The Catalog of Good Deeds

Teaching children to fast is very basic in an Orthodox Christian upbringing, like teaching them to pray. The question of when and how strictly to have one's children begin fasting should be discussed with a spiritual father. If a family does not have a spiritual father and the family is involved in a parish where fasting is not encouraged, especially among the children, one should ask God to present the family with an opportunity to find a spiritual father who can guide the family in the True Orthodox Christian life.

Today many children have dairy and egg allergies and live their entire childhood without these foods. Many people do not eat meat at all, for philosophical reasons, and raise their children on a meat-free diet. There are cultures in the world whose diet have no or a only a very limited amount of meat and dairy, and in many cases, the people of these cultures are physically healthier than Americans. So, it's not a matter of depriving children--it's simply a different way of cooking.

A child's ability to fast during the Great Lent depends a lot on how the child eats during non-fasting times. If a child's primary foods are meat and dairy, then fasting will likely be difficult. But if a child is accustomed to eating a variety of legumes, whole grains, fruits and vegetables, then in most cases, fasting will not be difficult. It is important to have your children eat a variety of legumes, grains, fruits and vegetables throughout the year, so that they will be accustomed to these kinds of foods and will not find fasting to be such a dramatic change in diet.

Yet, again, establishing a fasting rule for the children in a family must be done under the guidance of a spiritual father. It is possible to become overzealous for having our children keep a full fast, and a spiritual father would temper this and guide the family on the path that is best for the children's physical health and spiritual development.

It is helpful to educate yourself what constitutes a healthy, nutritious diet for fasting so that you and your children will not suffer any deficiencies. (Serving your family peanut butter and jelly for lunch and pasta for dinner for 40 days is not a healthy diet and will make your family--especially your husband--hate fasting.)

For children who keep a strict fast the morning of receiving Holy Communion, it is helpful to make sure that they are fed a substantial, nutritious meal the evening before. If you are in a parish where the Divine Liturgy is late in the morning and the children have difficulty keeping a strict fast for the entire morning, it can be helpful to serve the previous night's dinner or give the children an additional protein-filled snack (and water if they are able), before they go to bed the night before the Divine Liturgy.

That's Just What We Do

Our children are born into a family that fasts on Wednesdays, Fridays and during Church fasting periods. They get plenty to eat each day during those times. We are amazed at how many Orthodox Christian families do not make fasting part of their regular routine. We feel it's easier for children to grow up used to that aspect of the Orthodox Christian faith rather than having to learn to fast as adults. On the other hand, we are not "label readers" and discourage that in our children.

On Parish Life and Fasting

We understand that it is difficult to fast, and some of us many have special food requirements. Parish leaders and organizers: please, if it is a fast period and there is a retreat/youth function do not serve children non-fasting food. We are not judging you or others if you break the fast, but it is very difficult for us parents to keep to the fasting calendar and then have it broken in the church, of all places. Please have all Sunday School teachers/youth groups leaders and parishioners who cook for the parish know not to feed children non-fasting food during the fasts or to verbally criticize the fasts of the Church. Further, please do not call us "fanatics" for following the Church fasting rules.

Prepare Them for Difficult Days

The Elder (Geronda) Athanasios had personal experience with true physical hunger during WWII. Over 300,000 civilians died in Athens, Greece alone from starvation, tens of thousands more through reprisals by Nazis and collaborators, and the country's economy was ruined. He saw starvation with his own eyes, was himself truly hungry, and knew that it would always be possible for times of hunger to come to any people at any time.

"I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need." (Philippians 4:12)

In other words, when I have plenty of food, I do not eat like a glutton, and when I am hungry I have learned not to blaspheme God. I have learned the lesson to have plenty, to be rich without being attracted and attached to have plenty, to be rich without being attracted and attached to these things; but I can also go hungry without doubting God and questioning what is going to happen to me--maybe God forgot me or maybe God died. No; Saint Paul says, I have everything I need and then some. I have everything I need and I abound! (cf., Philippians 4:18). Holy Saint Paul, you were in jail for three years! Two years in Caesarea and one year in Rome and what do you have?

He says, "I have everything and I abound." Saint Paul is not lying. Do you see how a person can discipline himself, how he can be conditioned? My friends, what are you going to do when you keep filling your children up with chocolate, ice cream cakes, cream cheese and fresh butter? What is going to happen in a period of hunger? We need to teach the children to fast, to learn (even with all of today's technical means) to withstand some mild suffering, so they will be able to survive some difficult days if they happen to come upon us. If they are trained in this way of the difficult days of their lives, like Saint Paul they will say, I know how to live with plenty and I know how to survive with next to nothing.

Fasting With Joy

As to fasting before Holy Communion, we do a great disservice to our children by not teaching them to joyfully fast when they are young. Whatever you do, set a good example and do not complain about fasting in front of them. They are young but they are not foolish. Teach them why we fast.

Attention Span and Snacks

Children without health problems can go the length of a Divine Liturgy without food and drink. Please don't bring cheerios, or any food or drink (or gum) to church.

Blessed Meals

Pray while cooking or preparing food for yourself and your family. Make the sign of the Cross over your food and drinks. Always pray before eating, at minimum make the sign of the Cross; and do not be embarrassed about blessing your food in public or your children will feel the same way. (Source: Orthodox Christian Parenting. Cultivating God's Creation by Zoe Press)

Source: http://saintandrewgoc.org/home/2017/10/11/how-to-teach-children-to-fast

Saint Seraphim of Sarov is one of the pillars of the Orthodox faith in the Russian lands. Most Orthodox believers know his biography. We have also heard a lot about the miracles that he made. However, some readers of his biography might ask: what did he need all those ascetic feats for? After all, he led an absolutely chaste and pure life, didn't he?

What Does a Pious Person Need Asceticism For?

St. Seraphim himself considered fasting, alms-giving, prayer, and staying awake to be essential for acquiring the Holy Spirit.

St. Seraphim of Sarov led a chaste life since childhood years. Moreover, his entire family was known for its piety and donations to the Church. In spite of that, Father Seraphim used to say that you cannot rely solely on your good actions. You should check and see whether they bring down the grace of the Holy Spirit. He added more spiritual exercises to his everyday routines, noting, “I exhaust him who exhausts me.” It means that there are no actions that can shield us from the attacks of the enemy of the human race. We are stuck in this battle during our entire lives.

We Cannot Imitate Him Today

Apostle Paul writes, “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God, whose faith you should follow” (Cf. Hebrews 13:7) We know how Saint Seraphim imitated Jesus Christ and Saint Paul. How do “we” do it? We lack both the power and the desire to do so.

What we really want is to live happily. We don't want to suffer. We comfort ourselves by following the external rules and norms of a "godly" lifestyle. We always attend to our own needs and desires.

So… Are We Damned? How Can We Be Saved?

The Lord declares, “My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12: 9). That is why we should acknowledge our true condition and follow the Elder's advice by evaluating our actions and thoughts carefully in order to make our first step on the ladder that leads to the Heaven, to the Kingdom of God.

Admittedly, we cannot imitate St. Seraphim of Sarov today… We should at least do our best to treat the Holy Fathers' heritage respectfully and honestly and act accordingly. Apostle Paul writes, “So run, that ye may obtain” (1 Cor. 9: 24). If we can't run, let's take tiny steps towards the Heaven so far as possible…

By Pavel Davydov

St. Elisabeth Convent

My bishop recently shared the story of a young man whom he taught some years ago. He was Orthodox from Estonia. He grew up in the Soviet era and had come to hate all things Russian, including the Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, he saw an Orthodox procession in the streets of his city one year, a procession that included the Russian bishop (whom he also hated and believed to be a KGB agent). However, he saw the bishop surrounded by light. It was an experience that led him into the Orthodox faith. You might hate the man, and the Church as well. But the undeniable glory of God revealed what his hatred could not see.

My bishop’s point in sharing the story was not to exonerate the Russian Church from any wrong-doing, or cooperation with wrong-doing. Nor was it to exonerate the bishop involved and declare him holy. It was a story about the glory of God and its place and work despite our faults and failures. The 12 apostles cast out demons, healed the sick and cleansed lepers. We are nowhere told that Judas did none of those things. Doubtless, he did (which makes his betrayal all the greater).

There was a heresy in the early Church that denied the efficacy of the sacraments if they were performed by sinners. The debate was largely about those who, under the pressure of persecution, had in any way denied their faith or yielded to the requirements of the pagan state. It is an easy line of thought to maintain. If we are commanded to be holy, surely there are consequences for failure to observe the commandment. There are indeed consequences within the canons of the Church, but those consequences do not include an inefficacy of the sacraments.

The scandal of the Incarnation, God-becoming-man, is the seeming contradiction of the utterly transcendent God and the particularity and limits of human existence. It is a scandal whose errors run in two directions.

First, there is an assumption that God is so displeased with sin that He can have nothing to do with it, or that sin somehow nullifies the work of God. Second, there is an equally odious belief that human beings, in their observance of the commandments, are ever righteous enough to actually be compatible with true holiness. The first is an error about God, the second an error about human beings.

I’m always troubled to hear “there is no grace outside the Church.” I can’t fathom what such a statement means. Since the entire universe is sustained by the grace of God, I can only assume a sort of heresy of secularism by such a statement – the notion that anything can exist apart from God’s grace. For His own mysterious reasons, God even sustains the fallen angels by His grace. If it were not so, they would cease to exist. Only God has existence in and of Himself.

I can say “there is no grace outside the Church” only if I also say that everything in all of creation is inside the Church. In fact, I believe this to be true. The Church came into existence when God said, “Let there be light.” The sacraments do not make us to be what we are not, but reveal us to be what we truly are. Baptism and Chrismation are indeed required of those coming to Holy Communion, for they are fundamental realities in the medicine of immortality and the path of life God has given us. But the person who is Baptized does not somehow become other than what they are. They become more fully human, more truly what they were created to be. “The Holy Spirit completes that which is lacking,” it is said in our prayers.

There are boundaries which we describe as “the Church,” but this meaning is being used to specify that which is identified with the fullness of life in Christ. “Church”, in this usage, is “that which is reconciled.” St. Paul says that the end of all things is that they be “gathered together in one in Christ Jesus.” This is the Church, in the end.

Too frequently we speak of the Church in denominational terms, in which we speak of people who are reconciled in the fullness of Orthodoxy as though their “membership” constituted the whole of the Church. But St. Paul extends the Church to “all things.” Thus, the grass and the trees (and certainly the flour and the wine) are being gathered together into Christ. The Eucharist is not a gathering meant to exclude everything else. It is a gathering that represents everything else. “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee.” What is there within all of creation that is not God’s own? Indeed, the members of the Church who gather, are themselves but the “first fruits” of the whole Adam.

And so we have the reality of glowing bishops who might be hated in Estonia (just as many other bishops might be hated elsewhere). The transfiguration (for such was the scene in that procession) of God’s creation is simply shocking to us. It is a manifestation of the love of God that ignores all scandal, except that which does not love. It is a transfiguration that gives light and that burns.

Many take a cold comfort in the fact that the transfiguring light of God burns some. However, it most often burns the eyes of those who judge the fitness of those transfigured. They become blind in this very manner.

The Transfiguration of Christ would generally be deemed to be free of scandal. He appeared on the Holy Mount with Moses and Elijah – how could the disciples not rejoice. But the text describes a scandal.

As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening. And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. (Luke 9:29-31)

Christ, in turn, spoke to the disciples about His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem, and Peter rebuked Him! The great scandal is always the scandal of the Cross. There is no path to true union with God that does not go through the Cross. This is true finally of all those who are transfigured as well as for all who hope to ever see a transfiguration.

It is of note that the Greek beneath this translation does not say that Christ was speaking with Moses and Elijah about His “decease.” The text calls it His “exodus.” It is not a casual word choice. His journey into death is the Great Exodus, the path through the Red Sea that drowns the mystical Pharaoh. It is the Lord’s Passover.

That Passover is the path to transfiguration. Moses himself, after the Passover, leads the people to a different holy mountain. There he received the Law written by the very finger of God. When he came down from the mountain his face was transfigured and the people were afraid to look at him – and asked him to please wear a veil.

In Christ the veil is removed, except for those who wear a veil covering their heart (2 Cor. 3). But God is so merciful, He sometimes removes the veil so that angry young men on the streets of Estonia (which is everywhere) may see His glory and live.

By Fr. Stephen Freeman

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2016/08/06/the-scandal-of-the-transfiguration/

I remember, as an undergraduate student in a university chemistry laboratory, a fellow student who was having tremendous difficulty understanding the basic principles of laboratory science. A pre-medical student, she lacked both proper high school preparation in the general ideas of science and any concept of the importance of procedure in experimental methodology. Having accomplished very high scores on college entrance examinations, she was capable of learning what she did not know. However, something prevented her from understanding her ignorance.

Try as I might to help this young woman during our long laboratory sessions, I proved myself unable to do so. As I was unsuccessfully explaining to her one day the principles of a certain experimental technique, the doctoral student who was directing the session happened by. He asked if he might help me. What he said to the girl—directions which turned around her performance in the class—has always stayed in my mind. Looking at her intensely, he noted:

"Your intelligence is protecting your ignorance. In science we must not think that 'things are as they are' and that an intelligent person is one who discovers this fact. In science, we must treat our knowledge of events as a form of ignorance. Then we are free to ask, 'Why is this as it is?' For example, we are told that we should never pour water on acid. If we learn this piece of information, it may allow us to appear intelligent. But we are in fact ignorant. And unless we learn 'why' we should not pour water on acid, we will invite disaster. For one day, knowing the fact but not the 'why,' then we would never have made this error. In science, then, we must always understand causes and effects and know the 'why' of things. Otherwise we are ignorant with facts."

I have often thought of this wise teacher while reading texts on Orthodox liturgical theology—a subject in which I have great interest and which has invited the attention of some modernist Orthodox theologians. Many of our contemporary Orthodox thinkers know a great deal about the history and development of the Liturgy. Under the influence of Roman Catholic scholars, they have even produced cold, critical commentaries on the Liturgy which aim at exposing its supposed inadequacies. Using the catchy phrases of contemporary scholarly trends, they spew forth snide and even sarcastic analyses and critiques of the worship services which the Fathers of our Church have always approached with awe and trembling.

In all of their ponderous studies of the Orthodox Liturgy I suspect that many of these popular scholars suffer from the same ignorance that I found in my laboratory companion at university. They know facts. They observe historical data. They criticize and attack the Church's liturgical traditions. But in the end, I wonder if they really know the 'whys' and the rationale that underlie what we might call "procedural" liturgics.

Under the influence of these scholars, many young Priests wish to dispense with the Icon screen in Orthodox Churches, prompted as they are by the poor scholarship of their mentors, who have invented a history of the templon that ignores its early use and development. Recently I heard of a Priest who dispensed with one of the entrances in the Liturgy. Yet another Priest has proclaimed the expression, "Again and again" in the liturgical petitions redundant. And all of these innovations are no doubt backed up by high-sounding "facts" and historical observations. They reflect the idea that the Liturgy is a man-made drama subject to the tastes and developments of various ages and cultures.

But what of the "why" of the Liturgy? What of its procedural realities? In fact, the Icon screen in our Churches divides the Holy of Holies from other sections of the Church. And this division is not architectural or merely "spatial." The Eucharist rests in the Altar on the Holy Table. And its Presence there sanctifies and changes that place. In the procedure of the Liturgy, the Icon screen protects that which is holy from the profane and that which is profane from the power of the holy. No historical acrobatics meant to prove that the Icon screen is an impediment to worship can change the fact that the Altar contains something which must be protected and concealed, except in those moments when the Holy Things are brought out for the sanctification of the people. Such acrobatics represent the ignorance of knowledge without "whys." And just as water poured on acid can cause a tremendous explosion, so too can an ignorance of liturgical procedure bring spiritual harm to those who know facts but cannot put them, in context.

The Liturgy is a mystical event. Its development is subject to historical investigation. But the "whys" of its development lie within the action of the Holy Spirit. The Liturgy is a formula, as it were, by which the earthly lifts itself up to the heavenly. It exists for this purpose. Any changes and developments which we see in it are not the result of human whim but of maturation and the development of Divine procedure. When St. Basil, for example, wished to utter the Liturgy in his own words, this proved impossible. Rather, by his own account, holy personages came to him and guided him.

The entrances in the Liturgy are not just processions. They re-enact, outside time and space, events in human salvation. They bring those events into fruition for the Faithful. When we say "Again and again" in our prayerful petitions during the Liturgy, we are not being redundant. We are expressing in a mystical language, the symbolic language of Liturgy, the inner intensity of our prayer. We are expressing with repetition the dimensions of prayer in a realm which is open-ended, just as we close many of our petitions with the words, "unto the ages of ages." In every liturgical act and phrase, we are adhering to a Mystical formula by which what is transcendent is made present and by which the unholy are deemed worthy to behold the holy. To understand these acts and phrases as mere movements and words is to be ignorant. To participate in them by knowing their meaning as a procedure is to be a true worshipper.

The Church has taught us liturgical procedure. Those who analyze this procedure without knowing why it has been taught to us risk great danger. Our scholars and clergy have begun to throw water of human disbelief and rationality on the acid of spiritual truth. The Liturgy has been chopped to pieces in the modernist Churches. Evangelicals coming into the Church without proper preparation have made what is often a cheap circus act of what should be a window into eternity. Snide scholars, the masters of "Punk Patristics," have suggested that the Liturgy is an a "sad state." And spiritually deluded fakirs in the guise of Orthodox believers have begun to rewrite and redefine the Liturgy.

The explosion that awaits those who fail to understand the Liturgy at a procedural and spiritual level is a sad one. It consumes not only the Priest, but the Faithful. It consumes not only the body, but the soul. It burns and disfigures not only external belief, but internal faith. Those who follow the heterodox in their treatment of worship as something man-made and invented—a device for "creating" Grace—have failed to know that the Orthodox Church alone preserves that which is authentic. They have defiled what is holy by associating it with that which is indeed an invention of man. They sin not only against the Church’s Divine worship, but against the very Church itself.

It is time that the modernists either cease their deprecatory studies of Orthodox worship or openly join the heterodox whom they so wish to please by their adolescent rebellion against the Faith. And it is time that modernist clergy cease taking pride in their ignorance and immerse themselves in an understanding of the general nature of worship in Orthodoxy and of the authenticity of spiritual experience which the Liturgy guarantees to those who enact it with fidelity to the spiritual formulas by which its power is made manifest.

What I have said may seem harsh. And it may seem that I have not allowed for sympathy for the modernist clergy who, coming into the Orthodox Church with no knowledge of its true spiritual power, are themselves victims. I am, however, compelled to speak truthfully, for through the Liturgy we Christians receive the very source of life: The Body and Blood of Christ. If the Liturgy is defiled, our food becomes defiled. And if one can sympathize with modernists who have gone astray, this sympathy prompts us also to speak firmly to them about their responsibility to overcome ignorance and its dangers.

By Bishop Chrysostomos of Etna and

the St. Gregory Palamas Monastery

Source: http://orthodoxinfo.com/phronema/acid_water.aspx

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