The Catalog of Good Deeds

American Orthodox Christians find themselves at the beginning of the 21st century encompassed by a cultural milieu that is post-Christian, secular, and foreign to the mind of the Church. Nowhere is this reality more evident than in the area of human sexuality. Sex has been violently torn from its proper context, and, isolated from the wisdom and blessing of the Church, contemporary man is adrift in sexual confusion. On the one hand we know more about the practice and mechanics of sex than ever before, yet on the other hand we know very little about the purpose, meaning, and control of sex in God's grand design.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s is the mother of much contemporary thinking about sexual relations. From it have arisen the following erroneous ideas. Sex is absolutely vital to full human development and happiness. Virginity is an unfortunate and incomplete condition. The sexual needs and drives of men and women are the same. All sex is good, as long as it involves love or at least refrains from "injuring" someone else. Traditional Christian notions of sexuality are repressive and incongruous with personal freedom.

Thinking like this has led to immense sorrow, and the bad fruit of the sexual revolution over the last thirty years are obvious: the exponential proliferation of domestic violence, adultery, venereal disease, unwed pregnancy, abortion and divorce. Living according to the mores of the sexual revolution neither glorifies the Holy Trinity nor promotes the dignity and salvation of men and women.

We Orthodox Christians must know more than what we are against. We must know what we are for. What exactly does the Orthodox Church teach about sexual relations?

First, sex is not essential to full human development and happiness. Mankind was not created for sex. Sexual relations as we know them today did not exist in Paradise. Adam and Eve lived without sex, and did so in unutterable bliss. Sexual relations began only after mankind fell into sin, and was stripped of its pristine glory and the Holy Spirit. This is the teaching of the Book of Genesis, "Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden...And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived" (3:22-4:1).

The Holy Scriptures also teach that when mankind is resurrected into the Kingdom of God there will be no sex in the new heavens and new earth. Answering an objection from the Sadduccees, whose argument implied that the earthly norms of marriage and sex would continue in heaven, our Lord Jesus Christ taught, "For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven."

That sex is not essential to a healthy and full life is also evident by the example of the life of our sweet Savior Jesus Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the perfect human being, and yet He never had sex. He denied Himself the blessing of earthly marriage, and successfully trampled upon all sexual temptations in order to ceaselessly do His Father's will, which was His very food and drink. Far from being essential to human life sex is a reminder of the loss of our spiritual refinement and dignity due to our fall into sin. Sex is designed for good in this fallen world, but it is in no way at the core of human development and happiness.

Second, consecrated virginity is the highest way of life. Far from being an unfortunate and incomplete way of life, chastity is the highest expression of love and devotion to God. Such a life has only been made possible by the ennobling of human nature by the Incarnation, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on human flesh on the Holy Day of Pentecost.

Since that time humanity has been radically changed, altered, and unshackled from earthly attachments. The Church's virgins, most typically our monks and nuns, are the very proof of the presence of the Kingdom of God on earth and a sign of contradiction and hope in this fallen world. When St. Athanasius the Great was asked by a skeptic to prove that Jesus had brought the Kingdom of God to earth, he answered by pointing to the virgins of the Church as the irrefutable proof of the presence of the Kingdom of God on earth.

Prior to the Incarnation of our Master Jesus Christ, life long virginity as we have it today in the Church was unheard of. Our Lord Jesus Christ recommended and modeled such a life, as did the Great Apostle Paul. Our greatest saints, the Most Pure Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary and the Holy Forerunner and Baptist John, while honoring the noble estate of marriage and its sexual components, renounced sexual relations and consecrated their chastity to God's service.

Since that time until today an innumerable multitude of virginal saints have filled our One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Anyone who can successfully embrace such a beautiful way of life should, and in so doing wed not an earthly bride or bridegroom, but Jesus Christ Himself. Even for those with the gift of marriage virginity is a precious treasure to be guarded and bestowed in tact as a love offering to one's spouse, with whom one is first joined in the Mystery of Christian marriage.

Third, sexual relations are good only when used according to God's design. God has designed sexual relations for three basic reasons: to avoid fornication, to unite the husband and wife as a powerful adhesive, and to bring forth children to be raised to worship God and for the upbuilding of the Church. St. Paul wrote, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband."

Since our fall from grace our passions have been disordered. For most people this disorder is particularly noticeable in powerful sexual drives.

Sexual relations in marriage provide a safe and calm harbor to tame and redirect these unruly passions and desires. Sexual relations are also designed to serve as marital glue. "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and the two shall become one flesh." The physical union of intercourse is designed to strengthen the marital bond by both enacting a very real physical unity and by producing a child, who is a creation not from only husband or wife alone, buy from both the husband and wife together.

For this reason this powerful sexual relation is not to be accomplished with anyone but one's God-given spouse. Sexual relations are also designed to bring forth children. For the married sexual relations are not only an unspeakable blessing but one of the main ways to fulfill God's commandment to "be fruitful and multiply." The procreation of children is the duty of Christian spouses, and can no more be avoided or tampered with than can the other purposes of sexual relations.

Those not prepared to assume the responsibility of sexual relations ought not engage in them. The intense pleasure of sexual relations are designed by God to promote the procreation of children, since the difficulties inherent in childbearing and Christian parenting might otherwise tempt spouses to avoid this solemn responsibility.

Today's contraception culture strikes at the heart of the God-designed unity of pleasure and responsibility, opting to embrace pleasure while avoiding the responsibility of childbearing and calling it "family planning." Such planned parenthood and family planning is in reality planned barrenhood and family banning, and as such has been vigorously forbidden by the Holy Fathers throughout the history of the Church. St. Paul teaches that married women find their salvation in and through childbearing.

***

Having documented what the Church says is the God designed purpose of sexual relations let us conclude by noting what sexual practices are clearly outside that purpose, and thus are sinful.

Homosexual relations are forbidden as a perversion of the created order, and as an assault upon God-ordained heterosexual marriage. Persons with strong homosexual dispositions, that have proved resistant to reorientation, are urged by Christ to struggle against this passion in the embrace of chastity, and, if at all possible, to enter the monastic vocation where life can be lived in a community of persons.

Masturbation is censured as self-abuse, the waste of seed and its procreative intent, and an improper turning inward and rejection of the marital context of sexuality. It is always sinful.

Sexual relations prior to marriage are strongly condemned as fornication, a sacrilegious defilement of the Temple of the Holy Spirit, a defrauding of one's future spouse, and are detrimental to the development of a stable future marriage. It is no coincidence that the rise in pre-marital sex has been paralleled by the rise in divorce and marital unhappiness. To take the very sublime things of marriage out of their context of grace, perpetual commitment, and the Church's blessings is a recipe for disaster.

Marriage itself does not make legitimate all forms of sexuality. The sexual intercourse of the married is to be modest, and within its proper limits. Moderation is determined both by regulation of time and method of sexual relations. Relations on fast days, on the eve prior to one's reception of Holy Communion, and on days on which one receives the Holy Gifts are forbidden as an illegitimate indulgence to the flesh. Anal and oral intercourse, as well as the use of pornography and sexual toys, are sexual perversions and are always sinful, even for married Christians. The unnatural prolongation of sexual desire, through the use of drugs such as viagra, is forbidden. On the contrary, such decline in sexual desire is to warmly welcomed by aging Orthodox Christians as a divine help in one's life long preparation for departure from this life.

An article by Fr. Josiah Trenham

Source: http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/frjosiah_sexualrelations.aspx

Have you ever thought that everything that touches you touches Me as well? For that which touches you touches the apple of My eye.

You are dear in my eyes, precious, and I have loved you; therefore it is a particular pleasure for Me to educate you.

When temptations arise against you, and the enemy comes like a river, I want you to know—This was from Me.

Your weakness needs My strength, and your safety comes from giving Me the opportunity to fight for you. If you find yourself in difficult circumstances, among people who do not understand you, who do not take what you like into consideration, who alienate you—This was from Me.

I am God, Who arranges circumstances. It was no accident that you find yourself in the place where you are; this is the place I have appointed for you. Did you not ask that I teach you humility? Well, then, look: I have placed you in precisely that place, in that school, where this lesson is learned. Your surroundings and those who live with you are only fulfilling My will. If you find yourself in financial difficulty, if you find it hard to make ends meet—This was from Me.

For I have your material means at my disposal. I want you to call unto me, for you to be dependent upon Me. My reserves are inexhaustible. I want you to be confirmed in fidelity to Me and to My promises. May it not be said to you in your need: “You did not believe in the Lord your God.”

Are you in a night of suffering? Are you separated from your loved ones and those close to your heart? This was from Me.

I am the Man of suffering, Who has tasted affliction. I have allowed this so that you would turn to Me, so that in Me you would find eternal comfort. If you have been let down by your friend, to someone to whom you opened your heart—This was from Me.

I allowed this disappointment to touch you so that you would know that your best friend is the Lord. I want you to bring everything to Me and to speak to Me.

Has someone slandered you? Give this to me, and bring your soul closer to Me, your Refuge, to hide from the “contradiction of the nations.” I shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday. If your plans have been destroyed, if you are downtrodden in soul and tired—This was from Me.

You made plans, and brought them to Me, so that I would bless them. But I want you to leave Me in charge of the circumstances of your life, and then responsibility for everything will be Mine, for this is too difficult for you; by yourself you can not manage them, for you are only an instrument, and not the actor. If unanticipated problems of life have visited you, and if despondency has seized your heart, then know—This was from Me.

For I want your heart and your soul to be always aflame before My eyes; to conquer faint-heartedness of the soul in My name. If you do not hear from your dear ones and friends for a long time, and in your faint-heartedness fall into despondency and grumbling, know—This was from Me.

By this anguish in your spirit, I test the strength of your faith in the surety of My promise and the strength of your boldness in prayer for these dear ones of yours. Was it not you who entrusted them to the Protection of My All-Pure Mother? Was it not you who once entrusted their care to My providential love? If serious illness, either temporary or incurable, has visited you, and has confined to your bed, then know—This was from Me.

For I want you to know Me even more deeply in you bodily infirmities, so that you would not grumble over this trial sent to you, that you would not try to penetrate My plans through different means for the salvation of people’s souls, but that you would uncomplainingly and submissively bow you neck under My goodness towards you. If you have dreamed of performing some special deed for Me, and instead haven fallen onto a bed of sickness and weakness—This was from Me.

Then you would have been immersed in your activities, and I would not have been able to attract your thoughts to Me, for I want to teach you My deepest thoughts and lessons, so that you would be in My service. I want to teach you to recognize that you are nothing. Some of My best co-workers are those who have been cut off from vital activity, that they would learn to wield the weapon of unceasing prayer.

Have you unexpectedly been called to occupy a difficult and responsible position? Go, place it on Me. I entrust these difficulties to you so that the Lord God would bless you for this in all your deeds, on all your paths, in everything that will done by your hands. On this day I put into your hands a vessel of holy oil. Use it generously, My children! Every difficulty that arises, every word that insults you, every obstacle to your work that could elicit in you a feeling of annoyance, every revelation of your weakness and inability, shall be anointed with this oil.

Remember that every obstacle is a Divine instruction. Every sting will be dulled when you learn to see Me in everything that touches you. Therefore place the word I have declared to you today in your heart: This was from Me. For this is not an empty matter for you—this is your life.

By Metropolitan Manuel Lemeshevsky

Source: http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/saint-seraphim-of-viritsa-this-was-from-me.aspx

The icon of the Holy Prophet Jonah is one of the the most ancient images of Christianity. Like the story of this prophet, his image is a powerful symbol of death and resurrection. I want to look closely at the story of Jonah and its iconography because it brings together almost all the elements I have been pointing to in my articles for OAJ, elements relating to death and glory, linked closely to the body and to the arts. I have heretofore presented these symbolic elements under a basic leitmotiv, how the paradox of death is a moving away from a center into an always further periphery. I have constantly alluded to the primordial image of the garments of skin added by God to Adam’s nature at the Fall and how they both show his exile from the Garden and protect him within that exile.

The structure of Jonah’s story is based on a few key elements, and most of these have to do with inversion, a surprise or a “switch” happening at the very “end” which turns life into death and death into life. I have explained elsewhere how in our liturgical tradition, Christ’s harrowing of hell is presented as a trick played on Hades, a surprise and inversion where Hades having brought the author of life into death created the opposite effect of what was intended. Like trying to capture light by bringing it into darkness, Christ filled death with life as he entered the pit. With Jonah, one of these switches is of course basic repentance which plays a strong role in the story, but we must be careful not to limit our vision simply to a moral change, because to do so will blind us to some of the more ontological aspects of the “metanoia” which underlies the story.

The very tone of Jonah’s story exemplifies the inversions seen within as it is really the closest thing to a comedy found in the Bible. The comic aspect is not a detail, for as Jonah goes to his extremes he in fact reproduces (or rather anticipates) the movement of Christ down into Hades, then back up and then ascending to Heaven, but he does so almost despite himself, whining and complaining as a parody of the actual meaning. Yet in the story, like a pearl hidden in a shell (or like a prophet hidden in a fish), is Jonah’s prayer, one of the most powerful poetic expressions of death and resurrection found anywhere.

The first sign of the inversion in the text is that God asks Jonah to go East to Nineveh, the Capital city of the Assyrian empire, the current enemy of Israel, but Jonah goes West towards Tarshish to flee God. This is very interesting already, because the West is usually associated with darkness, death and the edge of the world, and this is where he will end up, at the “bottom” of the world. With Jonah asleep in the bottom of the boat, we have the first image of death, of the body and of the arts brought together. Jonah asleep in the bottom of the boat is already his being “dead” yet protected through the water by a “shell”.(1) It is of course an image which refers to Noah, the flood and the animals at the bottom of the ark. This relationship was also made by early Christian artists by linking Jonah to Noah (or even to Daniel) in the catacombs, those caves where the dead were buried.

The pagan foreigners on the boat find out through lots that Jonah is the cause of their suffering such a horrible storm, but when Jonah tells them to throw him in the water, they do not want to do it, they hesitate. This situation is of course a mirror image, an inversion of how Jonah will later be angry that God will not destroy Nineveh, which is the cause of Israel’s suffering. Also, unlike Nineveh which repents before being destroyed because of Jonah’s warning, Jonah does not heed the foreign mariners’ request to invoke his god, so Jonah does not repent until he is “dead”, at the bottom of the water.

Jonah is thrown in the water, and after three days in the fish, the big flip occurs, the great repentance, and we will see the rest of the story like an almost perfect mirror image of the first part. It is very important to notice that Jonah’s fish is traditionally a Sea Monster. The monster, as I have explained elsewhere, is the perfect image of the limit, the place where categories fall apart through a hybridization which is the death of identity and particulars.

There are small ivory statues of Jonah dated as early as the 3rd century. In this series of statues, one sees the major elements of the story, Jonah going into the fish, coming out, Jonah praying and Jonah sleeping under the vine. The image of Jonah was also painted in the catacombs along other Old Testament prefigurations of death and resurrection such as Noah's Ark, Daniel in the lion's den or the three youths in the fiery furnace.

The mouth of the Monster becomes a strong image of Hades in iconography. It appears in Western images of the Harrowing of Hell as well as in later Orthodox images of he Last Judgement or of the Divine Ladder. We need to see these elements as supporting each other in their meaning. So in Jonah’s iconography, the sea-monster is something which has persisted from the very early centuries until now.

In the deep, in the bottom of the waters, Jonah utters his prayer. Jonah’s prayer is a powerful bringing together of so many aspects of the Christian symbolism of death and the solution to death. In the first part of the prayer Jonah speaks of his state, of being surrounded by the waters. This surrounding is the very image of periphery for death comes from the outside, the “outer darkness” . He compares death to the “belly” of the fish, to a prison with bars, to a cave or pit, he also speaks of the “lowliness”, of the depths, of his being at the bottom of the world, the root of the mountains. He says that he has been “banished” from the sight of God, and in this he is using the same Hebrew word as Adam and Eve being banished from the Garden. We need to remember that he is using all these images as he has been swallowed by a fish, trapped yet covered by an animal “garment”.

And in that final moment he gives us the solution:

“When my life was ebbing away,

I remembered you, Lord,

and my prayer rose to you,

to your holy temple. (Jonah 2:7)

This is the key, the key to all of it. This is the key to how all human action, all human art and culture can be transformed. It is memory and humility- knowing we are dead and remembering God. As Ilias the Presbiter tells us in the Philokalia:

There is nothing more fearful than the thought of death, or more wonderful than remembrance of God. For the first induces the grief that leads us to salvation, and the second bestows gladness. ‘I remembered God,’ says the prophet, ‘and I rejoiced’ (Ps. 77:3. LXX). And Sirach says: ‘Be mindful of your death and you will not sin’ (Eccles. 7:36). You cannot possess the remembrance of God until you have experienced the astringency of the thought of death.

Starting with the Eucharist itself, memory is that attachment to our origin within distance from that origin, it is the link which changes periphery from death into glory. Memory can be expressed as both our remembering God or God remembering us. Just as in the Fish, Jonah remembers God before being ejected from the water, so too in the Ark it is said that God remembered Noah before he was freed from the waters(Gen. 8:1). But just as Ilias the Presbiter tells us, we cannot remember God without the thought or the awareness of death. It is indeed humility, the knowledge of how low we are in relation to God, coupled with our remembering of God which creates the true ontological link between the highest and lowest and which permits us to be transformed. Memory “anchors” us to the Divine Ladder and the level we find ourselves on the ladder does not matter as much as being anchored to it, looking up to God’s “divine Temple”. This is true repentance, and this is what we see Jonah praying, both knowing his death and remembering God, so that when he cries “From the Belly of Death I called upon the Lord”(Jonah 2:2), he could also say: “and my prayer rose to you, to to your holy temple.”(Jonah 2:7)

All of this is also the point of baptism, for baptism is not only dying, a sinking to the bottom of the deep, but in that sinking is operated that double movement which can be summed up in the “Memory of God”, the Memory which operates the inversion between death and glory.

As we return to Jonah, we will begin to see how the inversion, the flip which happened at the bottom of the water will begin to play itself out in the rest of the story. Jonah goes East to Nineveh and announces that God will destroy the city in 40 days. The city is made to be yet another image of death for the text gives us the detail that Nineveh takes 3 days to cross, and is therefore analogical to Jonah’s descent into the waters. The city is also made an image of death in two other ways. First it is a foreign city, the city of the enemy, and I have explained in other articles the relationship made in the Bible between the city and the arts with Cain and the foreigner. Secondly, twice the text gives us a very strange detail about animals, in fact this is the only place I know of in the Bible where it is said that animals fast. The fasting of animality is the very image of the conversion of flesh while at the same time continuing the inversion of the story, for unlike the fish that swallowed Jonah the Israelite in the deep, the “foreign animals” fast in the city. Of course God no longer intends to destroy the city once the foreigners have repented, and because the city is made akin to the fish and to Jonah’s tree days, it is almost as if the prayer Jonah made becomes the prayer of the city itself by which it is saved. As I said earlier, the inversion here is that unlike the foreigners in the boat who wanted to save Jonah who would not repent, now Jonah wants God to destroy the foreign city despite the fact that it has repented.

The excess of Jonah is seen powerfully in his now moving out of the city to the East where the inversion of the story will reach its extreme. Jonah was once at the far “West” and now we could say that he has come to the far “East”, instead of being in the bottom of the ship built by men to be protected by the water he is now covered with a plant that God grows next to him so that he is protected from the sun and the wind (read spirit). The moving East and being protected by leaves of a plant is like a kind of rewind of Jonah and Man in general, moving out of the deep pit, through the city and into the garden of Eden where Adam and Eve had made garments of fig leaves to protect themselves.

But those coverings are shown by God to be inadequate, and unlike when Jonah was in the bottom of death and wanted to live, now he is in the glory of the sun and the spirit and wants to die! And this is where God reminds Jonah of the city, of its population and its animals and how God could not destroy such a great city where “they do not know their right from their left”, a very mysterious statement that certainly refers to a kind of innocence in regards to the Tree of Knowledge. And so the city is seen as the “middle” place, not the “naked” facing of God, not the impossible vision of the invisible Father, but rather the glorified body, the Church, the New Jerusalem anchored in the vision of the incarnate Christ. And so this is the hope of human activity, the joy of of the liturgical artist and any artist who wishes to participate through the building of a glorious city, a city that can hopefully both remember death and remember God all at once.

Source: https://www.orthodoxartsjournal.org/jonah/

Myrrh is a special mixture of oils, herbals and fragrant tars (more than 50 ingredients). In the Old Testament, the Tabernacle, archpriests, prophets and kings were anointed with it. The myrrh bearing women were heading to the Christ’s tomb with that very myrrh. People are anointed with it during the Sacrament of Chrismation in case when people of other faiths are going to accept Orthodoxy. Besides, myrrh is used in consecration of the altars of newly built churches.

The Sacrament of Chrismation goes back to the apostolic times. In the ancient Church every newly baptized person received the blessing and the gift of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of the hands of an apostle or a bishop. Later, when the number of Christians began to increase and it became too difficult for every newly baptized person to meet with a bishop, that rite was changed on the Sacrament of Chrismation.

Priests can only anoint people with the myrrh, while bishops are allowed to prepare it. Only the head of the autocephalous church (patriarch, metropolitan) has the right to prepare myrrh.

In Moscow, the Patriarch performs the rite of preparation of myrrh once every several years and then he sends the consecrated myrrh to different parishes. Thus, anyone who becomes the member of the Church receives the blessing of the Patriarch.

Even prophet Moses, following God’s orders, poured myrrh on the head of his brother Aaron, when he proclaimed him the archpriest of Israel. Prophet Samuel did the same to Saul and David when he anointed them before enthronement. Archpriests and kings by law and prophets by God’s will received that mysterious anointment from other prophets or archpriests as a sign of the Holy Spirit descending on them, which let the clerics celebrate divine services and the prophets speak.

The Hebrew word Messiah and the Greek word Christ means the Anointed. That title was given in its triple meaning to the Son of God, Who appeared on earth in the image of the Son of Man: it was given as to the prophet of the Heavenly Father, as to the King of Israel and the Universe from the tribe of David and, finally, as to the Archpriest of God, Who willingly sacrificed Himself for the sins of the whole world.

The rite of preparation of myrrh begins during the Week of the Cross during the Great Lent. It begins with choosing the ingredients. On the first day of the Holy Week the clergy gathers in a special chamber where silver boilers and vessels are prepared. The Patriarch blesses to begin prayers, consecrates Holy Water and blesses all the ingredients from which myrrh will be made with the Holy Water. He pours water into the boilers, while the priests pour wine and oil and put burning coals. After a short prayer to Jesus Christ before the beginning of any task, the Patriarch leaves the deacons and priests who will continue boiling myrrh for three days constantly reading the Holy Gospel. On Great Wednesday various flavors are put into myrrh, and then it is poured into twelve large vessels, which correspond to twelve apostles.

The consecration of myrrh occurs during the Liturgy on Great and Holy Thursday. Before the reading of hours, the Patriarch and the clergy bring the vessels with myrrh from the chamber to the church altar and put them around the table of oblation.

This festive transportation of the twelve vessels repeats during the Great Entrance before the Holy Sacraments, because myrrh should be consecrated on the holy table as well. The older archimandrite or bishop goes ahead and carries a precious alabaster vessel full of myrrh under two rhipidions just like under the wings of cherubims. It reminds about the alabaster with the myrrh, which was poured by the repentant wife on the head and the feet of the Savior. Other vessels are carried after the bishop and then placed on the sides of the holy table. The Patriarch takes the first alabaster in the Holy Doors and puts it on the holy table. When the consecration of the Holy Sacraments should occur, the Patriarch opens each vessel and blesses it with a sign of the cross in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Then the Patriarch pronounces out loud the prayer of myrrh consecration, appealing to the Merciful Lord and the Father of light, “As Thou gavest to Moses Thy faithful minister, to Thy servant Samuel, and to Thy holy Apostles, so also, despite our unworthiness, give to us the grace to serve this great and life-creating Mystery. Send down Thine all-holy Spirit on this myrrh. Make it the anointment of kings, the spiritual nourishment, the preserver of life, the sanctification of souls and bodies. Make it the oil of gladness which was prefigured in the Law and shone forth in the New Testament”. He prays that everyone who goes through Baptism will be recognized as the citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom and be frightful for demons; that they become the chosen people, the royal clergy, the holy people registered by the sacrament and carrying the image of Christ in their hearts.

The Patriarch addresses the people and wishes peace to all and after the deacon’s appeal to bow, he returns to the holy table and thanks God, Who has granted him the grace of serving. After the prayer to the Holy Trinity, he blesses three times each vessel with a sign of the cross. After the Liturgy the vessels are brought to the storage while singing the psalm “My heart is overflowing with a good theme…”, which mysteriously depicts anointment and the glory of the Son of God.

All these prayers and actions of myrrh consecration refer to the Sacrament of Chrismation because only bishops have the highest power to seal Christians in their faith following the example of apostles. Myrrh is consecrated for the whole Church so that later priests can perform the sacrament and tell people about the blessed gift of the Holy Spirit. Holy Myrrh flows over the whole Church from one source to another and maintains the inviolable union of peace by the seal of the name of Christ.

The rite of myrrh preparation occurs only during the Holy Week. On Monday, the Patriarch performs prayers before the beginning of the rite. On this day myrrh is brought to the boiling point and boiled over a low heat constantly being stirred. It is boiled for three days: on Great Monday until the evening, for the whole day on Great Tuesday and in the morning on Great Wednesday. During this time priests are reading the Holy Gospel in turn, while deacons are stirring myrrh with paddles. The consecration of myrrh is performed by the Patriarch on Great Thursday during the Liturgy. It occurs after the Eucharistic canon when the Royal Doors are open.

An excerpt from the book “The Sacrament of Faith”

by Mitropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev)

Source: http://dishupravoslaviem.ru/miro-iz-chego-i-kak-gotovyat-miro/

Archaeologists in Rihab, Jordan, say they have discovered a cave that could be the world's oldest Christian church.

Dating to the period AD 33-70, the underground chapel would have served as both a place of worship and a home.

It is claimed that it was originally used by a group of 70 persecuted Christians who fled from Jerusalem.

These early Christians lived and practised their faith in secrecy until the Romans embraced Christianity several hundred years later.

'Beautiful things'

Rihab is in Northern Jordan. The cave is beneath the ancient church of St Georgeous, itself one of the oldest known places of worship in the world.

According to Dr Abdul Qader Al-Hassan, the director of the Rihab Centre for Archaeological studies, the cave site shows clear evidence of early Christian rituals that predate the church.

Dr Al-Hassan says that steps lead down into the chapel which is approximately 12m long and seven metres wide.

There is a circular area of worship with stone seats separated from living quarters. This circular element, called an apse, is important says Dr Al-Hassan because there is only one other example of a cave with a similar feature, which was also used for Christian worship.

Dr Al-Hassan said: "We found beautiful things. I found the cemetery of this church; we found pottery shards and lamps with the inscription 'Georgeous'".

In the cave there is also a tunnel that leads to a cistern which supplied water to the dwellers. An inscription in the floor of the church above refers to the "70 beloved by God and the divine" whom the archaeologist believes were refugees from religious persecution in Jerusalem.

Dr Al-Hassan says that excavation of the tunnel and the cistern may yield yet more evidence about the lives of these early Christians.

"From the tunnel to the cistern is very important. We want to clean it and make an excavation inside it. We found a very old inscription beside it and coins also, and crosses made from iron."

Other experts say they are cautious about the claim. They want to examine the artefacts and see clear dating evidence. The earliest confirmed examples of churches date from the third century, they say.

An article by By Matt McGrath

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7446812.stm

There is a small chapel in honour of the Holy Martyrs Faith, Hope, Love, and their mother Sophia in the building of the Private Grade School and Sunday School run by our St Elisabeth Convent. It is still being decorated but for the most part, the work has already been done. Every piece of work adds something important to the general design idea. Each new detail does not only make the chapel more beautiful but also adds some meaning to it. Even the smallest brick has its mission.

This is what fresco painter Dmitry Kuntsevich, who is in charge of the mosaic workshop of St Elisabeth Convent, tells about it:

— We did our best to make the chapel look interesting, distinctive, warm, and lively. The fact that the chapel is located in a place where children come together, allowed us to let our imagination run free. We even considered letting children create certain decorative elements themselves but it soon became evident that this kind of work requires serious concentration: you’ve got to teach the children regularly and for a long time. Unfortunately, we did not have this opportunity so we did the majority of tasks on our own.

The idea and its implementation was a joint effort of Sergey Kozyr, Mikhail Lavshuk, Alexander Truskovsky, Maksim Dudarau, Anna Ambrosova, Vitaly Zharov, Sergey Kudlach, Andrey Dudka, Alim Raula and many others.

We hope that the children will pray, study church-related subjects and enhance their creativity. This nice and cosy place will help them to concentrate on prayer and learning.

“The Dome Looked Empty Without Mosaics”

During the concept design stage it became clear that a mosaic could fit into the dome nicely. The attempts to do without the mosaic were dull. We felt that something was missing because the composition looked incomplete.

The dome is a semi-sphere, or, symbolically speaking, a transcendent place. It symbolizes the Heaven — a place where God dwells. We decided to cover it with gold, which, coupled with the starry darkness and the clouds in the centre, signifies something ethereal, something from outer space. However, we felt that there was a lack of the central piece, some “personal” image. If we used the face of Christ as the centrepiece, we would need to develop a plot of some kind. We did not want to do it because it would involve adding unnecessary details. We were to make the composition lighter, so one of our team suggested placing a dove in the centre of the dome. The allusion to the dove that brought an olive branch to the Noah’s Ark is a testimony about forgiveness and unification between the Heaven and the earth, between God and man. We gave the dove a golden olive branch, and this made the dome look complete, deep, and multilayered, which is very important for the composition.

Each Detail Has Its Own Image

Once we formulated the general idea and completed several parts of the composition, we decided that we should focus on the materials – the beauty of gesso, natural stones, bricks, and alabaster – and not to overload the composition with paintings, stories, and literary events.

At a certain point, we decided to make niches in the walls, which would represent windows into the alternate world. The vigil lamp lights shine like the saved souls of the reposed whose sepulchres we observed in ancient caves. The niches also resemble swallow’s nests in quarries or maybe burial sites of early Christians in catacombs. I hope these images will be properly interpreted by the visitors.

Finally, we finished the dome; the walls with niches “land” into the scheme and create a sort of a space in its own right; they follow their own logic. The problem was how to make pendentives. We did not want to continue decorating the chapel with mosaic.

Once I saw several photos on the Internet related to Syrian art: ruins of churches, decoration, tiling, streets and palaces that went back to late antiquity and the beginning of the Christian era. I had never seen Syrian Christian art heritage before. These masterpieces were the foundation for the entire Orthodox culture; in fact they lie at the roots of the Orthodox church art.

I saw how stones match bricks. I appreciated the imagery of these materials, the conceptuality of these masterpieces, their artistic perfection, when I suddenly felt that they were in tune with our ideas and could be reproduced in our chapel! They are so amazing!

I was so inspired by the Syrian architectural masterpieces that I wanted to use them, to put this inspiration into practice, so we made a wave in the pendentives, which represents the grace of the Holy Spirit, the sea and air waves through which the Lord touches us. The movements in the pendentives diffuse the tension from the dome down to the people who stand in the church.

The chapel itself is an artistic representation of the Noah’s Ark where human beings, including the students and other supplicants, can get saved. The pieces of wood incorporated into the plastered walls remind us of the old wood – the authentic wood that the Noah’s Ark was built of – and of the saving wood of the Lord’s Cross. The fumed oak looks like it has survived many ages and epochs.

The walls have an arched structure. It expands the space and adds visual depth. Figured mosaics and paintings will cover the surface of the niches. However, it took us a long time to figure out what to do with the floor. The ancient samples helped us again: we finally decided to try making a ceramic floor with glazed elements, and found out that they were a perfect match!

Like all other elements, the ceramic floor has a symbolic meaning. It represents clay and soil, the earth that human beings are made of and to which they shall go. These tiles were made of our Belarusian clay excavated in Polesie region. Firing, shaping, and fitting it was no easy task. Nevertheless, seeing how nicely it matched the general concept, the artistic idea of the church, we decided to undertake this hard work.

We used wooden inserts of fumed oak for the floor, too. The combination of the materials and colors looks fascinating.

The lower tier of the chapel requires lighting. We chose not to make forged brass sconces. Amazingly enough, I realised that ceramic vessels on those Syrian photos were used as lights when vigil lamps, candles, and wood spills were placed into them. We made a sketch and then adapted it for our chapel. Quite unexpectedly, we discovered another piece of the puzzle: a jug… A jug is basically earth, water, and air that went through fire. Generally, water, earth, air, and fire are the basic elements of the creation, according to the Holy Fathers. These jugs made from the dust of the earth become sources of light, thus embodying a human being who can be filled with either light or darkness, with either living or dead water. As a result, we put ceramics into the white walls, the color of which is the same as the color of the floor tiles, and the ceramics start to shine through holes in the exquisite floral ornaments.

Several important parts of the interior design remain to be implemented in order to fully finish the decoration of the chapel, including painted, glazed, and ceramic plates made according to an ancient Byzantine technology; entrance doors made of glass with fumed oak inserts, rivets and doorknobs with images of the Evangelists on them.

With an Image of Christ in the Centre

An icon of the holy patron saints of this chapel, Ss Faith, Hope, Love, and their mother Sophia, is being painted now. It will sit in a side niche. There will be images of other saints in various other strategic points around the chapel. The central icon of Christ who holds a white scroll in his hands with an inscription that reads, Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (Cf. John 14:27). This scroll in the hands of the Lord, combined with his dark posture, looks like a cross. This image of Christ was inspired by an icon of Moses found in one of Jewish synagogues in Syria. This icon was painted in the style of early Christian encaustic paintings, and it has become the centrepiece of the chapel that helps to finish the general image of the chapel.

We plan to make mosaics Alpha and Omega, which will be located on both sides of the Savior and will serve as a continuation of this image. The mosaic is a concise composition where letters α (alpha) and ω (omega) will be parts of the ornament. There will be faces of the apostles and two hands of Jesus in this ornamental pattern: a blessing hand with the Eucharistic Cup and a hand with Eucharistic Bread. Can this be the perfect illustration of the idea of fullness of ecclesiastical life? The Communion is the beginning and the end of all things. The Body and the Blood of Christ contain the entire Revelation! There is nothing better than what the Lord feeds us with. Jesus Christ is the Word of God — our Logos, our life.

I’d like to hope that this is the Word of God that the children are taught in our school.

Recorded by Vadim Yanchuk

September 30, 2017

St. Elisabeth Convent

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