The Catalog of Good Deeds

1. Faith is the foundation of all goodness you need both in this life and to secure a good fate in the future everlasting eternity.

2. When our autocratic volition, guided by reason, wants to do good, i.e., to fulfil God’s will, and proves it by deed, it is pleasing unto God, and God helps us in performing those actions. When our foolishness wants to do something contrary to God’s will and insists on committing it, God allows it to happen because he doesn’t restrict our volition. However, He awards us for the first choice and punishes us for the second choice.

3. Our salvation is in our neighbour, and the Lord commands us to seek not our own benefit but the benefit of our neighbour.

4. Pride is the reason for all our disasters and alienation from God… It hides in the heart so well that a person who has it doesn’t notice or understand it unless God sends him a temptation to make it visible.

5. When we make God angry at our sins, we will not succeed in our worldly affairs, either.

6. Teach your children moral values and, when they are worth it and when it’s useful for them, God is able to enrich them or grant them things that they need and that will suffice them.

7. Our Lord Jesus Christ has revealed to us what the love of God consists of: “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me” (John 14:21). That is why when we trespass God’s commandments, there is no love of God in us any longer.

8. When you don’t have a lot of time for prayer, use the time that you have. God will accept your will; remember: the publican’s repentance in prayer is pleasing unto God. Be careful not to put a price tag on your prayer: it’s God’s business, not ours.

9. If our thoughts are pure, we see everyone as holy and good. When we see that people are bad, it is caused by our own disposition.

10. You must be aware that every failure is preceded by pride; which is why you have to look at your heart closely and not let that serpent to creep into your heart. Our downfalls make us humble, so you should know that and you will be made free of those passions.

11. You should teach yourself to be patient not when you are rebuked for your actual guilt but when you are innocent and nevertheless scolded and admonished.

12. You have to struggle with your passions both if you live together with other people and if you live alone. However, secluded living is not for everyone, especially those who haven’t defeated their passions—abstract theorizing, rage, guile, and the like. Such people have to learn to defeat their passions through interaction with other people first.

13. Reading spiritual books enlightens our minds and shows us the road to salvation. It nurtures the soul in the same manner as physical food nurtures the body.

14. All our actions are not enough if they are not enlightened by consideration. Consideration is caused by humility. Humility in turn is born out of sorrows.

15. The Kingdom of God is within you, the Lord said (Luke 17:21), i.e., in your heart; so you must look for it in your heart by cleansing it from passions and temptations of the enemy, and by refraining from judgment or finding faults with anyone…

September 20, 2018

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

Perhaps one of the most memorable verses in the New Testament comes from the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel, “ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.” (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) It was not by accident that St. John used, as the primary vehicle for communicating God’s person and presence, the term “λόγος” – Word.

A word is a means of communication. It is customarily spoken. It is itself a revelation of the One who speaks it. It requires seeing and hearing and, to distill its full meaning, it requires “rumination,” or pondering in the heart. Sacred Scripture is the living compendium of God’s Word, replete with stories, lessons, instructions, directions, and prophetic preaching designed to be seen, heard, and brought deep into the heart. In his book Bread for Life: Reading the Bible, Fr. Theodore Stylianopoulos, Professor of New Testament at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, writes, “The Church does not give us Holy Scripture as a book to study and interpret on our own. Rather, it opens to us the door to that beauty to which we are called by the Bridegroom Himself.”

Sacred Scripture is an encounter. It is a meeting between the human person and the very author of humanity itself. It is an extension of the salvific work done in Jesus Christ. A “living” testimony, Scripture is the presence of the Holy Spirit seeking us out to renew us and recreate us to live life in the post-modern world where, alas, words grow increasingly cheap, meaningless, and void of any power to inspire. If Sacred Scripture is so wondrous, then why do so few Orthodox Christians fail to read the Word of God every day?

A Pew Research Study on Religion and Public Life, indicates that nearly 70 percent of Orthodox Christians seldom or never pick up the Scripture and read it. 70 percent! I suspect that many, if not most reading these words find yourselves in that group. More shocking is the fact that 43 percent of Orthodox Christians believe Sacred Scripture is not the Word of God. These alarming survey results stand in stark contrast to the words of St. John Chrysostom. He tells his listeners “to persevere continually in reading the Divine Scriptures, because it is not possible, not possible for anyone to be saved without continually taking advantage of spiritually reading the Scriptures.”

Saint Jerome confirms Chrysostom’s counsel when he writes that “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ Himself!” For that reason, we need an Orthodox renaissance of Scripture reading. For the sake of our own holiness, spiritual life and desired closeness to Jesus, we need to read the Word, to reflect on the Word, and to live the Word – every day! How can we do that? Because of the limited amount of space, I suggest we begin by understanding how Sacred Scripture is read and by knowing four key qualities of reading the Word of God.

How is Sacred Scripture Read?

First, there is the reading of Scripture that is principally concerned with whether or not an event actually historically (factually) happened. For this method, historical authenticity means everything. It is often referred to as the “literal” way and is built on the premise that everything in Scripture literally happened as described. Secondly, there is the moral way of reading Scripture which seeks to find the moral reality, the values/ethics being taught in every passage. This way seeks out the various principles for Christian conduct, tantamount to a handbook of values. Finally, there is the spiritual way of reading Scripture. This method puts far less significance on the historical reality than the literal method and less emphasis on the purely moral reading.

A spiritual reading means discerning what the passage says about God, His world, and His work in the world – and how it applies to my life. This last method is used by Orthodox scholars as it was by the Fathers of the Church who were the first to engage in the formal study and development of Sacred Scripture. Biblical scholar Fr. Joseph Fitzmeyer notes that, “Our culture is obsessed with literal truth. Yet Sacred Scripture dealt in larger categories that literal truth. The New Testament, in particular, uses symbolic/spiritual language. Rarely do we decide a parable’s worth by whether or not it historically happened, in real time and space.”

Sacred Scripture tells us the story of how the kingdom of Light is expelling the darkness of human sin and death, as the Good News of Christ is preached and lived. The entire Bible is actually telling the “spiritual” reality behind what we perceive with our senses. The Orthodox way of reading Scripture is actually more faithful to reality, not as we see it, but as God sees it. Reading Scripture is an expression of what the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl said was, “man’s search for meaning”—a school of psychiatry he named “logotherapy”.

What are the Four Key Qualities of Reading Sacred Scripture?

Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia answers that question in the following way, “We believe that the Scriptures constitute a coherent whole. They are at once divinely inspired and humanly expressed. They bear authoritative witness to God’s revelation of Himself – in creation, in the Incarnation of the Word, and the entire history of salvation. As such they express the word of God in human language.”

Because of this, when we pick up Sacred Scripture to read it, we approach it with four qualities. Firstly, our reading should be obedient. We read Scripture like no other reading we may do. It is inspired of God, contains his voice and authoritative witness, and requires our obedience (openness, submission). In short, we must be receptive to the message God is communicating to us in our reading. Not a novel, not a biography, not a history text, Scripture is “Word-for-Meaning” in our life and we use our God-given reason to plumb its depths.

Secondly, as Orthodox Christians, we should receive and interpret Scripture through the Church and in the Church. The Church tells us what is Scripture and how it is understood. The Church defined what books were to be in Scripture, known as The Canon. In Acts we see the Apostle Philip encountering an Ethiopian reading the Old Testament. Philip asks, “Do you understand what you are reading?” The Ethiopian answers, “How can I, unless some man should guide me?” (Acts 8:30-31) Though we read the Scripture personally, it represents the mind of the Church and is “the Book of the Church.” For this reason it is precious to our faith.

Thirdly, our reading of the Bible should be Christ-centered. From start to finish, the Bible is the story of God’s persistent love reaching out and into man, ultimately through the Word-made-flesh, Jesus Christ. Analytical approaches break out the Scriptures into various sources which can harm the inner integrity of the book as a whole. We Orthodox prefer, instead, a synthetic approach, reading the Scriptures as an integrated whole with Christ as the bond of union. As Fr. Alexander Schmemann famously wrote, “A Biblical Christian is the one who, wherever he looks, on every page of Scripture, finds Christ everywhere.”

Lastly, our reading of Sacred Scripture ought to be personal. St. Mark the Monk, an early ascetic writer, relates, “He who is humble in his thought and engaged in spiritual work, when he reads the Holy Scriptures, will apply everything to himself and not to his neighbor.”

Scripture does not just ask “What does it mean?” but “What does it mean for me?” Where is my story within the larger narrative of salvation history? Where is God encountering me, reaching out to me, correcting me, teaching me? This is the point of all Scripture reading, both private and liturgical: to discover ourselves as part of salvation history, part of the reason why Jesus came, part of the hand of God’s mercy reaching into our lives to heal us and make us whole. There is life and hope in the pages of Holy Writ, there for us to discover.

One day, a still small voice whispered to St. Augustine as he sat in his garden. “Tolle, lege!” – “Take up, and read!” The incorrigible Augustine, who spent his life running from God, took up the Sacred Scripture, by chance flipped it open to the Epistle to the Romans, and it literally changed his life forever! That is God’s promise to each one of us – if we, too, take up and read.

By Rev. Fr. Dimitrios J. Antokas

Source: http://myocn.net/take-up-and-read/

July 23/August 5 is the day of commemoration of the glorification of St. Fyodor Ushakov, an admiral of the Russian navy of a brilliant undefeated career who lived a life devoted to the teachings of Christ and the services of the Church, and finished his life in the quiet peace of the Sanaksary Monastery. Below is an account of his life and glorification from Sputnik/The Voice of Russia.

* * *

On August 5th, 2001 at the Monastery erected in honor of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Sanaksar, they glorified the blessed holy warrior Fyodor Ushakov, canonized as a local saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. This was the first appearance of a saint in shoulder-straps—a navy officer—in the Russian church calendar. For what spiritual valor did our Lord thus pay homage to this legendary admiral, who brought glory to the Russian Navy with many a victory at the end of the 18th century? To tell us this is a layman, writer Valery Ganichev, author of a number of books about Fyodor Ushakov, and in actual fact, one who stood at the source of that which led to his glorification. Asked what inspired him to turn to the life story of the great navy officer, Valery Ganichev replied:

“Upon graduating from Kiev University I worked in the town of Nikolaev, a shipbuilding center in the south of the country. This was in the distant 50’s –60’s. These places are linked with the activity of Admiral Ushakov, who participated in the grand-scale epopee of opening up the virgin southern territories—Novorossiya and the Crimea; built up the Black sea Fleet and its base—Sebastopol. In scope, this epopee could be compared to the conquering of the American Wild West or the discovery of Australia.

I was greatly interested in the personality of Fyodor Ushakov. So I started collecting material on him. Working on the books devoted to Fyodor Ushakov, I marveled at his whole-hearted nature, unwavering conformity to the Lord's commandments and selfless dedication to his homeland. I began to see farther than his military valor, recognizing the valor of the spirit, thanks to which he, in effect, became the great navy officer he was.

What kind of a man was Fyodor Ushakov? He was born in 1744 on the Volga, in the family of a military man. He was baptized in the Church of the Epiphany-on-the-Isle, as if receiving from above a blessing to “serve on water.”

His birthday, February 13th, falls between the commemoration days of two warrior-martyrs—Fyodor Stratilat, and Fyodor Tiron. This, likewise, is an omen of Ushakov's military calling. So it is hardly surprising that as a youth, he chose to join the naval corps. By God's will he was sent to the Black Sea, where in battles with the Turks the Russian Black Sea Fleet was born. It was here that his God-given talent as a naval commander was manifested in full measure. For a number of spectacular victories during the second Russian-Turkish war of 1789-1791 Ushakov was elevated to the rank of Rear Admiral and placed at the head of the Black Sea Fleet. The Turks feared him, calling him, deferentially, “Ushak-Pasha.” Finally, in the celebrated battle of Tendre in 1790 he routed the Turkish fleet and thus put an end to the Turkish domination on the expanses of the Black Sea. Thus, Russia was able to hold its own among other great seafaring nations.

In the course of his service, Ushakov participated in forty campaigns and never once suffered defeat. This is unparalleled in world history. To us today this might seem a miracle, an unbelievable stroke of good fortune. Indeed, it was a miracle, but, from the point of view of an Orthodox believer, one worked by God.

Ushakov was a profoundly religious man, always staunchly believing in our Maker's providence, convinced that He granted victory to the Orthodox warriors while all of man's skills were "nothing without divine intervention.” After each victory he ordered a service in church to thank the Lord for yet another victory granted him. Even Ushakov's ships bore names of the Saints—"Saint Pyotr", "Saint Pavel", "The Nativity of the Mother of God", etc. According to the witness of contemporaries, despite an extremely busy schedule Ushakov daily went to the church services and never undertook any activity of importance without first attending the Liturgy. And indeed, busy he was. Ushakov was involved in not only navy matters proper, but in the construction of the naval base Sebastopol. Due to his excellent administrative skills the latter was turned into a real city, with attractive stone buildings, gardens and churches.

A true Christian, Ushakov closely followed the biblical commandment "love thy neighbor as you love thyself" in all of his deeds. It is true he was at times obliged to severely reprimand his subordinates for violating naval discipline, fighting their weaknesses: inclination to heavy drinking, slatternliness, idleness, and idle talk. And yet, there was no other commander in the whole of the Russian fleet who showed such concern for the sailors, their health and proper diet. "An ill sailor will be unable to serve the Navy as he should," he would say. There were times when the fleet experienced great hardships, not receiving money from the state coffers on time, and at such moments the Admiral would dip into his own pocket. History has preserved a decree dated October 18th 1792, where it is written: "Due to lack of funds and in view of a need to ensure the good health of the men, I allot, out of my own means, thirteen thousand and five hundred roubles, of which I order that ten thousand go towards buying fresh meat, and the remaining three and a half thousand be used for the needs of the hospitals.”

We do not know if the generous impulses of the great man were ever fully reimbursed by the state from its coffers, yet Ushakov was indeed repaid for his generosity in the love and complete devotion of his sailors, ready to follow him in the face of any danger...

Read the full article here: http://www.orthochristian.com/81187.html

It’s easy to find testimonies about “deconversion”, aka loss of faith, in the English-language part of the World Wide Web. People who grew up in a Christian (most often Fundamentalist) environment and then became atheists encourage each other, sharing their stories about how “reason and science” opened their eyes and demonstrated that the Bible (or in fact, the interpretation thereof, preached by the congregations which they attended as children) is evidently false.

Lately, similar stories have started to surface out in the Russian-speaking part of the Internet, too. An anonymous story of a priest who ostensibly lost his faith appeared on an anti-Christian website not long ago. I don’t know if that story is authentic; in any case, it resembles other stories so it’s worth looking into.

The author lists three main reasons for loss of faith. First, science has proven that the Earth is more than six thousand years old. Second, there are demonstrably false stories in the saints’ lives. Third, he never witnessed any miracles while praying. Well, let’s deal with these reasons, starting with science.

Science

What’s always striking in all those stories of deconversion is that the new knowledge and discoveries that the author puts forward as the reason for abandoning Christ are well known for many educated Christians but never lead them to renounce Jesus.

Take, for instance, Francis Collins, an American geneticist and the former head of the institute that decoded the human genome. Currently, he is in charge of the National Institute of Health and belongs to the upper layer of the world scientific elite. You are hardly more informed in the field of biology than he is. And yet, he’s a Christian, and he even wrote a book called The Language of God, which was translated into Russian. If biology makes you renounce Christ, what do you know which Dr. Collins doesn’t know?

Here is another Christian, Sir John Eccles, who won the Nobel Prize for his research in neurophysiology. His knowledge of how brain works did not interfere with his belief in the immortality of the soul and God’s Providence.

I am not going to turn this article into a detailed list of famous scholars who remain faithful Christians. There are dozens of such lists on the Internet. Sure, these scholars don’t think that the Earth is six thousand years old — frankly speaking, neither do I — but it doesn’t lead them to become atheists.

Given that these famous scholars aren’t led away from the faith by their profound knowledge but other people are led away from the faith by their haphazard and superfluous knowledge of some pop-sci books, I have to conclude that the real root of their spiritual crisis is elsewhere. Science doesn’t destroy faith.

Miracles

The same is true of miracles, too. The majority of believers have never witnessed the transformation of water into wine and crossed rivers using only bridges, yet it doesn’t prevent them from remaining Christians and being able to see God act in their lives.

Indeed, whether we see God act in our lives or not is to a great extent our choice, it’s what we want to see or not. There were many people in the Gospel who witnessed the Lord’s miracles but not every one of them started to believe in him. Furthermore, the more evident those miracles were (especially the resurrection of Lazarus), the more stubborn their denial was. We read in the Gospel that after Lazarus was raised from the dead, “many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him. But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done. Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation” (John 11:45-48).

If you stand face to face with an obvious miracle, it feels like you face a trial: you will never be able to go on living as if nothing happened. An individual either responds to the miracle with repentance and faith or refuses the opportunity; either of these decisions changes that individual’s life and determines his further destiny, including the eternal destiny.

That is why miracles of Biblical scope are extremely rare. On the contrary, the examples of God’s engagement with our lives happen quite often but they are subtle and uncoercive. You can agree to notice them or not. Someone has cancer, he goes through relentless treatment; other people pray for him with fervor, and in the end, he recovers. Is it a miracle? Skeptics will say: it was thanks to the chemo, so the effect of prayer is negligible. Someone is in trouble and doesn’t know what to do, then prays to God, and—the situation changes in an unexpected way. Is it a miracle? Skeptics can say that it was sheer luck. Someone prays to God to rescue him from a disaster, and the disaster goes away. It’s an accident, a skeptic may say.

Can we prove the skeptic wrong? How? We don’t have an alternative reality, where we didn’t pray, to check against. A person who chooses not to believe in God, won’t believe. God won’t force him into seeing His presence in the circumstances of life—at least until the Judgment Day.

Sure, sometimes prayers don’t work: people die and or dreams don’t come true. However, prayer isn’t the way of manipulating the universe. It’s our personal plea to the One Who knows best. You can believe or refuse to believe if your request is met; likewise, if your prayers don’t yield fruit, you can either trust God or decide that if God doesn’t always do what I ask him to do, He doesn’t deserve my allegiance. A believer and an unbeliever may encounter the same events but react to them differently.

Lives of the Saints

Unreliable information in the saints’ biographies (lives of the saints) is an even weaker reason for loss of faith. Let’s assume—as many Orthodox Christians do—that there are certain unreliable facts there. What does it change for us? If the story of a saint destroying pagan temples with the power of his prayer is just a later legend, does it mean that there is no God and that Christ isn’t risen?

It seems to me that the deconverts are simply looking for ways to excuse their loss of faith but the real reasons aren’t the ones that they claim as such. What are the real reasons? I don’t know. They must vary among various people; with that said, there are certain well-trodden paths.

The first reason, which destroys our relationship with God, is our doubting his forgiveness. We all sin, sometimes chronically, year after year. Sometimes we fail suddenly and awfully. When an individual doubts that God has enough mercy for him, he tries to hide from the pangs of his conscience using the customary method, i.e., putting on the prosecutor’s mantle, justifying his own behavior and blaming others as a counter-attack measure. Furious condemnation of other Christians doesn’t mean that you’re zealous in the Lord. Zealots like Savonarola or Protopope Avvakum are an endangered species, if not extinct, nowadays. Much more often this behavior points at one’s own guilty conscience: “Those other sinners are even worse than I. They wear miters nevertheless!” The more a Christian attacks the Church, the stronger his anxiety is, the stronger he feels that he’s going in the wrong direction. The stronger his anxiety, the more thundering his invectives. Like other sins, this sin follows a downward spiral pattern.

You can jump out of that spiral if you simply believe that Christ knew who He was about to deal with from the start, and that all our sins are redeemed on Mount Golgotha. What we need is to get around to it and accept His forgiveness.

The second reason is our reluctance to forgive others. We all commit sins, and other people sin against us, too. If you are hurt, offended, or rebuked unjustly by other members of the Church, you are called to forgive them, and if you are reluctant to do so, it will erode your faith very fast.

The third reason is gradual evaporation of the feeling of awe. We live in a world that opposes the feeling of awe and hierarchy. Faith looks up at God, angels, saints, and the Church. The contemporary world can hardly stand it: it demands total vulgarization and defilement. “Creative artists” with their wry smiles of troubled teenagers are looking for ways to mock all sacred and revered objects and ideas and invite everyone to join them. Do you want to appear laid-back, blinkered, and ignorant of the modern art? They are always making fun of the Church and have the snide attitude that requires joking and derisive remarks every time they talk about sacred objects and ideas. When an Orthodox Christian gives in to this spirit of the time, he’s in trouble.

As far as scientific evidence is concerned, we’ve heard it already, haven’t we?

By Sergey Khudiev
Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

Source: https://pravoslavie.fm/articles/o-prichinah-otpadeniya-ot-veryi/

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