The Catalog of Good Deeds

Their lives were literally divided into the “before” and the “after”. They used to work, make friends, dream, love, and believe… until a mental disorder broke into their daily routine unexpectedly. After they left the psychiatric hospital, they found themselves alone in the face of the new world where neither the society as a whole nor employers want to have anything in common with them.

Dobrodel Social Rehabilitation Workshop was established by St Elisabeth Convent this spring. Dobrodel gives mentally challenged people an opportunity of rehabilitation. Government regulations guarantee rehabilitation as an integral part of treatment but in fact, mental disorders are heavily stigmatized in our society. Sadly, people are more ready to admit that their relative is an alcohol addict than that s/he is mentally challenged. This is pitiful because no one is ever fully protected against mental health issues. As a result, all rehabilitation efforts are solely the responsibility of the patient’s family. What can possibly be done?

We spent a day in Dobrodel Workshop and saw people who had been abandoned by many but are finding a way to return to normal life.

Sergey

Sergey is a jack of all trades. He learned to take pictures in a club house and now takes excellent photos. He spent a long time in hospital and looking for a suitable medicine. He is better now but drugs manufactured abroad are not sponsored by the government, so he has to buy them on his own money.

“I was a regular guy. It happened gradually. Several months prior to my demobilization, a drunk soldier started a fight. As a result, I got a double fracture with a displacement of the upper cheekbone and almost lost my eyesight. Now it seems to me that it was the first negative impact on my health.

I lost two close friends whom I had known since my first year at school during the tragic 1990s. I was depressed. I lost sleep. However, I heard about how awful psychiatric hospitals were and decided that I would never go there voluntarily.

I worked in an industrial plant after I had been discharged from the army. My health condition deteriorated until I had a fight with a co-worker. Finally, they sent me to the hospital for compulsory treatment in 1999.”

“When I was dismissed from the hospital in 2000, I received the 2nd disability group, and I was fired from my job immediately. I was looking for a job. I spent some time working as a mover and as an unskilled builder. My condition was unstable due to unsuitable drug therapy: I couldn’t sleep at all, I was weak to the extent of barely being able to drag my feet. After several years of suffering, I went to a private doctor who finally managed to choose the right drugs for me.”

“Today, I feel that I’m a regular person whose skills are in demand. The atmosphere here in the Workshop is totally different. It’s amicable. We are not hopeless. It’s just that the illness chose us.”

Igor

Igor is not disabled at all. He graduated from the Belarusian National Technical University, School of Transport. He used to work as an engineer in a large company. However, he admits, his unstable mental state would not let him stay in one and the same position. He had to change jobs all the time.

The Dobrodel Workshop has found a way to use Igor’s engineering skills. He develops schemes and blueprints of new items in AutoCAD. Igor has a very healthy and sweet hobby: he looks after bees. He has 7 beehives in Bierazino Raion. He participated in a special course on apiculture and received a certificate.

“I used to be a regular guy until I was 25 or 26. I had a job, hobbies, and friends. My life was totally normal. Then suddenly I felt bad, and that was how it started. I was weak, I had headaches and strange sensations. My parents showed me to a doctor but he just prescribed me some drugs and sent me away.”

“I know for a fact that our society doesn’t care about the people who are trapped by their own brain. It’s a huge problem. It’s almost impossible to find a good job that corresponds to your skills and qualifications. Employers don’t want to listen to anything you say. Who wants to deal with your quirks and symptoms?”

“The Open House Centre run by the Belarusian Red Cross helped me to adapt and return to normal life. I went from a guest to the foreman of the Centre. I had a list of duties, even if it was small. I felt my own value for the society and for the world.”

“The Dobrodel Workshop is a new step for me. I have crossed the line between rehabilitation and employment. Right now, I have a job. It’s hard for me to talk about it, but that’s my way…”

September 19, 2018

St. Elisabeth Convent

Question: Dear Father Andrew, your blessing. I am a mother of two. My younger son is 7 and he is autistic. I have a husband but we are not married in church. I go to church with the kids often and have them partake of the Holy Eucharist, although it’s difficult for the younger son.

Father, how does the Church view autism? Why are these kids even born? Man is made in the image and likeness of God, isn’t he? Essentially, what a human being must do here on earth is to get to know God and get closer to him. My child does not say anything and does not understand anything. Please tell us what to do. Olga.

Answer By Archpriest Andrew Lemeshonok: You have to carry your cross. Your child has an immortal soul. In spite of the fact that he cannot interact with you right now, his soul is alive, and it’s all part of God’s plan. We cannot intervene into God’s plan. We can only accept it or not.

Praise be to God that you didn’t deny your child, that you look after him, and he lives with you. I think that this child will some day become the spiritual centre of your life. Of course, it’s not easy. It is painful and difficult. However, life is like that — it isn’t easy because it is poisoned by sin.

Why is this child born this way? Why God let this illness happen? It was due to our sins or to teach us a lesson of humility and repentance. It’s all in God’s hands.

It is great that you go to church and that your children partake of the Sacraments. I believe that after a while you will be able to notice that your son loves and understands you. Every Easter, we give communion to bedridden children who stay in the Boarding Home for Children with Special Needs. They are old enough but their bodies remain short. When I give the Blood of Christ to those children (because they cannot digest the Body of Christ), I feel that I’m in Heaven already. They are quiet and holy sufferers…

Just keep carrying your cross. God will comfort you, trust me!

August 31, 2018

St. Elisabeth Convent

No Orthodox Christian in Russia doubts the existence of Demons, and that they wage brutal war against people. Neither do they doubt that Christ is stronger than demons; that He has won the war and continues to conquer. Why are they so sure? Because they see it with their own eyes. They see the pitiful victims of demonic possession who come to church to find relief but are tormented by the demons for doing so. Anywhere we go in the world we can see the result of diabolical hatred—violence, lewdness, profanity, coldness of heart—however, we fail to see the cause. But in the presence of the power of God, they are unmasked and revealed. The curtain is withdrawn that hides the puppeteer behind the puppets.

When I was in Russian, I stayed near a monastery where a priest lived who performed exorcisms. The rite of exorcism in the Orthodox Church is a formal service that has been the same for centuries. It includes generous amount of holy water, and is highlighted by the reading of the Gospel passages wherein Christ drives the demons out of people and demonstrates His authority over them. Just as the demons in the Gospels wail and lament when Christ appears, so they wail during these services.

Once the services are in full swing, the demons being to show themselves. One woman rages in a male voice, another person shakes violently, another shrieks in fear, yet another is thrown to the floor, losing consciousness. They scream their hatred for the priest, vowing to have their revenge as he douses them with holy water. Some demons make jokes some sound like dissatisfied customers (“I don’t have to take this!”), others are just raw anger and hatred. But the loudest noise always seems to be that of animals: mooing, crowing, and especially barking and growling.

Not all of the victims were adults. I saw one young girl being dragged and carried up to the priest. She was flailing and howling and wailing. When the priest finally came close enough to douse her with holy water, she moaned in a ghostly voice, which trailed off as she stopped her thrashing, finally collapsing. I saw another boy, held in his mother’s arms, who has the appearance of a poor, special ed. Child. He looked as though he was in distress and pain, just before he vomited on the floor.

Everywhere wailing, moaning, barking, convulsions, shrieking. It was a vision of hell. “Yes, you may attend,” the priest permitted me after I asked to witness and exorcism, “But stand near the icon of the Mother of God, and say the Jesus Prayer (‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’).” This is not something to be taken lightly. It is not a horror film, not a ghost story, but pure evil tormenting real human beings.

Naturally, I could not help but wonder why these people are possessed. But it is not right to inquire—they are sufferer and it is not for me to judge. But there are cases when the demon itself provides the answer. One woman was being exorcised when, to the priest’s astonishment, the demon informed him that God Himself does not will that she be released, “She killed three babies in her womb,” the demon revealed, “I am here to punish her.” Very many ended up in their pitiful state after going to “psychic healers.” They had turned to these so-called healers with some physical illness, or simply in search of pseudo-spirituality, and received some relief of fulfillment. But then they became demonically possessed, for the “healing” or “experience” was made possible solely through the psychic’s own pacts with demonic powers. These people, however, were impossible to help if they were not prepared to abandon the pseudo-spirituality and embrace the spiritual life of the Church, putting their trust in Christ.

But what about the children? What had they done to deserve this? Usually they have nothing. Their parents had brought this catastrophe upon them by their own unwholesome lives. This may sound strange and unfair, but we all acknowledge that a mother who smokes puts smoke into her child’s lungs, and a mother who drinks nurses her child with alcohol. When a father curses, he puts curse words into his child’s vocabulary. So is it really so surprising that parents who immerse themselves in the forces of darkness being those forces down upon their children?

The service concludes and I am in awe. The priest’s countenance us one of intense concentration, authority and sternness. Throughout the service he held the holy water sprinkler like I mighty whip; now he holds the cross as an invincible shield and a trophy of victory. His long, grey hair is a bit tousled, and sweat glistens on his forehead. Those poor people kiss the cross and clamor desperately to receive his blessing, then gradually leave the church. They feel better. In spite of the demon’s torment during the service, they now feel relieved and strengthened. They can go on, they are no longer overcome by despair.

Some people come to the exorcisms thinking that they are possessed, but they are not—it is a sort of spiritual hypochondria. Others speak blasphemies against God and man, not realizing whose mouthpiece they are being, and therefore will not even consider going to church. But wonders never cease. Once when the Communists were in power, some top party members were “touring” the monastery, laughing at its out datedness. One of these happened into the church where an exorcism was taking place. You can imagine the confusion that ensued when she began crowing involuntarily, like a rooster. She realized her great mistake in denying God, and became a Christian.

Still others have chronic, seemingly incurable illnesses that bring them to the monastery in search of healing, and there they encounter the power of Christ, which exposes the demon inhabiting them. Then the battle begins—fasting, praying, repenting, suffering. These are their “medicines.” But what is the doctor’s scalpel? Humility. I cannot forget one incident related to me by a possessed woman herself. At her exorcism, the demon in her reviled the priest, saying that he would spit on him. “Go ahead,” the priest answered, “Spit. It will make me humbler.” At this the demons shrieked as if seared by a blowtorch. But this is not surprising. Jesus Christ, by Whose authority this Orthodox priest, and indeed all those apostles, saints and righteous ones before cast out devils, was also spat upon, reviled, even crucified. But the devil’s rage was his own defeat.

By Nun Cornelia

Originally Printed in Issue 6, 1995

Source: http://deathtotheworld.com/articles/exorcisms-in-russia-from-an-eyewitness/

Question: How can someone best assimilate into the ‘culture’ of Orthodoxy even picking up other national customs without losing their own nationality (being of the USA for example)? How do we find that middle balance of taking the good and leaving the bad from our own culture?

There is no such thing as a generic Orthodoxy. Our faith is handed to us by particular people, who come from particular cultural expressions of the faith. Consequently I think a convert can only embrace the particular expression of the faith as they receive it, in the context that they have converted in. Some converts have gone so far as to actually try to adopt the ethnic identity of whatever Orthodox Jurisdiction they convert into -- I have even heard of cases in which people Russified their surname. This is of course ridiculous, and is neither necessary, nor helpful.

When I first encountered the Orthodox Faith, it was in the Russian Orthodox context. I was never under any illusions that I could become a Russian, nor did I have any great desire to do so. When the Orthodox Faith was brought to the Slavs, they embraced many aspects of the Orthodox Byzantine culture that brought them the Faith, but they remained Slavs, and with time, they in turn made the Faith their own, and a new Orthodox culture developed. You could go back one step further and talk about the Jewish culture of the Apostles, and the interaction that the Greek converts had with it, which ultimately developed into the Byzantine Greek culture. So while I am not a Russian, nor could I ever become a Russian, my experience of Orthodoxy came in a Russian package, and so I am Russian Orthodox, and love and appreciate the best aspects of Russian culture.

Anything in any culture that is contrary to the Orthodox Christian Faith has to go. But anything that is good or virtuous in a culture can be embraced. The Greeks certainly did not give up the best aspects of their culture when they embraced the Christian Faith, and the Church has been enriched by the Greek Christian culture that came out of that. The same is true of Americans. Anything that is good in the culture that you have when you enter the Church you get to keep.

And while we have to embrace the expression of Orthodoxy as we receive it, since we live in a context where we have many other cultural expressions of Orthodoxy, we should resist the temptation to look down on other practices that are no less authentic, but nevertheless different than what we are familiar with.

Someday, God willing, we will see a distinctly American Orthodox culture, but attempts to force that into existence prematurely have met with bad results, and I think this fails to understand how Orthodoxy changes a culture. The Russians did not decide one day that they were going to toss out Greek culture, and concoct a Russian version of it. It happened naturally, as their national Church matured. The American Church has a very long way to go.

However, none of this means that those of us whose language is English need to have the services in a foreign language. The texts of the services have all been translated into English, and so there is no reason why we should not use them.

What a convert should do is try to learn what they can from the most pious and mature Orthodox Christians they encounter in their parish, and emulate them. You will inevitably find some faults in such people, and so those things you should not follow. And you certainly should not emulate the bad habits of those who have grown up on the Church. For example, many Orthodox Christians have a bad a habit of coming to Church late, or coming to Church inconsistently. Ignore the bad example of those people, and imitate the ones that are doing what they should be doing.

One temptation for any convert is to take things to extremes, and so finding the balance is something that you have to work towards. For example, while we can and should learn from monasticism, unless and until you go to a monastery, you should not try to live like you are an Athonite monk. For one thing, it's not going to work, and you are likely to have the wheels of your faith come off at some point. Keep your focus on trying to live like a normal pious layman, and if God leads you to a monastery eventually, you will be a lot more likely to work out your salvation there, if you have learned how to work it out in a balanced way, while living in the world.. We should always remember the wise words of St. Poemen the Great:

"Everything that goes to excess comes from the demons" (Benedicta Ward, translator, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, The Alphabetical Collection (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1975, 1984 revised edition), p. 185.).

By Fr. John Whiteford

Source: http://fatherjohn.blogspot.com/2017/08/stump-priest-converts-and-culture.html

There are plenty of testimonies concerning miracles and graceful help through prayers to the Holy Royal Martyrs. By the time the Romanovs Family was canonized in August 2000, there had been lots of accounts about miracles related to them.

Myrrh-Gushing Icon of the Emperor

I would like to share one such miracle in detail. An artist by the name of Pavel Tikhomirov painted an icon of the Emperor Nicholas early in 1997. Later, the icon served as the basis for color lithographies, one of which was owned by Oleg Belchenko, a surgeon from Moscow. He attended a service in the cathedral church of Sretensky Monastery on September 6, 1998 with this icon in a plastic bag. It started emitting fragrance, which was so strong that people were turning their heads to look at him. When he took the icon out of his bag after the service, the scent increased.

The image spent three weeks in the sanctuary, emanating fragrance continually. It started to pour myrrh late in 1999. The icon was placed in the Ascension Church in Gorokhovo Pole, then transferred to St Nicholas the Wonderworker Church in Pyzhy in February 1999, and then to other churches in Moscow. Hundreds of parishioners could witness the pouring myrrh with their own eyes. When this icon was in Holy Trinity Church in Khokhlovsky Pereulok, it healed Alexander Vytiagov, a veteran of the WWII and a retired 87-year-old colonel. He had been blind for fifteen years by that time. He met Father Alexius Uminsky, the rector of that church, and said, “I believe that this icon will heal me.” Father Alexius replied, “Let it be to you according to your faith.” He covered the man’s head with a towel soaked in the myrrh. The colonel woke up the following morning, looked around, and screamed, “I can see!” His family ran to his bed and saw that he was able to see.

The wonderworking icon traveled around many churches and monasteries. It visited more than twenty dioceses before the 2000 Synod of Bishops. The myrrh was seen pouring from that icon on numerous occasions. A number of healings was also recorded.

Miracle in Krasnodar

Here is another example. Archpriest Alexander Ignatov, the rector of the Holy Nativity of Christ Church in Krasnodar, bought an icon of the Royal Family in the icon store of St Daniel Monastery in 2000. A cleaning lady who washed the icons after a Sunday Liturgy in 2002 noticed that the glass became blurred. When they opened the kiot, they saw that the icon of the Holy Royal Martyrs was imprinted on the glass from the inside in slightest detail. Miracles like these are well known to the Orthodox. A similar miracle happened in 1993 in the Monastery in honor of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple (Kyiv) with an icon of Look at Humility Mother of God, which had an imprint on glass not made by hands. The image on glass was then put in a separate kiot and is said to work miracles.

The icon of the Holy Royal Martyrs imprinted on glass in Krasnodar was sent to the Commission on Research of Miraculous Phenomena of the Moscow Patriarchate, with the blessing of Metropolitan Isidore of Krasnodar. Forensic experts from the Institute of Forensics of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, Forensic Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the laboratory of the Institute of General Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences tested this icon for a year using advanced equipment and modern methods. They confirmed the existence of the image on glass but could not explain its origin. The icon and the image on glass are made of different matter.

By Fr Job (Gumerov)

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )

Search This Blog

featured Slider

We Aren’t Outcasts: We Were Chosen by Illness

Parable of the Day: The Young Man Who Defeated Death

Why Are Some Children Born Ill?

Exorcism: a Story from an Eyewitness

How Can Converts Accept Orthodox “Culture”?

Miraculous Images: the Myrrh-Gushing Icons of the Royal Martyrs

Partners