to a way of life in which even the way that we eat, walk, speak, dress, and groom ourselves draws us and those around us to a loftier life, making us a peculiar people and a people apart from the world (St. Titus 2:14; St. John 15:19).

Thus, for centuries Orthodox men and women have followed a style of dress and adornment that reflects the ethos of a Christianity lived partly on earth and partly in Heaven. Women have traditionally avoided cutting their hair short, wearing male attire (pants and other clothes which emphasize the body),or adorning themselves with excessive jewelry and make-up. Men, too, are called to dress modestly, to avoid wearing their hair in such a way as to appear effeminate, and to maintain at least a moustache, so as to avoid the same impression. Orthodox Christians have adhered to these traditions because they express a living Faith, not because faithfulness to such customs and traditions is demanded by the Church or because they constitute, as such, matters of confession. They are undertaken in that freedom which we all find in Christ, which is not a fetter which binds, but a light yoke which helps us move forward in rightly cultivating the seeds of the Christian life.

Having said this, there is, of course, a level at which the intentional defiance of Church customs and traditions sometimes reflects a wrong course in one’s spiritual life and a worldly spirit that thwarts growth in Christ. This is especially true in an age when men and women, but especially women, purposely pit their personal preferences and perceived rights against ecclesiastical customs, somehow thinking that human rights (and especially those of women)—which the Church certainly respects and rightly defends—take precedence over submission to the Church and Her traditions.

In voluntarily submitting to the Church, neither a man nor woman gives up his personal rights; rather, he brings them into focus in the realm of humility and obedience which the Church constitutes. If human rights are sacred in the world, they are made sublime when they are freely relinquished in the ecclesiastical kingdom of humility. For our freedom in Christ makes submission victorious and self-elevating and selfassertion self-defeating. Moreover, when a turning-away from humility and modesty leads others into sin, as is often the case with immodest apparel and stylish dress (after all, "sex appeal" and style are not separate things, and most certainly so in the world of women’s fashion), then, whatever one’s intentions, he risks scandalizing others. Here intention becomes a secondary issue and the lack of discretion and prudence convict a violator of Church custom by the harm brought upon others.

If all of this seems to be simply a matter of hard-headed fanaticism on the part of traditionalist "fundamentalists"—a popular accusation these days—, let us point out that the Patristic and Canonical witness of the Church is unequivocal in setting forth rules that call both men and women to a strict standard of modesty, with special attention to women’s attire, adornment, and grooming. And this witness would lead any prudent Christian to believe that the Church’s proscription against immodest dress and grooming in women—whether in wearing pants, tight dresses, and otherwise revealing clothing, or in excessively cutting, styling, and adorning their hair—is anything but fundamentalistic. Ecclesiastical teaching on this matter is wise, moderate, and commendable. Nor can one justly argue that the practice of a woman covering her head during prayer is demeaning or primitive. It is a part of tradition, binds her, once more, to the liberating submissiveness that is freedom in Christ, and brings her to a state of greater glory, to expand on the words of St. Paul (I Corinthians 11:15), than even the hair which adorns her head. In this submission, she is one with the Christian man, who in his quiet obedience to the Church also learns from and draws on her exemplary witness.

There follow, then, a few representative Patristic and Canonical passages on the matter of modesty in Christian dress and grooming, only several from the very many others that could be cited. In his twenty-sixth Homily on I Corinthians (Patrologia Graeca, Vol. LXI, Cols. 219-220), St. John Chrysostomos, citing St. Paul’s declaration, "[I]f a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering" (I Corinthians 11:15), pointedly notes that this understanding is "not unknown even to Barbarians." He further observes that "it is a shame for a woman to have cut hair or a shaved head." With regard to controversy arising from St. Paul’s prescription that woman cover their heads in Church, he writes: "‘And if...[her hair]...be given her for a covering,’ say you, ‘wherefore need she add another covering?’ That not only nature, but also her own will may take part in her acknowledgment of subjection." In short, the Divine Chrysostomos, one of the greatest of the Church Fathers, supports St. Paul’s desire that a Christian woman should not cut and shave her hair, while pointing out that the obedience of covering her head in prayer is an act of subjection to God and the Church.

He further warns that to ignore these things is to "subvert the very laws of nature" and demonstrates a spirit of "most insolent rashness." In his eighth Homily on I St. Timothy (see Patrologia Graeca, Vol. LXII, Cols. 540-542), St. John Chrysostomos also speaks to us about St. Paul’s admonition that women dress and adorn themselves modestly, avoiding excessive jewelry, decoration, and flamboyant dress (I St. Timothy 2:9). "Paul, however, requires something more of women," he notes: "That they adorn themselves ‘in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided [coiffured] hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.’" Elaborating on this passage, he asks: "But what is this ‘modest apparel’? Such attire as covers them wholly and properly, not with superfluous ornaments, for the one is appropriate, while the other is not." He directs to women who ignore these guidelines some sternly sobering words: "Do you approach God to pray with styled hair and gold jewelry? Have you come to a dance, a marriage, or some fancy parade? There such styling and costly clothing may be acceptable, but here [in Church] none of this is desirable.

You come here to pray [and] to beg for the forgiveness of your sins.... This is not the dress of a suppliant....She who weeps should not be wearing gold. This is nothing but acting and hypocrisy....Put away such hypocrisy! God is not mocked! This is the garb of actors and dancers... Nothing of this kind is appropriate to a modest woman, who should be adorned ‘with shamefacedness and sobriety.’" On these subjects the canonical witness of the Church is also not silent. The Ninety-Sixth Canon of the Synod in Trullo ["Penthekte"] reads: "Those who are by baptism clothed in Christ have professed that they will imitate His way of life in the flesh. Those, therefore, who style and trim the hairs of their head, to the ruin of onlookers, with inventive intertwinings, and thereby provide enticement for unstable souls, we paternally proffer an appropriate penance, so as to cure them, instructing and teaching them to live prudently, setting aside the deceit and vanity of materialism, that they might ever give over their minds to a blessed life without havoc, being fearful in their pure intercourse, thus approaching God to the extent possible through their purity of life; embellishing the inner man instead of the outer, so that, adorned with virtues and sweet and blameless ways, there might not be in them the remains of the coarseness of the adversary.

But if any should act in opposition to the present Canon, let him be kept from communing." (See Pedalion, or The Rudder, Thessaloniki: B. Regopoulos, 1982, p. 305). Commenting in his "Interpretation" of this Canon, St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite punctuates the fact that it provides excommunication (suspension from Holy Communion for a period of time, as specified by one’s Confessor) for "those Christians who style the hair of their head, and comb it and wave it, and flaunt it as enticement to those souls who are of weak faith and easily led astray," pointing out that this admonition falls on both men and women. He emphasizes that Christians must conduct themselves in an innocent and pure manner, avoiding all vanity and falseness, adorning the soul with virtue and eschewing the marks of the Devil that the stylish adorning of the body entails. (Ibid., pp. 304-306.) While, once more, the Canons of the Church are not meant to violate our freedom in Christ or to form our faith by dead rules that fail to acknowledge both the good intentions of those who at times err and the exceptions to rules that lie within the realm of pastoral discretion, St. Nicodemos’ comments should serve as a reminder to all of us that the customs and traditions of the Church are not things with which we are free to trifle; nor, indeed, should personal opinion, mere convenience, or an abuse of pastoral condescension lead us into a way of life that serves as a source of scandal to others and to violations of the standard of sobriety to which all Christians are called.

It goes without saying, of course, that, in upholding the traditional grooming customs and dress codes of the Church, we should never judge or condemn anyone among the Faithful who deviates from them. We should approach them with care and evaluate each individual by the quality of his or her Christian life. As for individuals who openly defy the customs and traditions in question out of tenacity, making "excuses in sins" (Psalm 140, Septuaginta), and who refuse at the very least to acknowledge their weakness, let the Church leaders settle the matter.

The Faithful should not make such things a matter of rigid rules and division, lest they, too, become a source of scandal and act in a truly sectarian manner, rightly earning the condemnation improperly attributed to us traditionalists by overt innovators who would like to dismiss all that is difficult in the Faith as fundamentalistic. * With regard to "cross-dressing," or dress styles which downplay the distinction between men and women, the Old Testamental witness is worthy of mention here: "The apparel of a man shall not be on a woman, neither shall a man put on a woman’s dress; for every one that does these things is an abomination to the Lord thy God" (Deuteronomy 22:5).

This very proscription is contained in the Canons of the Church, too; see Canon XIII of the Council of Gangra (340) and Canon LXII of the Sixth Ecumenical Synod (Pedalion, op. cit., pp. 401, 275, respectively). From Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XVII (January, 2000), pp. 24-28. See also the sobering homily for women on Isaiah 3:24 by St. Nikolai Velimirovich in The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. III, pp. 183-185.

Source: http://www.holyresurrection.us

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The Orthodox Church proclaims equality between men and women. They have, however, different roles to perform within the context of the Church. Women, as the Church emphasizes, are the backbone of the Church in that they are the backbone in their respective parishes and homes. It is well known that churches cannot continue to be strong units in the Church unless their families and children, the nucleus of any given parish, are raised and cared for in a Christian manner and according to Christ’s teachings. Chrysostom asserts that “the home is the little church” (Homilies on Ephesians, Homily XX), where all Christian education starts and ends. Nowadays, more than ever, women play an essential and indispensable role in the family. They are caring wives, nurturing mothers, valuable parish leaders and workers, and productive contributors in the workplace of our modern society. One might note that men play very similar roles in all mentioned segments! That would be absolutely true. Nevertheless, roles vary in different fields according to the gifts granted by God to each sex.

Whether one likes it or not, whether one admits it or not, whether one accepts it or not, the handson role in raising children and keeping the sense of family strong belongs to the wife and mother more than to the husband and father. This is not to say that the husband or father has nothing or very little to contribute in this field. On the contrary, the husband or father has a crucial role to play. Yet the wife or mother has a bigger role. God has equipped the female with more qualities than the male in this area of human responsibility. A mother’s nurturing abilities are not matched by the father in most cases. A mother’s nurturing abilities is shown by the fact that, more often than not, a child will run crying to his or her mother when he or she falls and has a scratch on the knee, rather than to dad. This innate ability to comfort and console the child is more commonly found in the mother. It is noteworthy that, in general, the mother spends more time with the children than the father.

Children, who are impressionable especially in the first five years of their lives, receive invaluable education not only through the direct teachings from the mother, but also through her actions, behavior, and words. Children absorb like sponges the mother’s influence on them, even if it is not directly apparent at first. If the mother carries herself properly, adheres to the rules she sets for her children in the house, is polite, and is genuine, then the children will usually follow suit. If the mother, on the other hand, is on drugs, drinks to excess, and so forth, and/or does not pay attention to her children, then the children will learn that behavior and eventually practice it. They would seem to them to be the norm, because their mother lived it and she is the prime example for them. The following Arabic proverb rings true: “A mother is a school; if you have prepared her well, you have prepared good people.”

What does this have to do with being the backbone of the Church, one might ask? St. John Chrysostom instructs mothers that they are to “let everything take second place to our care of our children, our bringing them up to the discipline and instruction of the Lord. If from the beginning we teach them to love true wisdom, they will have more wealth and glory than riches can ever provide” (Homilies on Ephesians, Homily XXI). When a child grows up in a home saturated with discipline and the instruction of the Lord, and full of Christian values, and he or she witnesses and experiences sacrificial love, which is the highest virtue according to St. Paul (1 Corinthians 13:4), he or she will imitate those patterns and will become a virtuous and productive member of the Church and, by extension, society. It is widely known that children learn best by imitation at first.

Apart from this psychological and behavioral view of the important role a woman plays in the Church, a glance at Church history yields much fruit with respect to the same topic. The New Testament is a good place to start. We see in the Gospel According to St. John that “there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene” (John 19:25). Nevertheless, all His disciples, who followed Him, learned from Him, and were very close to Him for three years, were conspicuously absent at the foot of the Cross, with the exception of John the Beloved. The loyalty that these women exhibited to the Son of God was second to none. This alone qualifies them to be the Church’s backbone.

Another example from the New Testament is in order. The story of Mary and Martha in the Gospel According to St. Luke demonstrates to us several important virtues to acquire (Luke 10:38–42). First of all, Mary was eager to learn from the Master, so she sat at His feet in humility, while Martha served Him with love. She complained a little about her sister, but nevertheless, she served Him well with love. The virtue of knowledge through learning, for which Mary thirsted, strengthens the virtue of faith. Since the more one learns, the more one realizes that faith is needed to accept that which is not understandable, and hence unknowable, like the substantial constitution of the Holy Trinity.

At the same time, the virtue of humility, which again Mary exhibited by sitting at the feet of someone, is the beginning of the virtue of wisdom, which one must have on the narrow road of salvation. On the one hand, faith and wisdom are two of the most important virtues that advance someone on the narrow road of deification. On the other hand, the virtue of love is evident in Martha’s behavior as she served Him in her house. Despite the fact that she complained about her sister’s lack of service, she had obediently served her Master. A Church father remarked that the beginning of love is obedience. If someone is not obedient to anyone, he or she does not love anyone.

The prototype of faith, love, service, humility, and knowledge, among other virtues, is the Virgin Mary herself. She managed to combine the virtues that both Mary and Martha had, especially faith, love and service. She served Christ, her Son, and cared for His needs as would any good mother. She learned from Him every opportunity she had, despite the fact that she did not understand what He said in every instance such as: “‘Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?’ But they did not understand the statement which He spoke to them … but His mother kept all these things in her heart” ( St. Luke (2:49–51).

Let us not neglect the fact that she had such love for the Master, her Son, that she was at the foot of the Cross (John 19:25), feeling His pain on the road to Golgotha and at the Place of the Skull. Conversely, her faith in His Resurrection, which was continually strengthened by acquired knowledge about Him and His teachings, was unwavering. Therefore, she did not go with the other women to the tomb to anoint Him, where she should have been the first one there as His mother, did she not have her steadfast faith in His Resurrection: “Now when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him” (Mark 16:1).

There is a plethora of stories that we can reference in the Old and New Testaments to confirm the aforementioned assertions, but a practical example from the lives of parishioners is more demonstrative. I leave you, then, with the obvious living examples of the Ladies Societies in every parish, that carry the burden, cheerfully, I might add, of raising funds for many good causes, of serving on parish councils, of cooking for almost every event in every parish, of leading Sunday Schools and teaching most classes, and of singing in choirs and at chanters’ stands. Without women’s efforts, parishes would not function properly.

Bishop Nicholas

Bishop of Brooklyn and Assistant to the Metropolitan

Source: http://www.antiochian.org/role-women-orthodox-church

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Background of St. Luke

The holy Evangelist Luke was born in the Syrian city of Antioch. His parents were not members of the Hebrew race; and the very name “Luke” bears witness to this in part, for it is an abbreviated form of the Latin name “Lucanus.” Furthermore, in one passage in his Epistle to the Colossians, the holy Apostle Paul makes a clear distinction between Luke and those “who are of the circumcision,” that is, the Jews (Col 4:10-15). In his own writings, however, Luke shows a thorough knowledge of the Law of Moses and the customs of the Jewish people. Hence, we may conclude that Luke had already adopted the Jewish religion before his conversion to Christ. Moreover, in his native land, which was renowned for the flourishing state of the arts and sciences, Luke had developed his intellect with various scholarly studies. From the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians, we learn also that Luke had studied medicine (Col 4:14). Tradition also informs us that he was a painter. He undoubtedly received an excellent education in general, for the quality of the Greek language in his writings is far more pure and correct than that of the other New Testament writers.

Coming to Christ

When rumor of the miracles and teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ spread from Galilee throughout Syria and the entire surrounding region, Luke journeyed from Antioch to Galilee, where the Lord Jesus Christ had begun to sow the seeds of His saving teaching. These seeds found good soil for themselves in the heart of Luke, and bore much fruit. The holy Luke was soon found worthy of a place in the company of the Seventy Apostles and, after receiving traveling instructions from the Lord and the power to work miracles, he went “before the face” of the Lord Jesus Christ, preaching the imminence of the kingdom of God and preparing His way.

At the Crucifixion

During the final days of the Savior’s earthly life, when, with the striking down of the Shepherd, the sheep of His flock also were scattered, the holy Luke abode in Jerusalem, lamenting and weeping for his Lord Who had voluntarily accepted suffering. In all probability, Luke also stood “afar off” among the others who knew Jesus, and looked upon the Crucified One. But soon after, his sorrow was turned into joy, for the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ consoled Luke on the very day of His resurrection, counting him worthy to see and converse with Him, as Luke himself informs us in his Gospel in great personal detail (Luke 24:13-32).

On the Road to Emmaus

Grieving over the death of His Master and in doubt concerning His resurrection, of which the myrrh-bearing women had informed him, Luke set out from Jerusalem for Emmaus in the company of Cleopas, another disciple of the Lord. Along the road to that town, he was accounted worthy to become the traveling companion of Him Who is “the way, the truth and the life.” Both disciples were walking and conversing with one another when Jesus Himself overtook them and walked with them. The Lord appeared to them, as the Evangelist Mark relates, “in another form” (Mark 16:12), and not in the form in which they had known Him before. Moreover, by the special providence of God, “their eyes were holden” (Luke 24:16), that they might not recognize the Lord Who had appeared to them. They supposed that their Companion was one of the pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover.

“What manner of conversation is this that ye have with one another, as ye walk, and are sad?” the Lord asked them. “Art Thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?” Cleopas asked in return. “What things?” Jesus asked again. “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, Who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people; and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and have crucified Him. But we hoped that it had been He Who should have redeemed Israel; and besides all this, today is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, who were early at the sepulcher; and when they found not His body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels, who said that He was alive. And certain of those who were with us went to the sepulcher, and found it even as the women had said; but Him they saw not.”

Then said the Lord to them: “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?” And, beginning with Moses, the Lord Christ explained to them passages from all the prophets that told of Him in the Scriptures. Thus, conversing with the Lord, the disciples drew nigh to Emmaus without being aware of it. And since His conversation was pleasing to them, and their Companion made as if to journey further, they besought Him to remain with them, saying: “Abide with us; for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.”

Therefore He entered the town and sojourned with them in a certain house. When He reclined with them to dine, He took a loaf of bread from the table and, blessing it, broke it and gave it to them. No sooner did the Lord do this than His disciples immediately recognized Him. In all probability, the Lord had performed this action in the presence of His disciples previously; moreover, they may have recognized Him from the wounds made by the nails that had pierced His hands. But at that moment, the Lord vanished from before their eyes, and they said to one another: “Did not our hearts burn within us, while He talked with us along the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?”

Back in Jerusalem the Risen Lord Appears once More

Desiring to share their joy with the other disciples of the Lord, Luke and Cleopas rose immediately from their meal and set out for Jerusalem. There they found the apostles and the other disciples assembled in one house, and, of course, they announced to them straightway that Christ had risen from the dead, and that they had seen Him and conversed with Him. For their part, the apostles reassured them, relating that the Lord had truly risen and had appeared to Simon. Then Luke and Cleopas recounted to the apostles in detail all that had transpired with them on the way, and how they had recognized Christ the Lord in the breaking of the bread. (*Partaking of Holy Communion, we also recognize Christ in “the breaking of the bread”.)

In the midst of their conversation, the risen Lord Himself suddenly appeared among the apostles, bestowed His peace upon them and calmed their troubled hearts. To convince those who thought that what they were seeing was not merely the ghost of their dead Teacher, the Lord showed them the wounds which the nails had inflicted upon His hands and feet, and partook of some food. Then the Evangelist Luke was again accounted worthy to hear from the Lord an explanation of all said of Him in the sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament, and received the gift of understanding the Scriptures (Luke 24:18-49).

St. Luke at Sebaste, Antioch, Greece, and Phillipi

After the ascension of the Lord, the holy Luke remained in Jerusalem for a time, with the other apostles; but later, as tradition bears witness, he went to Antioch, his native city, where there were already many Christians. Along the road to Antioch, he passed through the city of Sebaste, the principal city of Samaria. There he proclaimed the glad tidings of the coming of the Messiah. There also, he found the incorrupt relics of St. John the Forerunner. When it came time for him to leave Sebaste, the holy Luke wished to take them with him to his native land, but the Christians there, fervently honoring the Baptizer of the Lord, would not permit Luke to remove all his holy relics. Then, St. Luke detached from them the right arm, under which Christ had bowed His head when He had received baptism from John. With this priceless treasure, the holy Luke arrived in his homeland, to the great joy of the Christians of Antioch. And he left that city only when he became the traveling companion and fellow laborer of the holy Apostle Paul, who, in the words of several ancient writers, was even one of his kinsmen. This took place during the Apostle Paul’s second missionary journey. At that time, St. Luke and the Apostle Paul traveled to Greece to preach the Gospel, and the holy evangelist was left behind by the Apostle to the Gentiles to establish and organize the Church in the Macedonian city of Philippi. Then, for a period of several years, the holy Luke labored to spread Christianity throughout those parts.

With the Apostle Paul

When, at the end of his third missionary journey, the Apostle Paul again visited Philippi, Luke, on his instruction and as the choice of all the faithful, went to Corinth to collect alms for the poor Christians of Palestine (cf. 2 Cor 8:18-19). When he had finished what he had been sent to do, St. Luke departed with the Apostle Paul for Palestine, stopping along the way to visit the Churches on the islands of the Aegean archipelago, along the coast of Asia Minor, in Phoenicia and in Judaea. When the Apostle Paul was kept under guard in prison in the city of Caesaria of Palestine, the holy Luke remained by his side. And he would not forsake him even when he was sent to Rome to stand trial before Caesar. Together with the Apostle Paul he endured all the difficulties of their voyage across the sea, and nearly lost his life (cf. Acts, chapters 27-28).

The Gospel of St. Luke and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles

On arriving in Rome, the holy Luke again stayed by the Apostle Paul’s side and, together with Mark, Aristarchus and several other of the apostles’ companions, preached Christ in the capital city of the ancient world (this is evident from information given in St. Paul’s Epistle to Philemon). In Rome, the holy Luke wrote his Gospel and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. In his Gospel, he described the earthly life of our Lord Jesus Christ, not only on the basis of what he himself had seen and heard, but also taking into account all that had been handed down by those “who from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the Word” (Luke 1:2). The holy Apostle Paul guided him in this labor and afterwards approved the Gospel written by St. Luke. In the same way was the Book of the Acts of the Apostles written, as the tradition of the Church says, at the command of the Apostle Paul.

With St. Paul in Rome unto his Martyrdom

After two years in chains in the dungeons of Rome, the Apostle Paul was released and, departing from Rome, visited several of the Churches he had founded before. At this time, the holy Luke was again his companion. But before long, the Emperor Nero initiated a cruel persecution against the Christians in Rome. The Apostle Paul then returned to Rome, that by his discourse and example he might encourage the persecuted Church, make it steadfast, and, if it so pleased God, share with the faithful the crown of martyrdom. He was arrested by the pagans and imprisoned again. Yet even then the holy Luke did not forsake his teacher, and he alone, among all the apostles’ fellow laborers, stayed at his side during that period of time which was so terrible that the apostle compared himself to a victim doomed to be slaughtered. “I am now ready to be offered,” he wrote to his disciple Timothy, “and the time of my departure is at hand. Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me; for Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me” (2 Tim 4:6, 10-11).

St. Luke in Italy, Dalmatia, Gaul, Macedonia, and Achaia

It is quite possible that Luke was also a witness to the martyrdom of the Apostle Paul in Rome. After the repose of his teacher, the holy Luke, as the tradition of the Church informs us, spread the Gospel of Christ in Italy, Dalmatia, Gaul, and especially, Macedonia, in which he had labored before for several years. He also evangelized Achaia, which borders on Macedonia.

St. Luke in Egypt

When he was already quite elderly, the Apostle Luke undertook a journey to far away Egypt and there labored greatly and endured many afflictions for the holy name of Jesus. He arrived in Egypt, having first passed through all of Libya, and in the Thebaid of Egypt converted many to Christ. In the city of Alexandria, he ordained as bishop a certain Abilius to be a successor to Annas, who had been ordained by the Evangelist Mark, and had carried out his ministry for twenty-two years.

The Martyrdom of St. Luke

Returning to Greece he again set up churches there, primarily in Boetia, ordained priests and deacons, and healed those sick of body and soul. Like his friend and mentor, the Apostle Paul, St. Luke fought the good fight, finished his course and kept the Faith. At the age of eighty-four, he died a martyr’s death in Achaia, crucified on an olive tree in lieu of a cross. His precious body was buried in Thebes, the principal city of Boetia, where his holy relics, which were responsible for a multitude of hearings, were to be found until the second half of the fourth century; they were subsequently transferred to Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Empire.

The Holy Relics of St. Luke

The location of the relics of the holy Apostle Luke became known in the fourth century because of the healings worked there. Many cures were worked through them especially for those who suffered from diseases of the eyes. The Emperor Constantius, the son of the holy Emperor Constantine the Great, the equal of the apostles, on learning from the Bishop of Achaia that the body of St. Luke lay in Thebes, dispatched Artemius, then Prefect of Egypt, to translate the relics of the holy Luke to the capital, which Artemius accomplished with great solemnity.

A Miracle at the Transfer of St. Luke’s Holy Relics

During the transfer of the holy relics of St. Luke from the seaside to the church, the following miracle took place. A certain Anatolius, a eunuch who was one of the imperial chamberlains, was afflicted with an incurable illness. He had expended a great deal of money on physicians, yet had not obtained a cure; but then, approaching the precious relics of the Apostle Luke with faith in their miraculous power, he entreated the holy one for healing. He drew near the honored reliquary of the saint and, to the extent of his ability, helped to carry it. And what happened? The disease left him before he could walk many steps. After this, he joyfully carried the precious reliquary to the Church of the Holy Apostles, where the relics of St. Luke were enshrined beneath the altar together with the relics of the holy Apostles Andrew and Timothy. There they became a well-spring of miracles and were venerated with particular love by the Orthodox Christians.

St. Luke, the First Iconographer of the Church

The writers of the ancient Church inform us that St. Luke, acceding to the pious desire of the early Christians, was the first to paint the image of the all-holy Theotokos, holding in her arms the pre-eternal Infant, our Lord Jesus Christ; and later painted two other icons of the all-holy Theotokos and brought them to the Mother of God for her approval. On seeing the icons, she said: “May the grace of Him Who was born of me and my mercy be with these icons!”

The holy Luke also painted on boards the images of the holy pre-eminent Apostles Peter and Paul, and was thus himself the initiator of the good work of iconography, to the glory of God, the Mother of God and all the saints, unto the adornment of the holy churches and the salvation of the faithful who piously venerate them. Amen.

Source: http://stlukesoc.org/about-us/life-of-st-luke/

In this holy season you could have a child ask you, “why was Jesus born as a boy? Why couldn’t St. Mary have had a baby girl to be our saviour?” How would you answer these questions? I would say this because the Bible says it: God wanted to be born of St. Mary as a baby boy because it was His intention to be a perfect man. God made that choice. God can do and will do what He wants to do.

Now suppose a little later an adult person asked you, “Why don’t the Orthodox Christian Churches allow women to be ordained as deacons, priests or bishops?” The Church of England just voted to permit women to be ordained to the sacred ministry. Many other Christian denominations have been ordaining women to the ministry for many years. The question is answered in the Christmas story recorded in the Bible. God took the form of a man when by the power of His Holy Spirit He was born of the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos. That provides our Orthodox Christian Churches’ answer. Only a man can be ordained as a deacon, priest or bishop because Jesus the perfect Man chose only men to be His disciples and apostles. God made that choice. God can do and will do what He wants to do.

Sadly many people do not believe that the Christmas story about the Incarnation and Holy Nativity is true. They don’t believe that God became man in Jesus Christ. Quite naturally then, they don’t believe that God made the choice to become a man and not a woman. Unfortunately no Biblical, rational or historical answer can be given to those who choose not to believe. Many Christian people, however, need some kind of rational explanation in order to discuss God’s Incarnation as a man with other Christians or with their feminist or “politically correct” friends. Fortunately our Orthodox Christian Churches have experienced and preserved some rational theological reasons why only men can be ordained to the Sacred Ministry. I want to present three of the most compelling reasons.

We need to understand them in order to be faithful to our Biblical Doctrine and Holy Tradition. We need to believe in these reasons in order to continue worshipping in the same way Jesus Christ told our ancestors to worship God for our salvation. We need to hold fast to these reasons in order to resist the devil’s unrelenting attempts to destroy our faith in Christ and the Orthodox Church He founded.

The first reason for a male priesthood has to do with the foundation and tradition of the Christian religion. When Christ was living in human flesh, He deliberately selected twelve men to be His Apostles. These men were the beginning of a priesthood of men who were prepared to follow Him as the ordained leaders of His Church down through the centuries to this moment. The Christian churches that chose to remain within the apostolic and catholic tradition have therefore only ordained men to be bishops, priests and deacons. Now, some two thousand years later, in the supposedly greater wisdom of our twentieth century many leaders have decided that all the Christian churches should allow the ordination of women. They claim to know the mind of Christ in arguing that it was for sociological, political and economic reasons that Jesus decided not to select and ordain women to be among His disciples. The arrogant presumption of those people who say that they know what Jesus had to do or had not to do, hardly deserves an answer, but we can try to do so anyway. Christ is God and He will do what He wants to do and when He wants to do it. God did what He did because what He does is always right and the best for us.

To argue that Jesus did not ordain women because women were not considered worthy enough and would be a liability to His ministry in a male-dominated culture is illogical. It begs the question. After all Christ is God and He could have brought women into the apostolic ministry at that time if He thought it was necessary He did not think it was necessary because He chose not to do it. Instead He honored His Virgin Mother to be the Theotokos, our God-bearer, thereby elevating her to be first among the saints. Through St. Mary Jesus has raised the status of all women everywhere and for all time. They were no longer to be regarded as chattel but to be treated as being equally precious as men in the eyes of God. Christ hallowed the state of marriage which was much abused in those days to the detriment of women.

He taught the spiritual equality of men and women and blessed that equality by saying, “for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife and they shall be one flesh.” But while Christ taught that men and women are equal in their human nature, they are blessedly and entirely different in their human function. I intend to say more about their human function in a moment.

Those people who advocate the ordination of women to the Sacred Ministry of our Orthodox Church disregard history — both church history and Holy Tradition — and they misinterpret the Bible. They want us to believe that the Bible allows the ordination of women. While they claim that there is no specific verse in the Bible prohibiting women from being ordained, we Orthodox Christians know that you can not argue justifiably that point from mere scriptural silence. There are many specific things about which the Bible is silent. There are many things the Bible does not explicitly prohibit but which we know we should not do. It is obvious in the study of church history that the idea of female priests never developed in the religious and spiritual experience of our Christian ancestors. They struggled desperately against all those pagan religions which had a plethora and panoply of male and female gods and goddesses.

Our Christian ancestors saw that priestesses were frequently involved in the performance of fertility rites which glorified sexual deviance and promiscuity They knew that such obsession with sex was destructive of morality and the life and safety of the human family. They knew this because they understood the Holy Scriptures proclaimed by the Hebrew prophets and God Himself through Jesus Christ. What we must remember is that while the Bible may not contain a verse specifically prohibiting women to be ordained, it does contain much specific teaching about the necessity for a male priesthood. There is no indication whatsoever that any women were part of the ordained ministry in the time of the apostles. There is, however, in the Bible, St. Paul’s teaching that women should not lead in the worship of the church.

In the letters to the Ephesians and Corinthians, St. Paul speaks of the ordained man as being a presbyter, which means an older man or elder or ruler. He believes that only men should lead or rule in the Christian family. He believes that equal rulership with men would eventually cause confusion in the human family as well as in the church by preventing singleness of purpose in decision-making. There is, however, no argument from St. Paul about the fact that women have the right to rule in the political and vocational order. There have always been queens and princesses, and now there are female prime ministers and presidents. Women are active now in all the professional vocations and in all the trades known to mankind. We Christians who advocate only a male priesthood as being the only valid apostolic ministry of the Church do not in any way deny that women have equal rights and opportunities to work. We believe that women should be paid commensurately with men for their labor and skill. But certain leaders deprecate the male priesthood as being a bastion of male chauvinism and a violation of civil and equal rights for women. Nonsense! The Church is not a secular institution governed by democratic processes. The Church is a spiritual organism and not just a secular organization. She is a spiritual and supernatural monarchy with God as Her king and supreme judge. We Orthodox Christians declare that while men and women are equal in the eyes of God and under the secular law, they are very different in their human nature because God has created them for different functions. A bishop, priest and deacon have a specific function within the family of the Church. To ordain women to the sacred ministry would only confuse and destroy that function. In terms of human function a woman can no more be a priest than a man can be a mother.

What has happened in many protestant churches since the Reformation has been the supplanting of the doctrine of Apostolic Succession by the protestant idea of the priesthood of all believers. Protestant churches have no problem with ordaining women because they believe that all the people in the church are ministers to one another. But to say that all people are priests before God is to deny the apostolic and Biblical teaching that there are certain men in every time and place who will be selected by the consent of the people and given Grace by God to carry out special functions for the Church. God gave this function to men. Men did not, nor could they secure it for themselves.

There is a second reason why we Orthodox Christians have only a male priesthood. It rests on the fact that we have always had a catholic and apostolic understanding of the priesthood and not just that of a protestant ministry. We have a priesthood of all believers like the protestants because we do minister individually to each other through our love and prayers and mutual support. But our Orthodox priesthood goes far beyond a protestant ministry. We have a sacerdotal priesthood. Bishops and priests are not only presbyters as I said earlier, they are also individually a sacerdos. Sacerdos is a Latin word which means “an offerer of God’s gifts.” An Orthodox priest therefore is one who offers God’s gifts to His people as well as being set aside as being the people’s gift to God. We believe that God comes to us in a very special way through the sacraments. We believe that only a priest who has been given the authority by the Church through Christ can administer those sacraments. Only a priest and a bishop have the function and the authority to consecrate the elements of bread and wine to become the Body and Blood of Christ. Only the priest and the bishop have the function and the authority to bless water and oil in Holy Baptism and Holy Unction and to sanctify material objects for devotional and spiritual purposes. Only a priest and a bishop have the function and the authority to absolve people from their sins. Only a priest or bishop who is a man can exercise this function and authority because Christ ordained only men to have this kind of function.

Now there is a third compelling reason for the male priesthood. Orthodox Christians believe that their bishops, priests and deacons are Ikons of Christ and therefore must be male because Jesus Christ is male. To understand this we must think about what an Ikon is. An Ikon is a religious symbol, but yet much more than a symbol. It is an instrument of Divine reality. It is a picture and a vision for the eyes which conveys a spiritual reality to the worshipper. We can say that an Ikon is an image of the Divine, but we must say at the same time that an Ikon has no divine power of its own. That would make an Ikon an idol and idols belong to pagan worship. An Ikon has the spiritual function to help us receive into our souls the spiritual awareness of what it depicts. For example; when we look at an Ikon depicting the crucifixion, the Ikon helps us to participate more spiritually in the wonder of Christ’s love for us and the efficacious power of His sacrifice on the cross. Looking at an Ikon in our worship is the most direct way we can visually represent Christ’s atoning death for the forgiveness of our sins. Looking at an Ikon strengthens the spiritual reality of our worship.

The same thing should happen when we look at our clergy. When we are at worship our priest or bishop becomes an Ikon of Christ. Christ is God but He is also a fully perfect human man. That means that a priest, as His Ikon or most true symbol, must also be a man. A priest must be male because Jesus is a man. In the Incarnation God became man not woman. The male priesthood is a supernatural concept. In that sense it is a mystery just as the Incarnation or Resurrection is a mystery. Reason and logic cannot fully explain it, or define it, or detract from the truth of it, any more than you and I can explain it as being the way of God.

We can say that God has no particular sex, male or female. But in the Revelation of God through Christ, God chose to become a man because He wanted to take to Himself a bride which is the Church, the Family of God. In like manner, God also chose men to represent Him as the head of the human Church family. God decided that the function of consecrating, blessing and absolving is the role of man to do in our human existence on earth. Men have not made this their role. God made it men’s role. As individuals we believe God’s Word about this or we choose not to. But as members of the family of Orthodox Christian Churches we have no choice. The Church belongs to God and God has made His choice. God will do what He wants to do and what He wants is always right and best for us. God has chosen and blessed us with a male priesthood. Let us rejoice and be glad and thankful for it.

Father Alister Anderson is attached to Sts. Peter & Paul Church in Bethesda, Maryland.

Source: http://www.antiochian.org/midwest/Articles/The_Orthodox_Priest_An_Ikon_Of_Christ.htm

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