The Catalog of Good Deeds

In a small, humble village in Kosovo, a great event in the life of the Church took place on Sunday, May 20. On this day, the first Divine Liturgy glorifying the memory of the newly-canonized St. Bosiljka the Martyr of Pasjane was held, with the local bishop, His Grace Teodosije of Raška-Prizren, along with many priests, monks, nuns, and a multitude of the faithful in attendance. At the most recent Holy Synod meeting in Belgrade, Martyr Bosiljka, who has been venerated by the local faithful for many years, was finally officially canonized. With great joy, the faithful for the first time sang the troparion and kontakion to the saint they had for many decades venerated locally, and her holy presence and protection were strongly felt by all.

The Holy Martyr Bosiljka lived in the mid-nineteenth century in the village of Pasjane, near the town of Gnjilane, in eastern Kosovo. Her family was poor, and she lived an average peasant life, helping her family harvest their crops and tend to the farm animals. Due to the Ottoman oppression of Christians, the village no longer had a church, but Bosiljka’s family was known for their piety. She often walked about eleven miles each way to Draganac Monastery, a refuge for local Christians hidden in the mountains, in order to pray and receive the Holy Mysteries.

When Bosiljka was seventeen years old, however, her quiet life in the village was to come to an end as she would respond with faith and courage to a higher calling. One year, her family decided to go into the town of Gnjilane, where there was still a functioning Orthodox parish, for the feast of St. Elijah. Unfortunately, as often happened under Ottoman rule at the time, a Muslim Albanian saw the beauty of young Bosiljka, and charmed by her innocence begged her to convert to Islam and be his wife. Bosiljka rebuked his advances, and to his requests that she become a Muslim and promises of many gifts she said that she needed no other faith than that of Christ and that nothing is more beautiful than Him.

The Muslim was very offended that a young girl would act with such boldness towards him, and so he kidnapped her and took her to his home. He tried starving her into submission, but to no avail. Bosiljka remained firm that Christ was all she required, and that no torture or deprivation could take her from Him and His love. The Muslim then took her to speak with another previously-Orthodox Christian Serbian woman who had converted to Islam, who tried to convince her to accept Islam for the sake of her own life and for the safety of her family. Young Bosiljka responded again that she needed no faith other than that of the Orthodox, and that as for a husband—she already had one. Curious, the Muslim Serbian woman asked her who this husband is, to which Bosiljka said, “Christ, of course! He is my bridegroom, I belong to Him alone, and I will not renounce Him or my Holy Faith, unlike you, whom I pity.”

The Muslim Serb responded, “Don’t be so stubborn, convert and save your soul!” to which Bosiljka firmly responded, “That’s not how you save your soul, but rather, how you lose it.”

Frustrated, the Muslim Serbian woman returned Bosiljka to the Albanian Muslim who had fallen in love with her, who again tried to convince her to convert and marry him. Failing utterly, further tortures awaited Bosiljka, which she bore with bravery, strength, and great faith in Christ. They held her face above a chimney to choke her with the smoke, then threw hot coals on her. To this, Bosiljka’s only response was “Kill me, all you can do is kill my body, but I will remain an Orthodox Christian, I will remain with Christ, I will remain pure, and this you cannot take from me!”

Humiliated at his inability to make the seventeen-year-old girl change her mind, the Albanian Muslim tied Bosiljka to a horse and dragged her to the edge of the town, where he and several of his friends slowly cut the martyr into pieces while she was yet living, as they screamed “Death to the filthy Serb!” The whole time, Bosiljka is said to have just repeated the words “God, grant me to endure to the end, don’t let me give in, help me to endure to the end!” Her final words were “This is not my death, this is not my end, rather, this is the beginning of my eternal life. It is you, rather, who have died for eternity.” And thus, she gave up her soul to Christ her Bridegroom, after many tortures, showing much courage and giving a great witness to the love and truth of Christ.

Her family was able to retrieve her earthly remains from the Turkish authorities, and they buried them in the ruins of the ancient village church. Several decades later, when the Tanzimat Reforms were enacted in the Ottoman Empire and Christians could once again build churches, the village of Pasjane restored their church and enshrined Bosiljka’s holy relics within a stone column in the church. Placing relics within a stone column or foundation to protect them had become common in Ottoman Serbia, as too often the Turks or Albanians had desecrated relics that had been left out in the open. In this way many relics, including those of Holy Martyr Bosiljka, have been preserved to the present day.

And so the life of a teenage girl from a small village in Kosovo, who otherwise would probably have been long since forgotten, has entered into eternity, and has come to warm our hearts today. Holy Martyr Bosiljka, along with many other New Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke, was an average person: She was not a nun, nor a great ascetic, nor a theologian; her village did not even have a church during her lifetime. And yet, when it was asked of her, she gave her life for Christ, and that with much pain and suffering. Her life cries out to us through the centuries as a witness to the great love and power of Christ, of the great glories awaiting those who are faithful to Him, and to the reality that every person can be a saint. It is not only monks and nuns who are called to sanctity, but all Christians—from a seventeen-year-old girl, as in the case of Bosiljka, to bakers, gardeners, and shopkeepers, as in the case of other martyrs of the Ottoman Yoke. The life of this girl from a small village in Kosovo proclaims to all of us, throughout the world, throughout time, that we can all be holy, and that not only is this a possibility, but it is what is required of us.

By Monk Sophronios (Copan)

Source: http://orthochristian.com/113285.html

As someone who studies motherhood and theology and who has five children myself, fellow Orthodox mothers often ask me if I can point them to prayers for mothers for their children, since few of our prayer books include prayers on this subject. While I do have a few prayers I pass on, I also recommend that they read Saint John Chrysostom’s thoughts on prayer and motherhood.

Saint John of the fourth century is a frequent source for reflection on family life in the twenty-first. His reverence for family rings clear across the centuries, and this is true especially in his appreciation for motherhood. Saint John elevated motherhood to something beyond the mundane, daily care of children and into the realm of spiritual significance. Directing his remarks at mothers, he said, “I mean, the children being born, provided they receive proper care and are brought up to virtue by your attention, prove a basis and occasion of complete salvation for you; and in addition to your own virtuous acts you will receive a great reward for your care of them.” (Homily on Hannah, Old Testament Homilies by Robert Hill) Thus Chrysostom saw motherhood as a salvific opportunity, as a vocation that can lead to the heavenly reward.

Saint John was particularly moved by the vision of motherhood he saw in Hannah, the mother of Prophet Samuel in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 1-2). He admired the power of Hannah’s spontaneous prayer when she visited the temple eager to have a child. He wrote of the intensity of the prayer she prayed in her quest for motherhood and in her later dedication of her child to the Lord.

In praising Hannah’s spontaneous prayer, Saint John contrasted it with more typical, less mindful prayer: “I mean, while we all pray, we do not all do it before the Lord: when the body is lying on the ground and the mouth is babbling on, and the mind wandering through all parts of the house and the market place, how will such people be in a position to claim that they prayed before the Lord?” (Homily on Hannah, Old Testament Homilies by Robert Hill)

In short, Hannah provides the model for all types of prayer, not just a mother’s prayer. Most prayer is half-hearted, barely present, whereas Hannah’s prayer is fully present, felt in her body and her soul. Yet, Saint John also saw a special role for prayer by mothers. His specific instruction to mothers is that they should consecrate their children through prayer. As a mother and a theologian, I find this to be an important reminder of the importance of my prayers for my own children.

Though the Orthodox Church lacks many composed prayers for mothers, and though the addition of such prayers would be welcome, Hannah’s tale shows that mothers have taken prayers for their children into their own hands for millennia—and that the Church has celebrated this initiative. This is why I point mothers to Saint John: he reminds us that our spontaneous prayers as mothers are powerful on their own. Whatever words we choose, it is our sacred responsibility as mothers to bless and consecrate our children by praying for them.

Source: http://blogs.goarch.org/blog/-/blogs/the-power-of-a-mother-s-prayer?_33_redirect=%2Fmarriage-and-family

In the town where I live, funerals have become rather rare. I hear this is true throughout our country. People now have a “Celebration of Life” with lots of pictures of the deceased person and sometimes a cremation urn will be present. Cremation has become the norm for most Christians in our country. It has replaced the funeral and the burial of the body of the deceased.

This has occurred with almost no debate about the issue of cremation. It has become an accepted doctrine of most Protestant groups (It also is fully accepted by the Roman Catholic Church). Almost every Protestant statement of faith begins with something like this:

“The Bible is the inspired Word of God, free from error, and is therefore the final authoritative guide for faith and conduct.”

Putting this in simpler terms, most Protestants would simply say that they stand on the Word of God alone. With that as a foundation, here then is a defense of cremation taken only from the Bible.

First, since cremation is the burning up of the body, let us consider some of the verses dealing with the burning of bodies in the Bible. As you will see, the Bible is filled with great examples:

Genesis 19 – God burned up the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Leviticus 10 – God burned up Nadab and Abihu.

Leviticus 20:14 – A man who marries both a woman and her mother should be burned with fire.

Leviticus 21:9 – The daughter of a priest who becomes a prostitute should be burned fire.

Numbers 11 – God burned up some people for complaining against Him.

Numbers 16 – God burned up 250 men with Korah who rebelled against Moses.

Deuteronomy 12:29-31 – Nearby nations were burning their sons and daughters in the fire as a sacrifice to their gods. God forbid His people from doing this, but it does show that others were doing it. Haven’t you heard: “Everyone is doing it!”

Deuteronomy 18:10 – Even though God forbids His people, again we find that entire nations were sacrificing their sons and daughters in the fire.

Joshua 7:25 – Joshua had Achan and all his family stoned and then burned them up because of the sin Achan had committed.

Judges 9 – Abimelech burned up about 1,000 men and women in the tower of Shechem (Things didn’t go well for Abimelech right after that).

Judges 15:6 – The Philistines burned up Samson’s wife and her father.

1 Kings 16:18 – Zimri burned up himself after things went bad for him.

2 Kings 1 – The prophet Elijah called down fire and burned up the captains and their 50 soldiers (This happened two times).

2 Kings 16 – King Ahaz cremated his own son (It was an abomination to God, but it was done).

2 Kings 17 – The children of Israel were burning up their sons and daughters as offerings to other gods.

2 Kings 21 – King Manasseh cremated his own son (It was an abomination to God, but it was done).

This brings us to the Major and Minor Prophets of the Bible who did mention cremation quite a few times, but since it was all in a rather negative light, we will not cite each passage. So let’s move on to the New Testament:

Matthew 18:41-42 – Jesus actually mentions casting people into the furnace of fire (which sounds like a crematorium).

Matthew 25:41 – Jesus does speak of an everlasting fire which certain ones will be cast into.

Mark 9 – Several times, Jesus mentions a fire that never goes out that some could be thrown into.

Luke 12:49 – Jesus said that He came to send fire on the earth. This may not be an actual reference to cremation, but could be used out of context.

John 15:6 – Jesus talks about throwing those who do not abide in Him into the fire to be burned up.

1 Corinthians 3 – Our works will be tested by fire. Could this be a reference to cremation? Rats, that passage is about the Church, not individuals.

2 Thessalonians 1:7-9 – The Lord will take vengeance with flaming fire on the disobedient.

Hebrews 12:29 – A very strong witness for cremation: “Our God is a consuming fire.”

1 Peter 1:7 – Our faith will be tested by fire (compare with 1 Corinthians 3 above for the continuing debate regarding works vs faith).

2 Peter 3:12 – In the end, looks like everything gets cremated anyway.

Jude – More thoughts on the vengeance of eternal fire.

Revelation – Almost every chapter has something in it about fire. Suffice it to say, there will be some kind of everlasting cremation going on.

“If the Bible says it, it is good enough for me!” Clearly, the Bible shows that that even God practiced cremation. Some of the Kings in the Bible practiced cremation. The nations mentioned in the Bible often practiced cremation. Furthermore, the Bible points out that there is actually some sort of eternal cremation available.

But wait, these are all rather negative references toward the practice of cremation. In fact, I honestly couldn’t find one verse in which God blessed the practice of cremation. Perhaps we should take a different approach to the Biblical concept of cremation.

WWJD – “What Would Jesus Do?” This phrase has certainly impacted the Christian world and perhaps we can use it to look at this widely accepted doctrine of cremation.

The greatest miracle in the ministry of Jesus occurred with the person of Lazarus. He had been dead for 4 days when Jesus raised him from the dead. Oops, my mistake, if Lazarus had been cremated, that wouldn’t have occurred.

Jesus Himself died. Hmmm…He wasn’t cremated either. If fact, when He rose from the dead, he did have a body, ate food, and insisted on being touched. Bummer, that won’t work either.

Instead of that, what about taking a look at what St. Paul taught. He wrote a lot of stuff in the New Testament. He talked pretty seriously about death in 1 Corinthians. Let’s take a quick look at chapter 15. In discussing the resurrection from the dead (which we are all interested in), he only talks about the body. He speaks of the body as if it were a seed planted in the ground which will eventually be raised. Earlier in chapter 6, St. Paul talks about our bodies actually being the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Hmmm, there is no mention of cremation by St. Paul. But, a fair question to ask at this point is: “Doesn’t the Holy Spirit simply leave the body of a believer after death?”

There is one passage of the Bible does come to mind regarding that question. In 2 Kings 13:20, we are told that the prophet Elisha died and was buried. Well, let’s let the Bible speak for itself here:

“Then Elisha died, and they buried him. And the raiding bands from Moab invaded the land in the spring of the year. So it was, as they were burying a man, that suddenly they spied a band of raiders; and they put the man in the tomb of Elisha; and when the man was let down and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet.”

The bones of Elisha still contained the Holy Spirit so that a dead man was brought back to life. Wow, if he had been cremated and his ashes scattered over the Jordan River, that miracle would have never taken place.

I confess to you the reader that I have failed miserably in giving a Scriptural defense for the practice of cremation. That does raise the question about why so many Christians are practicing something that is actually condemned in the Bible if they truly believe in their statement of faith: “The Bible is the inspired Word of God, free from error, and is therefore the final authoritative guide for faith and conduct.”

What is guiding this doctrine of cremation? Please don’t tell me: “Everyone is doing it!”

By Fr. Stephen Powley

Source: https://upwordglance.com/2018/05/04/a-scriptural-defense-of-cremation/

You wouldn’t suspect that the jovial Orthodox priest who carries the gold chalise with such reverence from behind the iconostasis of “Mother of Unexpected Joy” church was once a drug dealing, rambling hippie and coffee-house owner with his own underground band, not to mention an illegitimate descendent of Nathaniel Boone, the son of the legendary American hero Daniel Boone. Father Moses Berry, who is by now in his 60s, is still a rolling ball of fire, overflowing with spontaneous exuberance. He bounces from one story to another as he moves from one section of the Ozarks Afro-American Heritage Museum he founded in his native town of Ash Grove. He is a man who unravels a ball of tightly-wound stories, one knotted to another and yet another.

Father Berry’s story, in fact his entire existence, is rooted in the dark history of American slavery. The three-room museum he opened is jam-packed with heirlooms, objects and artifacts culled entirely from his family’s possession. Two faded sepia prints in oval frame reveal pictures of his great-grandmother, Maria Boone, mistress to Nathaniel, and her daughter, Caroline Boone Berry, his grandmother. They are wearing stiff, laced-up dresses with matching bonnets fashionable for ladies in the 19th century. He says that the child of a slave mistress is born between the dark and the daylight, raised in the shadowland, not of this world. They are children whose existence is denied, whose marked absence in the American consciousness is a mark of their presence.

A collage of black-and-white photos, yellowed historical documents, tools, and everyday objects align the walls of Father Berry’s personal museum revealing how the intimate personal facts of a family’s life create the historical impersonal account in a textbook. He points to a faded photo of a young Black girl in a white dress. “This is Fanny Murray at age 13 in 1866,” Berry explains. “Fanny saved a young man’s life just by doing his laundry for 10 cents a week. This is why every little thing you do is important. A simple act of loving kindness, a seemingly insignificant gesture can have an incredible impact.” The young man, who had gotten in trouble and whose family had consequently disowned him, eventually became a history professor. Underneath is another photo, color this time, of an old woman in a pink dress and a wide, flamboyant Sunday hat. “This is Ms. Olivia Murray, Fanny’s daughter, who died at 93 in 1991. She would walk down these streets in long dresses with a bonnet even after the 60s. She was an Aunt Jemmima figure and quite an embarrassment to the young people in the town. ‘Check her out,’ they would point and stare, but I would tell them you can’t dismiss people at a glance. We don’t know who the person is, who s/he really is.”

Through the personalized tour of his family’s history, Father Berry spins his own story.

Over forty years ago, an African-American teenager, Karl, leaves home at 15 after hearing that in California young people were shooting flowers instead of bullets. “California, man,” he recalls in his black rassa, blacker than his glistening skin in the hot May sun, “Once I heard about California, about flower power, and how people were living together in love, I had to go.” He hitched his way west from his native town of Ash Grove, Mo. In California, he lived in a commune, learned how to roll hashish, and to tie-dye t-shirts. He returned to his native state of Missouri where he settled in Columbia, Mo. There he “hustled” by selling leather goods, Latigo of London in particular, out of a small store front on the corner of 8th Street and Broadway, “The Strow Away.” At night he jammed jazz rock with his group “Honey Chile,” which even had a hit single in the area. He was active in the Stony Brook commune that convened by a creek in the granite hills of the area. His fortune changed when he opened an underground coffee shop, the Rainbow Bread Company. While it fronted as a “coffee shop,” as was the case with most coffee shops of the period, it made a bigger profit selling hashish and marijuana. It would have continued as a lucrative underground establishment had the Columbia police department not set it on fire. As it could not secure a search warrant, the police forced a raid. During that forced break in by the police, which resulted in almost total devastation of the coffee house, Karl and his partners were forcibly arrested and taken into custody.

Without representation, Karl was placed in solitary confinement. “It was a cell literally 5 feet by 3 feet by 7 feet. No windows. Just a chink where they could throw you a piece of stale bread.” Karl could not say for how long he was confined in the dark pit. But he feared the worst. Under the statutes, his sentence could stretch for up to 15 years in a penitentiary. “I had hit a low point. This was the end,” Father Berry remembers puncturing the somberness of the event with his full, guttural laugh that reaches down through his heart and soul to the bottom of his shoe soles. “I remember the day before I was supposed to get my sentence. I got down on my knees in that dark, narrow cell and prayed for the first time in my life. I prayed and called out to God as I had never done before. I said, ‘Lord, get me out of this one, and if you do, I promise to serve you.’”

The next morning Moses heard a key turn in the cell door. At first he did not want to come out. He had heard how the guards would periodically beat prisoners and then return them to their cells. Haunted by the visions of the brutal beatings the prisoners received at the hands of the guards he witnessed before he was placed in solitary confinement, he refused to exit. The guards had to drag him out into the light while they shouted, “You’ve been released! Get out!”

“He repented,” Father Berry muses. “The police officer who had pressed charges against me had repented. He had come to the precinct before midnight and dropped all charges. He must have come just about the same time as my prayer.” From that day forth, Moses Berry’s life changed completely. His soul had heard the call of the divine.

It would be several years, however, before Moses’s course led him to Orthodoxy. Upon his release, Moses traveled to New York City, where he became a teacher in Harlem. It was there where he met his wife, a liberal, Jewish teacher. “I remember walking down the streets of Harlem, arm in arm, singing Beatles’ songs. People must have thought we were crazy,” Father Berry reminisces. On a spontaneous whim they accepted an invitation of a friend to visit in Richmond, Virginia. After driving eight hours, they were prodded by this same friend who was Orthodox to visit an Orthodox chapel another two hours away. While the reluctance was strong, they did find the chapel; it was on the second floor of someone’s Colonial house. “This wasn’t a church; this was somebody’s living room,” Berry says. But upon entering, even with the makeshift choir of three or four women, never had he heard a service like this. “I heard things like ‘Rejoice, Laver purifying conscience. Rejoice, Wine-bowl over-filled with joy. Rejoice, sweet-scented Fragrance of Christ. Rejoice, Life of mystic festival.’ This was poetry. This was beauty and peace and love. There was incense. There was reverence. Nowhere had I heard liturgy like this. I became Orthodox from that point on.”

Since that time, Berry has striven to live out his promise to God. He has worked with at-risk youth, prisoners, and drug addicts. One of his many accomplishments included starting up a 7-step drug rehabilitation program in Detroit based on the principles of salvation in Orthodox theology.

His two most recent achievements include founding a museum and church in Ash Grove, MO. Father Berry and his family have returned to his roots. They moved out of a comfortable three-story Victorian house in suburban St. Louis into a 150-year old unmarked farmhouse, the same farmhouse in which his great-grandmother was born. “Most of the Blacks moved out of Ash Grove. My family stayed. When they heard I was going to open up a museum in that little town, ‘Be careful’ they told me, white people are not going to like it.” The museum, however, has been successful and has become a point of pride for the town.

The Ozark African-American museum houses a uniquely personal assortment of historical objects tied intimately to the “dark side” of the Boone family. Some are quilts his great-grandmother and grandmother collaborated on. One quilt, a 1790 piece, featured prominently in the Underground Railroad. The quilt in triangular green, brown, and yellow patterns would be draped over the porches of “safe houses” a signal that welcomed entry for runaway slaves. Over the doorway to the second room is a “two-lady saw,” another object the two women would use. It is smaller, thinner, and shorter, at least by a foot, than a regular saw.

Among the other objects on display is a minted coin commemorating the lynching of three Black men on Good Friday 1906 in the Ozarks and an authentic 1858 AG Brock slave tag that was used during slave auctions at the houses of that company around the South. Father demonstrates a “screw lock” which looks like a menacing wrought-iron horseshoe with a long screw transversing it at the edge of which a bolt slowly tightens over a slave’s ankles. According to Berry, it is the origin of our slang expression for “screw” as slaves would report among themselves “so-and-so got screwed.” A leather-bound, yellowing volume of The Remarkable Advancement of the Afro-American by Lancaster Water, 1898 edition, and behind that, in a glass case, the same title but the original binding from 1852. The painting and photos in the museum tell the stories of slaves who fought in the Union army and were later freed for their service, of 12-year-old runaways who were frozen to death, married couples who started churches, of rebel slaves who saw visions and organized services in the forest eventually founding the African Methodist Episcopalian church.

Another curiosity is the hand-crocheted African Mammy doll, a caricature of the Caribbean slave trade figure. The doll stands alone on a green draped coffee table at the exit of the museum. Hand-made with double lacing, the doll’s woolen face exaggerates lips nose and eyes. She is wearing a green and yellow headdress from under which protrudes black woolen cornrows. “Mammie is a West African matriarch,” Father Berry explains the subtle shadings of cultural history in everyday objects as he turns the doll upside down. “She is a Josephine Baker fruit dancer underneath,” he says as the doll transforms into a bare-bellied, buxomous exotic dancer bearing the typical platter of bananas and pineapples on her head. The doll provides a casual metaphor for the transformation of a people, a subtle symbolism for the complexities of the soul at its surface and at its depths.

Father Berry ends with one final story that underlines the importance of relationship, the one thing that can transcend the impersonality of history, the division of race, the misunderstanding of class. Several yards from the Berry-Boone farmhouse is the family cemetery. Gray stones mark the resting place of slaves who never reached their final destination on the Underground Railroad. One of Harriet Tubman’s porters is there. So are the graves of Maria Boone and Caroline Boone Berry. “It was maybe three months after we had moved into the farmhouse, so things were still messy. I drive back from the church and all of a sudden, I see this red Corvette with California plates parked by the gate blocking the way to the cemetery. I see these three blonde kids in the back. ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask them. ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ they say all polite and all. ‘We didn’t know anyone lived here.’ (He puts on a high-pitched voice mimicking all too many “white boys”). Now, I call back to them all gruff and all, ‘I am here to tell you I live here, and you are on my property. What are you doing here?’ It turns out these kids had been raised by a Black nanny who was buried in this field. ‘Mammie raised us from when we were seven years old when our own mother died,’ they said. So, these kids had been coming to her grave every year on the anniversary of her death to put flowers on her grave.’” He ends his story like a sermon. “A simple act of kindness can reach into eternity; it can save your soul besides another’s.”

“Orthodoxy is the truth. It is the one true path to salvation,” Father Berry confesses. “Once you understand what it is all about, there is no hiding from the truth.” Once Orthodox, he confesses the greatest challenge for staying Orthodox is hopelessness. “The hardest thing to do in Orthodoxy is to learn how to have hope.”

Father Moses Berry now serves hope from a golden chalise every Sunday at 10 a.m. in a small, white and red barn church with a golden onion dome in the middle of a cornfield in rural Missouri. “There is no other hope than in our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ,” he smiles. “I am a living example of the immanent love of God for His children, even those who have gone far astray, of despair turning into hope. We must never lose hope.”

Source: https://greekamericangirl.com/father-moses-berry-from-hippie-bad-boy-cool-cat-to-humble-rassaphore-orthodox-priest/

“But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all”
(1 Corinthians 12:7).

Many different miracles were performed through the apostles, and Apostle Paul was not an exception, although he said about himself that he was “the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Corinthians 15:9). In his Book of Acts, Apostle Luke, who was one of Paul’s companions and the witness of many important events of the Supreme Apostle’s life, describes numerous miracles that the Lord performed by the prayers of Apostle Paul.

So, during the time of his first missionary journey, Apostle Paul visited Cyprus, where he converted proconsul called Sergius Paul to the Christian faith. There is a tradition saying that Apostle Paul chose his own name in memory of the very first conversion in his apostolic ministry. The proconsul turned to Christ after Apostle Paul had struck Elymas, the magician who tried to turn the proconsul from Christ, with blindness.

Apostle Paul in one of his journeys

In the city of Lystra, Apostle Paul appealed to the name of Jesus Christ and thus healed a crippled man, who could never walk before. We should point out one more time that there is an important ontological connection between faith and the healings described in the Holy Scripture. Apostle Paul healed that man when he saw that he “had faith to be healed” (Acts 14:9). That miracle was so great and amazed the locals so much that they even wanted to make a sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas, taking them as Zeus and Hermes: “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” (Acts 14:11). It was really hard for the apostles to reassure them after that.

In Philippi, Apostle Paul casted a spirit out of a woman, who earned a lot of money for her masters with the spirit’s prophecies. In Troad, the apostle brought a young man to life, who got so tired during the Eucharist and apostle’s long homily that he fell asleep. Since he sat near the open window, he lost his balance and fell three stories to his death. “But Paul went down, fell on him, and embracing him said, “Do not trouble yourselves, for his life is in him”” (Acts 20:10). Later people brought him alive and the whole Church took solace in it. “God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them” (Acts 19:11-12).

Paul and the young man

The miracles of Apostle Paul were great and numerous. However, St. Paul wrote like nobody else that it is not miracles and healings what is important in Christian life, but love. Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to Corinthians that the Spirit is one but it can work in different ways just as the Lord is one but we can serve Him in different ways. In the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, every person receives his own gift and is called upon to use this gift to the benefit of the whole Church. But the greatest gift is love. And we all must strive to attain Christ’s love, which is the ultimate display of the work of the Holy Spirit.

“Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 12:30-31, 13:1-8, 13).

What St. John Chrysostom says in his works:

But observe, I pray you, the theatre, how crowded it was: and the miracle, what it was. He was sitting in a window, at dead of night. Such was their eagerness to hear him! Let us take shame to ourselves! "Aye, but a Paul," say you, "was discoursing then." Yes, and Paul discourses now, or rather not Paul, either then or now, but Christ, and yet none cares to hear. No window in the case now, no importunity of hunger, or sleep, and yet we do not care to hear: no crowding in a narrow space here, nor any other such discomfort. And the wonderful circumstance is, that though he was a youth, he was not listless and indifferent; and though (he felt himself) weighed down by sleep, he did not go away nor yet fear the danger of falling down. It was not from listlessness that he slumbered, but from necessity of nature. I beseech you, so fervent was their zeal, that tliey even assembled in a third loft: for they had not a Church yet. Trouble not yourselves, he says. He said not, "He shall come to life again, for I will raise him up:" but mark the unassuming way in which he comforts them for his life, says he, is in him. When he was come up again, and had broken bread, and eaten. This thing cut short the discourse ; it did no harm, however. When he had eaten, it says, and discoursed a long while, even till break of day, so he departed. Do you mai'k the frugality of the supper? Do you observe how they passed the whole night? Such were their meals, that the hearers came away sober, and fit for hearing. But we, in what do we differ from dogs? Do you mark what a difference (between us and those men)? And they brought the young man alive, and, it says, were not a little comforted, both because they received him back alive, and because a miracle liad been wrought.

Reflections in the Holy Church tradition:

Paul, the spokesman of Christ and founder of His teachings, who earlier had persecuted Jesus the Savior, now you fill the first throne of the Apostles, O blessed one. Thus you saw things that cannot be spoken, and ascending to the third heaven you cried: “Come with me, and be filled with good things!” (Sticheron on the Litya. Tone 2)

To be continued…

Read about the miracles of Apostle Peter.

See the full Path of Love Infographics.