The Catalog of Good Deeds

Question: “If the Orthodox faith is the only true faith, can Christians of other confessions be saved? May a person who has led a righteous life on earth be saved, while not being a Christian?”

Answer: “For He said to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that struggles, but of God who shows mercy” (Rom. 9:15–16). In the Orthodox Church we have the most direct and complete path of salvation indicated to us, and we are given the means by which a person may be purified and have a direct promise of salvation. In this sense St. Cyprian of Carthage says, “Outside the Church there is no salvation.” The Apostle Peter writes exclusively to Christians saying: “According as His divine power He has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that has called us to glory and virtue. Whereby are given unto us exceedingly great and precious promises: that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Pet. 1:3).

And what should one say of those outside the Church, who do not belong to Her? Another apostle provides us with an idea: “For what have I to do with judging them that are without? You judge them that are within? But them that are without, God judges” (1 Cor. 5:12–13), having “mercy on whom He will have mercy” (Rom 9:18). The question, “Can the non-Orthodox, i.e. those who do not belong to Orthodoxy — the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church — be saved?” has become particularly painful and acute in our days. In attempting to answer this question, it is necessary, first of all, to recall that in His Gospel the Lord Jesus Christ Himself mentions but one state of the human soul that unfailingly leads to perdition — i.e. blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Matt. 12:1–32). The Holy Spirit is, above all, the Spirit of Truth, as the Savior loved to refer to Him. Accordingly, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is blasphemy against the Truth, conscious and persistent opposition to it. The same text makes it clear that even blasphemy against the Son of Man — i.e. the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God Himself, may be forgiven, as it may be uttered in error or in ignorance, and subsequently may be covered by conversion and repentance. (An example of such a converted and repentant blasphemer is the Apostle Paul. See Acts 26:11 and 1 Tim. 1:13.) If, however, a man opposes the Truth which he clearly apprehends by his reason and conscience, he becomes blind and commits spiritual suicide, for he thereby likens himself to the devil, who believes in God and dreads Him, yet hates, blasphemes, and opposes Him.

Thus, man's refusal to accept the Divine Truth and his opposition to it makes him a son of condemnation. Accordingly, in sending His disciples to preach, the Lord told them: “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believes not shall be condemned” (Mk. 16:16), for the latter heard the Lord's Truth and was called upon to accept it, yet refused, thereby inheriting the condemnation of those who “believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:12).

The Holy Orthodox Church is the repository of the divinely revealed Truth in all its fullness and fidelity to apostolic Tradition. Hence, he who leaves the Church, who intentionally and consciously falls away from it, joins the ranks of its opponents and becomes a renegade as regards apostolic Tradition. The Church dreadfully anathematized such renegades, in accordance with the words of the Savior Himself (Matt. 18:17) and of the Apostle Paul (Gal. 1:8–9), threatening them with eternal condemnation and calling them to return to the Orthodox fold.

It is self-evident, however, that sincere Christians who are Roman Catholics, or Lutherans, or members of other non-Orthodox confessions, cannot be termed renegades or heretics—i.e. those who knowingly pervert the truth. The Greek word for “heresy” is derived from the word for “choice” and inherently implies conscious, willful rejection or opposition to the Divine Truth manifest in the Orthodox Church. They have been born and raised and are living according to the creed which they have inherited, just as do the majority of you who are Orthodox. In their lives there has not been a moment of personal and conscious renunciation of Orthodoxy. The Lord, “who desires all men to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4) and “who enlightens every man born into the world” (Jn. 1.43), undoubtedly is leading them also towards salvation in His own way.

An inquirer once asked St. Theophan the Recluse if the non- Orthodox would be saved. The blessed one replied, “You ask, will the non-Orthodox be saved? Why do you worry about them? They have a Savior who desires the salvation of every human being. He will take care of them. You and I should not be burdened with such a concern. Study yourself and your own sins.”

By Metropolitan Philaret (+1985)

Other Quotes To Ponder:

St. Theophan the Recluse: "Why do you worry about them? They have a Savior, Who desires the salvation of every human being. He will take care of them. You and I should not be burdened with such a concern. Study yourself and your sins.... I will tell you one thing, however: should you, being Orthodox, and possessing the Truth in its fullness, betray Orthodoxy and enter a different faith, you will lose your soul forever."

Elder Nektary of Optina: One of Elder Nektary's spiritual children then inquired: "But what about the millions of Chinese, Indians, Turks and other non-Christians?" The elder replied:

"God desires not only that the nations be saved, but each individual soul. A simpl...e Indian, believing in his own way in the Creator and fulfilling His will as best he can, will be saved; but he who, knowing about Christianity, follows the Indian mystical path, will not." [Ivan Kontzevitch, Elder Nektary of Optina, p. 181].

Source: http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/11/will-non-orthodox-be-saved.html

St. John Cassian, in his 75 year life lived at the turn of the fifth century, interacted with every major Christian figure of the Patristic Age, founded monasticism in the West, laid the theological foundation for the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’, wrote the papal brief for the position of the Roman See at the Third Ecumenical Council, and wrote the most read work of devotional piety in late antique and medieval Latin Christianity. He is more likely than not the first saint ‘canonized’ by a Pope of Old Rome. Nonetheless, today, nearly no one has heard of him. His name has been removed from the popular Western calendar, and outside of the Provence, his feast day is not regularly celebrated by Western Christians. Those who have heard of him, primarily Protestants of a Calvinist stripe, hold him as the historical personage in which all of Christianity went wrong (a slander similar to the way in which some Orthodox scholars have treated St. Augustine of Hippo). How exactly this happened is one of the real curiosities of Church history and patristics.

Born ca. 360 in Scythia (modern day Romania) and given the name Cassianus, the saint first emerges in history some 20 years later. Having journeyed to Palestine (specifically Bethlehem) and entered the monastic life (there given the name ‘John’), Cassian journeyed with his friend, St. Germanus, to Egypt, there to study the more rigorous and (already at that early date) more traditional way of life of the desert. St. John there overstayed the release he had been given by his monastic elder by a period of several years, and this seems to have led to a situation in which he was no longer able to return to his original monastic home. Around the year 400, he and St. Germanus made their way to Constantinople. There they were ordained (St. Germanus a presbyter and St. John a deacon) and were part of St. John Chrysostom’s inner circle of clergy during his initial period as archbishop. Cassian’s specific task was the oversight of the treasury, which included both overseeing moneys managed by the Church and various objects and vessels of great value of ecclesiastical use. At the infamous Synod of the Oak, it was St. Germanus who brought Chrysostom’s response to the case against him and argued it against his opponents. When those efforts failed, St. John Cassian was dispatched to Rome to seek the support of the Pope of Rome in restoring St. John Chrysostom to his see.

After his journey to Rome, St. John Cassian settled in the West after forming a friendship with the Archdeacon Leo (later St. Leo the Great, Pope of Rome). He was ordained a presbyter, and was charged with bringing the monastic life of the East to Western Europe. He did so by two means: First, by establishing the Monastery of St. Victor in Gaul (what is now Marseilles to be precise) and second through the composition of his work The Institutes of the Cenobitic Life. The latter is a treasure trove of historical information, as St. John systematically compares and contrasts the traditions of Egypt and Palestine in all aspects of monastic life, and offers suggestions as to how the basic principles involved might find indigenous expression in Western Europe. The latter portion of the Institutes consists of a discussion of the ‘Eight Evil Thoughts’, which would later become the Seven Deadly Sins as they are known in the Western tradition. After concluding that work, St. John Cassian began another, his most famous, The Conferences. This work is really a collection of 24 shorter works, written as dialogues between St. Germanus and various of the Desert Fathers during St. John’s time in Egypt. These 24 Conferences were published in several small batches, one of which, comprising Conferences 11-17, would become the primary source of the controversy concerning St. John’s life and work.

The second decade of the fifth century in the West was rocked by one primary doctrinal controversy, that surrounding Pelagius, the British monk who had begun travelling the major cities of the Empire, preaching repentance, and focusing uncompromisingly upon every human being’s accountability before God. Most alarmingly, he proclaimed that Divine Grace was not necessary for salvation. Grace was, for Pelagius, a sort of fall back plan, a source of forgiveness for the lapsed. But for him the goal and purpose of the Christian life was never to lapse, and he claimed it was perfectly within the province of even fallen humanity to live a sinless and perfect life without any supernatural assistance and thereby attain to salvation. It was clear to many, chief among them St. Augustine, that this was heresy. Until this time, however (meaning the first two Ecumenical Councils and their related local councils), orthodoxy and heresy had been focused on conceptions of the Holy Trinity and the person of the Son in particular, not matters related to the path of salvation as such. Having brought Pelagius before the Holy Synod of Jerusalem for condemnation, Augustine was astonished that they cleared him of charges after only examining him regarding the Holy Trinity and the Creed. This set the Bishop of Hippo to writing, and his Anti-Pelagian works (quite literally) fill volumes. Finally, in 418, St. Augustine was successful in having Pelagius and his false teachings anathematized by the Council of Carthage.

In the process of arguing against Pelagius, however, St. Augustine had adopted (or at least seemed to adopt as a position from which to argue) the opposite extreme position. He seemed to argue for a form of Predestination and Reprobation in which human beings were completely passive in their salvation (as the flesh was a source only for concupiscence) and lived their entire lives of relative sanctity or wickedness playing out a pre-existing divine plan. At its extreme, St. Augustine even made the statement that the Holy Spirit had to constantly restrain the human flesh of Christ’s impulses in order to keep Him from sinning. These ideas were just as disturbing to many segments of the Church as those of Pelagius had been. It was especially disturbing to many of the fledgeling monastic communities in the West, whom St. John Cassian was serving. Therefore St. John composed Conference 13, “On Divine Protection”, in which he sets forward the basic principle of synergy in the Christian life. Pelagius was wrong that fallen man can do good and act under his own natural powers. Likewise, however, St. Augustine was wrong that God acts upon a passive (or actively fighting to fulfill opposite impulse) humanity. Rather, at the center of St. John’s text, every Christian ought, to quote St. Paul, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God Who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” The Divine Energies are the beginning, end, and basis of salvation, but do not negate, overpower, or snuff out the human.

At the end of his life, St. John Cassian’s final writing task was his Treatise Against Nestorius. Composed in 430 at the behest of Archdeacon Leo, the Treatise is really a sort of brief for the Pope of Rome explaining to him what the issues were with Nestorius’ Christology to allow him to prepare for what became the Third Ecumenical Council. Interestingly, in order to explain the Christological issues that St. Cyril had against Nestorius to a Latin audience, St. John connects Nestorius’ heresy to that of Pelagius. In the same way, he argues, that Pelagius separated the Divine Energies, God Himself, from His Creation, Nestorius was attempting to separate the Divine person of the Son from Christ’s human nature in a way which makes salvation impossible. Because of this connection drawn by St. John, at the Third Ecumenical Council, the anathema against Pelagius was renewed by the entire Church at the same time that Nestorius was condemned.

At the time of St. John Cassian’s repose in 435, there was no question whatsoever that he was in the full communion of the Church, and that he had been one of Her greatest spiritual teachers. Even those partisans of St. Augustine who had attempted to argue back against Conference 13, like Prosper of Aquitane, took issue with only ‘the author of the Conferences‘, being unwilling to speak St. John’s name in a negative light. A century and a half later, St. Gregory the Dialogist, Pope of Rome, was so devoted to St. John’s memory that he had his relics at the monastery of St. Victor placed in a silver coffer of his own design, inscribed with ‘Saint John Cassian’. Thomas Aquinas, as was common in many monastic orders of the Medieval West, read portions of Holy Scripture and portions of the Conferences every day as part of his prayer rule. In the East, not only was St. John’s sanctity unquestioned, he is the only Latin author whose work is included in the Apophthegmata, the collection of sayings of the desert fathers and mothers.

Then, during the Protestant Reformation, the history of the Christian West was rather cleverly revised. The project, of course, of the Reformation was to attempt to return the Western church to its original state, after centuries of corruption and creeping error. St. Augustine, as a Church Father, was looked to, especially by the Calvinist ‘wing’ of the Reformed camp as one of the purest sources of doctrine from the perceived height of the Western Church’s theological power and influence. While St. Augustine’s theology still undergirded much of the doctrine of the West, the positions expressed (especially in the extreme form there presented) in the Anti-Pelagian writings were no place in evidence in the theology of a Gabriel Biel. Rather than concluding, as is accurate, that those views were corrected partially by St. Augustine himself in his Retractions, partly by other Fathers like St. John Cassian, and in the greatest part by the guidance of the Church by the Holy Spirit through history, the Reformed instead concluded that there was a historical move away from an original predestinarianism and monergism during St. Augustine’s time or afterward, and that this movement formed part of the corruption of the Western church which was in need of reform. As he was the first and most prestigious respondent to St. Augustine’s views, St. John Cassian became an obvious target.

Seeing St. John Cassian’s position of synergism as a sort of ‘compromise’ between the human monergism of Pelagius and the Divine monergism of St. Augustine, the 16th century Reformed coined a new term: Semi-Pelagianism. Though they now had a good term linking St. John, ironically, to the man whose heresy he had actually brought to universal condemnation, historically speaking in both West and East, it was St. John’s position which had clearly won the day not only in terms of subsequent history (which the Reformed could write off as tainted) but also amongst his peers in the fifth century, many of whom were simultaneously being looked to by the Reformed as pillars of orthodoxy. In order to complete the historical revision, then, the early Reformed lit upon an episode that took place 100 years after St. John’s death, connected to him only in that it involved a subsequent generation of monks at the monastery in Marseilles which he had founded.

In the early 6th century, a heresy known as Massilianism had arisen in the Provence. In essence, the monastic clergy in the area were postponing baptism for recipients out of a belief that baptism, seen as the first interaction of the human person with divine grace sacramentally, must be merited by the recipient. In practical terms, an initiate to the Christian faith had to repent, amend his life, and become morally pure in advance in order to be worthy of being baptized. This was seen at the time to be a form of Pelagianism in that it held as a necessary presupposition that a person could somehow, apart from divine grace and the life of the Church, perfect him or herself in order to be worthy of reception into the Kingdom. This particular heresy was condemned by a local council, the Second Council of Orange, in 529. The Council was careful, however, in addition to recondemning Pelagianism, to also condemn the concept of reprobation (or predestination to damnation) on the opposite extreme, and to clearly teach that holy baptism has as its primary effect the remission of sins.

Despite the fact that the Reformed deny baptismal regeneration (that baptism actually forgives sins) and that they believed in the doctrine of reprobation so clearly anathematized by the Second Council of Orange, they re-branded Massilianism as a type of Semi-Pelagianism, then used the coincidence of Marseilles to tie this ‘Semi-Pelagianism’ to St. John’s (albeit quite different) supposed Semi-Pelagianism in order to assert that St. John Cassian’s views were condemned by the Second Council of Orange, casting St. Augustine’s most extreme positions as ‘the patristic viewpoint’. Despite its lack of basis in fact and the incredible tenuousness of its logic, this narrative prevails to this day in nearly all Protestant treatments of the topic. To compound the issue, rather than muster to St. John’s defense, the Rome of Trent yielded him completely, such that this narrative is even now frequently found in Roman Catholic sources, choosing to remove him from their calendar and defend only their (then) current teaching on merit and infused created grace. In truth, such a defense may have been impossible in the 16th century, as the theological categories in which Rome then spoke had ‘progressed’ so far beyond the mind of the Fathers as to render much of their work unintelligible (especially the Eastern Fathers).

Aside from the gross distortions of Christian history in the West and the slandering of a great and holy man, this re-characterization of St. John Cassian has had one particularly disastrous effect: It has deprived Christians of some of the greatest spiritual writing in the Church’s history. St. John composed all of his works in Latin, and so the East has known (and loved) him only through Greek quotations, excerpts, and summaries. His works in their entirety, in the original Latin, were entrusted to the West, and after the 16th century, they were largely abandoned. Perhaps the greatest evidence of this is the fact that even a resource such as Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers contains only portions of the Institutes and the Conferences. In fact, the first complete translation of the Conferences into English was published only in 1997. Fortunately, Christians of our era are finally in a position to reclaim these works, this portion of our shared history, and the man St. John Cassian himself.

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthodoxyandheterodoxy/2012/08/13/the-curious-case-of-st-john-cassian/

Our neighbors returned from a weekend away at a resort with their two teenagers. They described to us the wonderful food buffet at the resort. The brunch buffet, they reported, had everything, the meats, the scrambled egg bar, tremendous fruit spreads, all the pancakes and toppings you could think of, ten different types of dishes, salmon, croissants, you name it, they had it. They couldn’t hold back their dismay as they told us how their two boys came back from the buffet with a bowl of Captain Crunch cereal! “They can have that at home any time,” they exclaimed. They could have anything they wanted, a feast fit for a king, and they passed it all up for a bowl of cold cereal.

Lent is a time that we are invited to change our lifestyle in preparation for Easter. Like anything else in life, the more we understand what is happening, the more we indulge in the banquet, the more we will experience God’s healing presence in our lives. I won’t be able to highlight all of the delicacies that are laid out before us during this Lenten season, so I will highlight three of the dishes that families can partake in as a way of connecting to the banquet ourselves and teaching our children to partake. Notice the first connection, though. The most effective way to teach our children the joy of the liturgical life of the Church is to embrace it in our own lives.

Make a commitment on how you will fast during Lent

As Orthodox, we fast from food to be able to fast from sin. And it is our sin that keeps us from experiencing God fully. This connection between how we eat and how we sin is what the Fathers of the Church are clear on. This connection is also something that is lost in contemporary society. In America today, we don’t hear a lot about how fasting can help a marriage stay together or how a family can learn to love God through fasting. As a therapist, I see marriages fail because people cannot control how they act towards each other. Essentially the more we indulge ourselves in whatever we want, the more we become enslaved to our desires, rather than free to love. Fasting is not magic, but when we feast at the banquet of our souls through fasting we see God transforming our worldly desires towards His Kingdom. Opening up our marriages and families to fasting opens up our hearts to be filled with the Grace of God and be truly free.

Fasting rules for families is a personal thing. Each family will do it differently. In consultation with your Priest or Spiritual Father, consider following the fasting guidelines of the Church. Consider what you did last year, and take a step further this year. For some, this might mean fasting from meat and dairy the first and last weeks of Lent. For others, it is time to fast from dairy products during every week of Lent, or on Wednesdays and Fridays. Learning to partake of fasting from the buffet of the Church during Lent means letting go of control of our diet and giving this to God. Fasting is not just about food, but also about healing our souls. It is a challenge for us today, but like any sacrifices we make in faith, God’s blessings that come from it are uncountable.

Before Lent starts, decide as a family what your church service schedule will be. Families do this all the time at the beginning of the soccer, football, or basketball season. Families look ahead to commit their evenings and weekends to the sport schedule. The coach demands it and families do this. We do this for earthly rewards: a championship team or to help our kids develop their sports skills. Planning in advance that you will go to every Wednesday night Pre-Sanctified service, or Friday night Salutations service, or Saturday night Vespers is a commitment towards heavenly rewards of peace and healing. Planning ahead what services you will commit to is a way of setting your family’s Lenten journey within the life of the parish; right where it belongs.

Now what should we do if our kids don’t want to go? Or maybe we have mixed feelings about going. Attending the services requires a commitment of our time that will pay off in transforming our hearts and lives towards receiving God’s Grace. God’s Grace heals the ills of our souls, but services don’t have to be boring. Spend time as a family to make it meaningful. Learn about the service. Ask your Priest to teach what is happening to you and why. Participate in the services by learning the hymns and prayers. Suggest coordinating a potluck or discussion group at Church after service for families. This could mean coordinating activities for kids and discussions for adults. Do a family activity following the service that everyone will enjoy, like a family night at home. Like many good things in life, until we learn to love the medicine of worship in our lives, a teaspoon of sugar helps it go down. There are few things as boring as an Orthodox Church service that you are not connected with and there is nothing more transforming than living a life of worship.

Make a commitment to family prayer at home during Lent

Kids are more likely to feel at home at church if their home feels more like a church. While I am not suggesting that we walk slowly and use quiet voices at home, Lent is a great time to build your family icon corner, or come together before your icon corner in prayer. Mom and dad must be taking things seriously if they are lighting a candle before the icons and bowing their heads in prayer. If we are singing Church hymns at home, our kids will feel a familiarity when the hymns are sung at Church. Lent is a time to consider coming together as a family before the icons instead of before the television. If you don’t think you know how to do this, talk to your Priest about how to start to pray or find people to teach you about this.

Consider specifically incorporating the Lenten Prayer of Saint Ephraim as a family. Each evening, following dinner, or before bedtime when everyone is together, gather at the family icon corner and say the prayer all together.

O Lord and Master of my life, give me not the spirit of sloth, faintheartedness, lust for power, or idle talk. (prostration)

But grant me, your servant, the spirit of moderation, humility, patience, and love. (prostration)

Yes, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own faults and not to judge my brothers and sisters. For you are blessed to the ages of ages. Amen (prostration)

After each verse, do a full prostration, or bow, in front of the icon of Christ. This is the same prostration the Priest does at the beginning of services. Nothing shifts a family prayer time like doing prostrations together. Christ is present as we gather, and through the icons. Bowing down to Him makes it real and requires a step in faith. Paradoxically, it strengthens our faith, which is what we need as we try to turn our lives towards Him.

So the Lenten buffet is laid out before us to nourish our souls and prepare us to receive Christ at Easter. We can partake of fasting, church services, and prayer in the home. I have not mentioned many of the other ‘dishes’ available like confession, forgiveness, almsgiving, reading the scriptures, pilgrimages, reading the lives of the Saints, or memorizing scripture or prayers. The banquet is set for us to partake as much as we desire.

The goal or purpose of Lent is not to fast or pray. The goal of Lent is to experience God directly. Helping our kids ‘get more out of Church’ means helping them experience God directly. Lent is a time for families to reorient themselves towards God, but it takes a commitment to open our families to the life in Christ and open our homes to God’s saving Grace. The feast is there for us to partake of, but we can also walk right by, grabbing a bowl of cold cereal. Remember, though, that after a bowl of cereal you will be hungry again in an hour. But God promises those who partake, that “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

An article by Philip Mamalakis, PhD

Source: http://www.antiochian.org/699

The following is one of Eugene Rose’s lay sermons entitled “Weeping Icons of the Mother of God”, delivered in November 1966. Eugene Rose was later tonsured as the monk, Fr. Seraphim, a great modern-day ascetic and writer.

Of all the many ways in which the All-Holy Mother of God reveals Her mercies to men, there is one that stands out both as being undeniable (for it is a completely objective phenomenon) and as touching the heart in a most immediate way. This is the phenomenon of weeping icons, in which images of the Mother of God produce tears that are exact replicas, on the scale of the icon, of human tears – originating in a corner of the eye and coursing the side of the face, sometimes as distinct miniature teardrops, sometimes as a flood of tears that moistens the whole face.

America too, so late to receive Holy Orthodoxy, is now the witness of this miraculous phenomenon. Three weeping icons appeared quite suddenly, one after the other, within two months in the spring of 1960 among Greek families in Long Island, New York. The striking nature of this sign has drawn considerable attention to these icons, especially among Orthodox believers, but also among those outside the Church.

It is not, perhaps, well-known that this phenomenon of weeping icons is not new, for there are records of such miraculous icons in Russian Church history as early as the 12th century. Here we will give an account of one from the 19th century, together with an interpretation of its meaning by a bishop who lived at that time. [From The Orthodox Word, Nov.-Dec. 1965]:

This icon was located in the church of the Theological Academy at the Sokolsky Monastery in Romania. After the Liturgy in the seminary church on February 1, 1854, it was noticed that the icon was weeping. The rector of the seminary, Bishop Philaret Skriban, was among the witnesses of this miracle. He took the icon out of its frame, looked at it carefully, wiped the traces of the tears off with a piece cloth and replaced the icon. He then asked all to leave and he locked the church. When the rector, together with the teachers and seminarians, came to the church for Vespers several hours later, all were struck by the same miraculous flow of tears from the eyes of the Mother of God. The rector immediately served a moleben and read an Akathist before the icon.

Soon all of Romania knew of the miracle and began streaming to the monastery to venerate the icon. News of it spread throughout Russia also. The miraculous flow of tears occurred sometimes daily, and sometimes with an interval of two, three of four days. Many were thus to see the very miracle of the icon weeping, and those who did not could see at least the traces left by the tears. Even skeptics became convinced of the miracle. A certain colonel was sent to the commanding officer of the Austrian occupation force (during the Crimean war) to investigate the rumoured miracle, and to his astonishment he witnessed the actual flow of tears.

An important testimony of the miracle was offered by Bishop Melchisedek of Romansk, one of its first witnesses. Thirty-five years after the event he spoke of how he had long pondered the question of the meaning of the tears of the Mother of God. He came to the conclusion that such weeping icons had existed also in ancient times and that such an event always foretold a severe trial for the Church of Christ and for the nation. History justified this conclusion in the case of the Romanian weeping icon. During the Crimean war the Principality of Moldavia was occupied by Austrian troops and subjected to severe trials. The Sokolsky Monastery in particular had a sad future: this formerly great religious center of Romania, serving for a hundred years as a seedbed of spiritual culture, was suppressed, the seminary moved elsewhere and the monks dispersed.

The meaning of the weeping icons of America today is not yet evident; at least one of them is still weeping after five years. What is certain is that these tears of the Mother of God speak directly to the heart of every Orthodox believer, calling all to repentance, amendment of life and return to Orthodox faith and tradition in their fullness.

Source: https://iconreader.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/why-do-icons-of-the-mother-of-god-weep/

Pt. 4, Ch.1. Spiritual Life in the Family

Children and the spiritual life

— Geronta, if a mother gives holy water to her child and he spits it out, what should she do?

— She should pray for her child. Maybe the way in which she gives the holy water to her child causes a reaction. For the child to be on the path of God the parents must also live right spiritually. Some parents who are religious strive to help their children to become good, not because they are concerned for the salvation of their souls, but because they what to have good children. In other words, they are more worried about what people will say about their child instead of whether they might go to hell. So how can God help? The aim is not for children to go to church through compulsion, but to love the church; not to do good through compulsion, but to feel the need to do good. The holy lives of parents instruct the souls of their children and they naturally follow. In this way they grow up piously, with health of both soul and body and without spiritual injuries. If parents force their children out of fear of God, He helps and the child is benefited. If, however, they do it out of egoism, then God does not help. Children are often troubled because of their parent’s pride.

— Geronta, some mothers ask us what prayer should a child of three or four years old do?

— You should tell them: “You are the mother; see how much your child can handle.” They shouldn’t give them a rule.

— Geronta, what if the little children get tired when their parents bring them here for vigils?

— During Orthros they should let them out a little to relax, and during Divine Liturgy bring them back into the church.

Without forcing their children mothers must teach them to pray. Villagers in Cappadocia intensely lived the ascetic tradition. They would take their children to hermitages, do prostrations and pray with tears, and in this way, the children learned how to pray. Chetes would sometimes go by night to rob them; and when passing the chapels they would hear crying and stop in surprise. “OK, what’s going on?” they would say. “During the day they are all smiles and at night they cry?” They couldn’t understand what was going on.

Miracles happen through the prayers of small children. Whatever they ask of God He gives them because they are guileless and He hears their pure prayer. I remember one time our parents had gone out into the field and had left me in the house with my two younger siblings. The sky suddenly darkened and a torrential rainstorm began. “What will our parents do now?,” we said. “How will they get back home?” The two little ones began crying. “Come here,” I told them, “we will ask Christ to stop the rain.” The three of us knelt down before the family’s icons and prayed. In just a few minutes the rain stopped.

Parents must use discernment to help their children draw near to Christ from their early years, and from their childhood to live the joy on high—spiritual joy. When they start school they should learn, little by little, to read spiritual books to help themselves live spiritually. In this way they will become little angels, and their prayers will have greater boldness before God. Such children are spiritual heads of the home. The lives of saints especially help small children in their spiritual lives. As a small boy I found a little book of the lives of saints which they had back in those days. I went out into the forest to read and pray. I was flying with joy. From the age of ten to sixteen, when the Greek-Italian war began, I lived the spiritual life without restraint. Childhood joys are pure; they leave an imprint on a person that greatly affects him when he grows up. If children live spiritually they will live joyfully in this life, and in the next they will rejoice eternally with Christ.

Temptations on feast days

— Geronta, why do temptations often occur on feast days?

— Don’t you know? On feast days, Christ, the Panagia, and the Saints are joyful. They treat people, giving blessings and spiritual gifts. If parents give gifts when their children celebrate their namedays and kings release prisoners when a prince is born, why shouldn’t the Saints care for us on special occasions, too? Certainly the joy they give greatly endures and our souls are greatly helped. Knowing this the devil creates temptations in order to deprive people of the Divine gifts: they neither rejoice nor benefit from the feast. Sometimes you even see when a family is preparing to commune on a feast day, that the devil will send them a temptation to fight and then not only do they not commune, but they don’t even go to church! That’s how the little demon does it, so as to be deprived of all Divine help.

The same thing can be seen in our own monastic life. Many times the little demon—tempter that he is, because he knows from experience that we will be spiritually helped on some feast—will, beginning on the eve of the feast, create an atmosphere of temptation. For example, he might get us to quarrel with another brother, and then afterwards torment us in order to overpower us both spiritually and bodily. In this way he doesn’t allow us to benefit from the feast, with its joyous atmosphere of doxology. But the Good God helps us when He sees that we had not given occasion, but that this happened only by the envy of the evil one. And God helps us even more when we humbly reproach ourselves, blaming neither our brother nor even the devil, who hates everything good. For his work is this: to create scandals and spread evil—while man, as the image of God, should spread peace and goodness.

Source: http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/elder-paisios-on-family-life.aspx

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