The Catalog of Good Deeds

Today the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of one of the early stars in the pleiades of new martyrs and confessors of the Communist yoke, Metropolitan Benjamin (Kazansky) of Petrograd and Gdovsk, together with Archimandrite Sergei, Yuri, and John.

Hieromartyr Benjamin was born Vasily Pavlovich Kazansky in 1873, in a village near Kargopol, now of Archangelsk province, to the family of Priest Pavel and his wife Maria Kazansky. He was raised in a spirit of piety, and loved to read the Lives of the Saints, contemplating the struggles of the martyrs, and wishing that he too could make that same sacrifice for Christ’s sake. Little could he know during that peaceful time in a quiet village that such an opportunity would indeed arise in his native Orthodox land.

Longing to serve the Church, Vasily entered the Petrozavodsk Seminary and then the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy. As a student, he participated actively in the “Society for the spread of religious and moral enlightenment in the spirit of the Orthodox Church,” and organized talks with workers. In 1895 he received the monastic tonsure with the name Benjamin and was ordained a hierodeacon, and the next year a hieromonk. After graduating from the Academy in 1897, Hieromonk Benjamin was appointed teacher of Holy Scripture at the Riga Theological Academy, then in 1898 the Inspector of the academy in the city of Kholm. A year later he was made inspector of the Saint Petersburg Seminary. In 1902, after being elevated to the rank of Archimandrite, he was appointed rector of the Samara Seminary, and three years later of the Saint Petersburg Seminary.

The scholarly yet pastoral hieromonk Benjamin was called to the hierarchical rank on January 24, 1910, when he was consecrated bishop of Gdovsk, a vicariate of Saint Petersburg, by other future martyrs and confessors such as Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) and Archbishop Tikhon (Belavin) of Yaroslavl—the future Patriarch of Russia.

Bishop Benjamin became a zealous archpastor, often visiting the poorest and furthest neighborhoods of Saint Petersburg, serving the peoples’ needs like a parish priest, dressed simply in his ryassa with no outer signs of his episcopal rank. He put great effort into saving women from a life of prostitution, preaching to them in the “Society of the Most Pure Theotokos”. His sermons were very effective, and many repented of their sins and changed their lives.

He was always able to reach the hearts of simple folk, and his flock loved him for this, calling him “our batiushka Benjamin”. His evangelical simplicity, compassion, pastoral accessibility, sincere smile and quiet, clear voice endeared him even to those of other faiths.

After the revolution in February, 1917, Bishop Benjamin was chosen by the overwhelming majority of clergy and laity at the diocesan council as Archbishop of Petrograd and Ladoga, and then six months later as Metropolitan of Petrograd and Gdovsk.

Right after his election to the Saint Petersburg cathedra His Eminence Benjamin announced: “I stand for the Church’s freedom. She should be alien to politics, for in the past she suffered much from them. To place a new path upon the Church now would be a great mistake. The most important task right now is to build and improve our parish life.”

In those confusing times it would have been hard to find a man more foreign to politics that Metropolitan Benjamin. He put all his energy into his social programs, and into defending the Orthodox people from the fierce persecutions now encroaching upon them from enemies of the Church. In 1918, the new government published a decree “On the separation of Church from the state and the schools from the Church”, which was everywhere received as a signal to begin the destruction of the Church and its leaders, and to plunder its property. A wave rolled over the county leaving behind it closed church and monasteries, desecrated icons and relics, arrested, tortured, exiled and executed bishops, priests, monks, nuns, and laity. The Church was deprived of its clergy and any means of existence.

After the civil war, in 1921, Russia was stricken by an unprecedented famine amidst the general destruction, and this was used as an excuse to persecute and rob the Church under the slogan, “the proletarian campaign on Church valuables”. In Petrograd, they began this campaign in 1922. “We will give it over ourselves,” said Met. Benjamin, blessing the churches to submit anything of value that was not used in Divine Services to be used to help those in need.

But the authorities were not satisfied with the Metropolitan’s voluntary charity, because their aim was confiscation, and the declaration of Church property as state property—whether or not it was sacred was of no concern to them. By this time a schism had formed of renovationists calling themselves the “Living Church”, and collaborating with the Communist authorities against those faithful to the lawful Patriarch, Tikhon. Although initially there were no arrests in connection with the people’s unrest over the sacrilege, on March 24, 1922, twelve of the schism’s organizers published an article in the Petrograd Pravda accusing the lawful clergy of resisting the decree on confiscation and participating in counter-revolutionary conspiracies. In 1922 Metropolitan Benjamin was arrested, and on June 10 of the same year, 86 people were put on trial.

At his trial, Metropolitan Benjamin was as always simple, calm, and of pure conscience concerning himself and the others. When he was faced with his sentence, he said to the tribunal: “I do not know what sentence you will pass upon me—life or death—yet whatever your pronouncement, I will raise my eyes upward with the same reverence, make the sign of the Cross (here he crossed himself broadly) and say, “Glory to Thee, O Lord God, for all things!”

On June 5, 1922 the tribunal pronounced his sentence, and on the night of August 12-13, Metropolitan Benjamin along with Archimandrite Sergei (Shein), and laymen Yuri Novitsky and Ivan Kovsharov were shot to death outside of Petrograd.

Hieromartyr Archimandrite Sergei (in the world Vasily Pavlovich Shein) was born in 1866 in the village of Kolpina, Tula Province. He had been a member of the State Duma and the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church from 1917-1918, and assistant chairman of the Society of unified Petrograd Orthodox parishes.

Martyr Yuri (Yuri Petrovich Novitsky) was born in 1882 in Umani, Kiev Province. He was a professor of criminal law in Petrograd University, and chairman of the Society of unified Petrograd Orthodox parishes.

Martyr John (Joan Mikhailovich Kovsharov) was born in Odessa. He was a lawyer, and gave legal counsel to the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra in Petrograd.

The memory of Holy Hieromartyrs Benjamin, Sergei, and martyrs Yuri and John is honored in the feast of the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessers of Russia, and separately on this day, July 31/August 13.

Source: http://orthochristian.com/81333.html

In the Orthodox Church, Holy Communion is administered to communicants using a special spoon. Some have asked, doesn’t the 101st canon of the Council of Trullo forbid the use of Communion spoons? And why are the laity not allowed to receive Communion in the hand and from the chalice, as they did at the time of the Ecumenical Councils? Fr. John Whiteford answers these questions about the use of Communion spoons in our Orthodox Liturgy.

The canon in question has nothing to do with Communion spoons. It addressed the practice of some people who, rather than receive Communion in the hand, as was the practice at that time, would make vessels of their own, and would receive Communion in these vessels, thinking it was more pious than to receive it in the hand. Some may also have used these vessels to take some of the Eucharist to their homes. This practice was specifically prohibited by that canon:

“The divine Apostle loudly proclaims the man created in the image of God to be a body of Christ and a temple. Standing therefore, far above all sensible creation, and having attained to a heavenly dignity by virtue of the saving Passion, by eating and drinking Christ as a source of life, he perpetually readjusts both his eternal soul and his body and by partaking of the divine grace he is continually sanctified. So that if anyone should wish to partake of the immaculate body during the time of a Synaxis, and to become one therewith by virtue of transessence, let him form his hands into the shape of a cross, and, thus approaching, let him receive the Communion of grace. For we nowise welcome those men who make certain receptacles out of gold, or any other material, to serve instead of their hand for the reception of the divine gift, demanding to take of the immaculate Communion in such containers; because they prefer soulless (i.e., inanimate) matter and an inferior article to the image of God. In case, therefore, any person should be caught in the act of imparting of the immaculate Communion to those offering such receptacles, let him be excommunicated, both he himself and the one offering them.”

The practice of distributing the Eucharist to the laity with a spoon became the norm because of the practical issue of laity accidentally dropping particles of the Eucharist when communing. If you pay attention when people come up to kiss the cross at the end of the liturgy, and receive the antidoron, you can’t help but notice that there are almost always crumbs on the floor. We should of course make every effort to avoid this, of course, even when it comes to antidoron, but when it comes to the Eucharist, this is an infinitely more serious problem.

The clergy still receive Communion in the hand, and drink directly from the chalice—and they have the benefit of having the Holy Table to do this over, so that if something falls, it falls on the Holy Table, and can easily be consumed. However, even in the Altar, and despite the usual care that is exercised, accidents sometimes still happen. Such things are far more likely to happen outside of the altar.

If we believe that the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit, we have to believe that when it makes a change, like the introduction of the use of Communion spoons, there is a good reason for it. There are those who selectively advocate some ancient practice be revived because, “this is how they did it in the early Church,” but they usually do not advocate a return to the strict penitential system that they had in the early Church. Those who joined the early Church did so at a time when doing so could easily result in their martyrdom, and they were held to a very high standard, and so there are practices that made sense in that context that do not work so well in the context of a Church in which many people, unfortunately, grow up in the Church with a much lower level of piety.

We don’t have to speculate about the results of returning to this practice in our time. We can look at what has happened in the Roman Catholic Church after Vatican II when they began to allow laity to receive Communion in the hand. The result was not an increase of piety, but just the opposite. I know of a pious Roman Catholic who says more cockroaches receive first Communion each week than people, because particles so routinely drop to the floor—and most people do not seem to be concerned about it, either.

No less than Pope John Paul II observed:

“In some countries the practice of receiving Communion in the hand has been introduced. This practice has been requested by individual episcopal conferences and has received approval from the Apostolic See. However, cases of a deplorable lack of respect toward the eucharistic species have been reported, cases that are imputable not only to the individuals guilty of such behavior but also to the pastors of the church who have not been vigilant enough regarding the attitude of the faithful toward the Eucharist” (Dominicae Cenae 11.9).

The wisest course for us is to humbly accept the Tradition as we have received it, and to trust that what the Church has established is for our salvation.

By Fr. John Whiteford

Source: https://preachersinstitute.com/2016/04/02/orthodox-communion-spoons/

In the Orthodox Church, there is a battle chest available, providing us with practical ways to resist sin and to actually defeat it. We don't just tell people to "try harder". We also tell them HOW. We give them the weapons they need to wage war against sin, and to arise victorious

Everyone knows lust is bad. Everybody tells us to fight against it. But not everyone can tell us HOW to fight against lust successfully. We try, we fail, we try, we fail, we try again, and we fail again… and at some point, we realize that we need better advice than just "try harder".

Today, we will consider twelve practical ways for Christians to do battle against the sin of Lust. These methods are time-tested and trustworthy. And they actually work:

1) Don't let your fantasies write a check that your loins can't cash. If you are unmarried, do not fantasize about sex. Ever. Guard your thoughts. If you are married, but your spouse is currently inaccessible, then don't spend ten seconds thinking about sex. Don't even think about sex with your spouse. Guard your thoughts. If you are married, and your spouse is currently accessible, then have normal marital relations with your spouse regularly. This helps reduce the risk of illicit temptations.

2) Fight the birds. There is a saying: "You can't stop the birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from building a nest in your hair." No thanks to the logismoi, the devil can do this to you without your consent. Sexual thoughts will unavoidably pop into your mind. This does not make you guilty.

What makes you guilty is your *response* to that initial thought. The moment an illicit sexual thought pops into your head, immediately "fight off the bird" by distracting yourself with something else, and give that other thing your full attention.

3) Not all distractions are created equal. Some activities (like jogging or weight lifting) take a lot of physical effort, but very little mental effort. Even while doing these things, your mind can still wander into bad places. Other activities (like writing a theological paper, solving a math problem, or reading a good book), so intensely involve your thoughts that you cannot easily keep thinking about two things at once. As long as you are focused on that math, that philosophy, or that puzzle, the thoughts of sex go away for a while. If you try jogging or working out and that doesn't help, then try distracting yourself with something more mentally intense.

4) Confess it immediately. Call someone godly who you trust (especially a priest), and say, "I'm getting tempted again." It is amazing how confession totally breaks the power of the Enemy, and makes him go away for a while.

5) Immediately go near other people. When you are standing in the presence of other people, having a conversation with them, it is amazing how easy it is to avoid illicitly pleasuring oneself.

6) Read the Scriptures, and the writings of Orthodox Christian Saints. Sure, you "already know what they say". But read it again. And again. And again. It helps.

7) Fast. Orthodox Saints agree that indulgence in food is directly connected with indulgence in lust. Thus, by regularly fasting from food for a certain period of time, we do battle against the sin of lust. If you practice asceticism and self-denial with your stomach, that will make it easier to practice asceticism with the other parts of your body.

8) Don't feed the beast. Again, guard your thoughts. Don't watch a movie or TV show that has even a little bit of fornication, or a little showing of scantily clad beauties. Even if you only see them for a few seconds, your brain will lock onto those images, and hold onto them for hours (or years). Then when you are alone and vulnerable, your brain will bring those pictures back to torment you and tempt you. Therefore, avoid these triggers to begin with.

9) Look at Orthodox Icons. Look directly at the cross. God works wonders through the cross, and He tells you, "Your sin may seem strong, but it is not stronger than THIS!" Other icons are good too, for the same purpose. Remember, porn is just the Devil's iconography. God is the one who invented icons, and He did so because images are very powerful. Fill your mind with divine images, and God can use those divine images to drive out the other images.

10) Be Faithful even if you don't Feel like it. It's not all about your feelings. You can show faithfulness, even when your emotions haven't caught up yet to where they should be. Manifest faithfulness long enough, and the feelings will eventually return. Emotions are meant to follow, not to lead.

11) Pray. Don't fight lust alone. Call upon Christ, call upon the Theotokos, call upon the angels, and call upon all the Saints to assist you. Prayer to the Saints works.

12) This Too Shall Pass. When the temptation hits in a strong way, a voice in your head will tell you, "You have already gone too far. It is impossible for this tension to go away now, unless you manually pleasure yourself." — This is a lie. — In fact, if you get up, walk around, pray, and forcibly occupy your mind with something else for several minutes, the tension will go away, and the urge will pass. Knowing this to be true can help you successfully win the battle.

By Fr. Joseph Gleason

Source: https://russian-faith.com/explaining-orthodoxy/practical-ways-avoid-lust-answers-priest-russia-n1574

I sometimes cannot help asking myself three liturgical questions whenever I visit churches which serve the Liturgy in the “classic” pattern I learned in seminary — all of those questions quite rhetorical. I would like to share them here in a spirit of calm inquiry in the hope of provoking helpful discussion about things liturgical. My approach might be styled as motivated by a spirit of “liturgical reform” by some, or even “renovation” by the less sympathetic, but my aim is not so much reform or renovation as a return to patristic common sense. That is, at Liturgy I cannot help wondering what St. John Chrysostom would think about what we have done with the Liturgy ascribed to him, and concluding that he would be less than thrilled at some of the changes that have evolved over the years. This does not mean that we should take the liturgical scalpel to the texts as Vatican II has done with the Roman Mass. But it does mean that if certain aspects of our praxis would raise the eyebrows of a Chrysostomus redivivus, perhaps we should revisit that praxis.

Question one: why do the people say “Amen” to prayers that they have not heard? Where the practice obtains of saying the prayers silently, the priest will say (for example) the prayer after the Great Litany silently or quietly enough not to be heard by the congregation, and then raise his voice so that the final bit of the prayer can be heard: “for unto You are due all glory, honour, and worship: to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever unto ages of ages”. The congregation (or perhaps the choir, substituting for the congregation) then answers, “Amen”. The part that can be heard is not a prayer, or even a sentence, but simply a clause. The problem, of course, is that such a practice makes nonsense of the people’s response “Amen”. The word “amen” does not mean “the prayer is over”. As St. Justin Martyr explained long ago, it signifies “so be it” (in his Greek, genoito/ γενοιτο), and represents the people’s participation and assent to what has been said. This congregational assent transforms the utterance from being the private wish and prayer of the celebrant into being the corporate prayer of the gathered church. As Schmemann says (in his book The Eucharist), “With this word the ecclesial assembly concludes and, as it were, seals each prayer uttered by the celebrant, thereby expressing its own organic, responsible and conscious participation in each and every sacred action of the Church”. This presupposes, of course, that the prayer has been uttered and heard. Of course the people know (maybe) what the priest has said silently, but private knowledge is not the point. Liturgical worship is not private knowledge, but public utterance. As it is, the people are sealing not a prayer, but a clause, one with minimal content. The fact that this is not felt as odd reveals how greatly the role of the laity has been devalued and rendered liturgically irrelevant.

And sometimes it is worse than this. In places where the priest serves without a deacon, it is customary for him to intone the Great Litany, and then straightway intone the final clause of the prayer (the so-called exclamation or ekphonesis), and then, after the Amen has been sung, say the prayer quietly during the singing of the First Antiphon. (Presumably this is why that prayer is called in the liturgy books “The Prayer of the First Antiphon”.) This means that the people are saying their Amen not only to a prayer that they have not heard, but to a prayer that has not yet been said. Their “amen” and their role then is not only irrelevant, but nonsensical. I can imagine St. John Chrysostom raising his eyebrows.

The second question is this: why do we sometimes talk to people who aren’t there? I refer of course to catechumens in congregations where catechumens do not exist. Whether or not a congregation has catechumens within it, oftentimes the deacon and priest will assume they are there and talk to them. The deacon begins by addressing them, “Pray to the Lord, you catechumens!” and then goes on to pray for them. He will conclude by talking to them again, bidding them, “Bow your heads unto the Lord, you catechumens!” Then the priest prays a prayer, asking God to look down upon the catechumens “who have bowed their necks before” Him and unite them to His holy Church through baptism. After all this, the deacon again talks to them, ordering them twice to “depart” and again to not remain. But if no catechumens are there, who are priest and deacon talking to and about? Generally speaking, sane people do not talk to people who are not there as if they were.

If a congregation does have catechumens, it is reasonable for them to pray for these catechumens even when they are absent—but not to talk to them. In the case of absent catechumens, the church might reasonably pray for them in the third person, omitting the lines in which catechumens are addressed in the second person (e.g. “Pray to the Lord, you catechumens!”). And of course one would not tell people to leave who were not present in the first place. As it is, we are talking to catechumens who aren’t there, and then telling them to leave, when we would in fact want them to remain even if they were there. When Chrysostom had his catechumens dismissed, he expected them to actually leave. That is, his words had existential meaning and a corresponding reality in congregational life. He would wonder why we pretend we have catechumens when we don’t, why we tell them to pray and bow their heads to the Lord when they are not there, and why we tell them to leave when we expect them to stay for coffee hour, or at least until the end of the service.

Question three: why do we pretend things have happened when they haven’t? Here I refer to several things. In some congregations the deacon cries out before the Gospel, “Stand upright!” (or “Let us attend!”; the Greek is orthoi/ ορθοι) and in some places this is taken as the signal to kneel. We tell people to stand up straight, and then don’t bat an eye when they do the opposite. Their piety may be commendable (if a touch uncanonical), but it makes nonsense of the liturgical direction.

It is similar later on when the people are bidden to bow their heads to the Lord (i.e. bow their heads forward so that the priest may extend his hand over them to bless them), and everyone present remains with unbent neck—except, oddly enough, the priest who turns his back on them to bow his head to the Lord. Or, most strangely of all, the diaconal command, “In the fear of God and with faith, draw near!” This is, of course, not a suggestion, but a command to all those listening to come forward to receive Holy Communion. The liturgical text assumes that the people have obeyed and that everyone present drew near, for the next diaconal litany begins, “Stand upright! Having partaken of the divine, holy, most pure, immortal, heavenly, life-creating and awesome mysteries of Christ, let us worthily give thanks unto the Lord”. In some congregations hardly anyone comes forward to receive (I remember being in one packed Greek church of about 500 people, where my wife and I and four other people were the only communicants), but the deacon insists on chanting as if the congregation had partaken of the divine and holy mysteries. In all this we see a gap between what we say and what actually happens. Our liturgical words have been, if not exactly emptied of meaning, then certainly subject to an existential erosion of meaning. We no longer mean exactly what we say. Constantinople’s pastor, I suggest, would not be amused.

What to do? One sometimes hears that no one can do anything to close the gap between words and reality in the Liturgy without the pronouncements of an Ecumenical Council. Such a view of history is defective. As a matter of historical fact, liturgies evolved throughout the centuries through shared local variation, quite apart from the mandates of an Ecumenical Council. Such councils, whether “ecumenical” or “provincial”, only concerned themselves with liturgical details when abuses and problems became widespread enough to merit their attention. Thus the Council of Nicea ruled that deacons should not commune presbyters (canon 18), and that one should not kneel liturgically on Sundays, or during the Paschal season (canon 20). Thus the “Quinisext” Council ruled that the pre-Eucharistic fast should be maintained even on Holy Thursday (canon 29), and that milk and honey should not be offered on the altar (canon 57). In all these rulings the councils were not concerned to police every liturgical development that occurred (which was beyond their power even if they had wanted to), but to simply curb developments they felt were widespread abuses. Liturgy grew and developed because it was alive, and quite apart from conciliar decrees. (For a quick overview see Taft’s The Byzantine Rite: A Short History.) The bishops had the major share of decision-making and control because the bishops then (unlike now) were the local pastors. As such, of course they had liturgical authority over the churches in which they had the weekly burden of pastoral care.

For now, the best we can hope for is to at least start the discussion. It is not an unimportant one. And we should hold the discussion realizing that St. John Chrysostom is watching us with interest. He might not now get a vote in the proceedings, but his approval or disapproval should surely matter to us.

We invoke his name and his authority at the conclusion of every non-Lenten Liturgy, and we will one day have to face him and perhaps explain to him why it is we serve “his Liturgy” the way we do.

By Fr. Lawrence Farley

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/nootherfoundation/three-liturgical-questions/

Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )

Search This Blog

featured Slider

Parable of the Day: Why God Did not Give Us Wings

St. Benjamin of Petrograd, a New Martyr and the Enemy of the Communist Authorities

About the Usage of Communion Spoons in Orthodox Tradition

Practical Advice on How to Avoid Lust

Parable of the Day: Why to Waste Time with Prayer?

Three Rhetorical Questions about Divine Liturgy

Partners