The Catalog of Good Deeds

Metropolitan Anthony (Pakanic) gives his advice on how not to get lost in this world.

After the Fall of Adam and Eve, we live in a tragic world separated from God by our own choice.

That dreadful choice and the evil that accumulated throughout the world’s existence have brought us to our current condition.

Everyone either accelerates the global estrangement from God or helps to bring the world closer to God. We are responsible for what is going on today. Our excuses like “I have nothing to do with it,” “I’m just a victim,” “It’s them who are to blame” won’t fly. The offenses, envy, and rage that have accrued inside our hearts serve the darkness and cause all the dreadful and inhumane phenomena in this world.

We are Christians. This is the only saving straw that makes it possible for each of us to get saved and to change the world.

Indifference isn’t a Christian trait. “Ye are the salt of the earth,” Jesus said. Therefore, we are able to enforce God’s truth in this world by the power of our faith and to carry the light of Christ. If our faith is inert, no one needs it. It’s like salt that lost its savor, good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men (Matthew 5:13). Unfortunately, judging by the news, most of us forget about it, otherwise there wouldn’t be so much evil in the world.

The light of Christian faith would dispel darkness, fill up the space and transform it. It isn’t the case. Why?

We’ve got to open the hidden windows and doors of our inner house—to open our hearts as wide as possible by making them generous and loving—to make our eyes able to see and our ears able to listen—if we want to be filled with the light of Christ.

First of all, we’ve got to understand what Christ tells us. True understanding of His words and His divine teachings is possible only if we do our best to live like Jesus, that is, abide in His Body, the Church.

Only if we participate in the Divine and saving Sacraments of the Church, will we be able to maintain our connection with God, and that connection will become the source of immortal life for us. Consequently, we will be able to hope for the proper discernment of His Divine words and for faithfully preserving His teaching.

We’ve got to listen to the words of Christ with utmost attention, to look for the Savior and find Him. Gospel parables aren’t just far-fetched stories. They occur daily and repeat in our lives until we get to their core and absorb their meaning.

Did we show mercy toward our neighbors while asking the Lord to be merciful toward ourselves for serious wrongdoings and grave errors?

Did we forgive other people’s debts when we received forgiveness of our own debts? Did we act like the merciless debtor who, having been forgiven a lump sum, didn’t have mercy on another person who owed him?

Did we Christians become the yeast that ferments the world? “If twelve people (Apostles—editor’s note) were enough to ferment the whole universe, consider how bad we are if, in spite of the fact that there are so many of us, we cannot convert the remaining souls—we who would easily ferment a thousand of worlds!” Saint John Chrysostom exclaims.

Do we use our hard-earned money for a good cause or have fun and accumulate it like the notorious wealthy man? Do we waste our power and time in vain, forgetting about spiritual riches and needs? Do we turn our backs on the eternity?

Does our faith bring fruit every day? Do we fulfill the commandment? Aren’t we like the fig tree that grows in a vineyard and doesn’t bring fruit for three years in a row? God comes looking for our fruit but when He doesn’t find it, He orders to evict us from this life.

If our actions don’t carry the mark of eternity—the infinite God’s depth—they will scatter like dust as soon as the Lord puts an end to our earthly existence. Our numerous actions will be regarded futile because they aren’t deep enough to be allowed into the eternity.

Orthodoxy is not just a narrative about God. Orthodoxy means living in God. It’s the connection between God and human, when God descends to the human and the human gets the chance to ascend to God, i.e., achieve theosis.

This is the aspiration of our God-revealed religion.

Jesus Christ established the Church so that the people clad in His Spirit would transform the world and shine His light into it.

He called us Christians into the world, which drowns in its sins, like sheep in the midst of wolves (Matthew 10:16). It means that we must guard our purity and love, faith and truth. We must trust God and obey His redeeming will no matter what.

If we don’t preserve the spirit of Christ in this world, we are smeared by participation in this world’s affairs and aren’t in any way different from it. We can get saved and change the world only with God’s mercy.

May our faith be proactive! May our hearts be merciful! May our souls avoid everything that doesn’t contain this spark of love and eternity. Only if we abide in the Spirit of Christ, can we oppose evil and serve the Lord and His Church.

Only in that case will we stay on the side of light that casts away darkness.

Recorded by Natallia Goroshkova

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

Source: https://pravlife.org/ru/content/kak-opredelit-s-kem-my-so-svetom-ili-tmoy

“Don’t resist evil,” “do good in return for evil,” “bless those who curse you”… These biblical verses have baffled us and made our selfish souls afraid multiple times, haven’t they? Frankly speaking, it’s so far over our heads. Seeing how negligent we are towards our loved ones, we need to rewrite the commandments, “Don’t resist good” and “bless those who show mercy towards you.” This is the ABC of moral culture and respect; an instruction for those who lag behind and cannot cope with the curriculum.

There are many people who are pleasant to deal with only while everything is fine. Do they really deserve praise? Isn’t it natural that people act nicely when everything is okay? One has to be a good person even when everything goes wrong, right?

I recall my friends’ family who were so courageous as to give birth to many children in the 1990s. That decade was a difficult time in Russia. They literally didn’t have enough to eat. Their children seldom ate candies. They were happy when they managed to buy a pair of boots or even a pack of diapers. They couldn’t even dream of the things that we can easily afford today, such as household appliances or new furniture for the children’s room. Workers weren’t paid for half a year or more. Breach of trust and blatant lies became the norm for the emerging “wild market”. Their family barely survived thanks to random gigs, pickled food, and other tricks to make ends meet.

My friend was distressed when he ran into another case of ill luck or someone’s dishonesty. He had to rack his brain thinking how to feed his growing family. His attempts to earn some money sometimes failed, and their family budget was getting more and more strained. His young wife had to pull the weight of the everyday household chores while being overburdened with little kids. How surprisingly pleasurable it was to witness her talking her husband out of his sad thoughts and urging him not to worry but instead wait and be patient during the hard times.

It is a simple story with a straightforward lesson, you might say — and you’d be right. However, doesn’t it often happen that the head of the family, the breadwinner, when faced with a similar situation, is caught in the crossfire? He has problems at work and immediately there are unpleasant talks and arguments at home? His wife grabs at every opportunity to show her discontent, to remind her husband of his missteps and failures since the beginning of time. She beats up the person who is already wounded. She makes him resist, defend himself and justify his actions, and sometimes to counterattack until they both are too tired and too confused by the endless explanations, causes, and effects.

“That which is falling, deserves to be pushed” — this barbarian and immoral phrase coined by Friedrich Nietzsche isn’t declared openly but is often present in people’s relationships de facto. Without noticing it, you hit another person when he’s the most vulnerable and where it hurts the most — the only reason for it being your dissatisfaction with what you’ve got and your desire to have more because you keep thinking “I am entitled to it” or “Everyone else has it, but I’m missing out.”

We’re not talking exclusively about money here! Let’s say, a child falls ill, she has problems at school, or a neighbor’s water pipe was damaged and the water ended up your precious kitchen furniture. The whimsical and comfort-loving beast inside us is looking forward to such accidents. That one crisis is instantly followed by another one: the husband and the wife lose their temper. They become irritated and want to criticize one another. It happens exactly when the circumstances call for the need to support one another!

Now tell me please: Isn’t it silly to damage your relationship with the person you love right in the middle of some unpleasant event? Is it a good way to solve your problems? Do you expect to feel better after all that? Being patient and staying together is merely the most sensible thing to do. It’s inexplicable and weird that people damage their relationships, become inefficient and don’t demonstrate even those positive qualities that they used to have. It is silly and naïve that they try to blame the other person.

It is hard to remain a good person when something doesn’t go according to your plan…

Contemporary people are hard to please. They don’t lose their temper only if everything is fine. Any divergence from their initial plan disrupts the equilibrium. Any adversity may lead them to waive their obligations. Any non-fulfillment of their desires threatens to kick off a chain reaction of their painful rethinking of everything in the world. Only God knows how far the people who are influenced by these fluctuations can go!

In fact, our times aren’t particularly difficult. Circumstances vary, but if you look back into the past, even the more recent past, there have been more difficult times, haven’t there? Internal instability encroaches on us simultaneously with an unparalleled improvement of living conditions and a veritable revolution of comfort. We are conquered by a multitude of pleasant trifles that accompany each of us from dawn till dusk. Why is our willpower less reliable than it used to be? Strangely enough, the more one gets, the less satisfied one becomes. Our society appears to be the princess on a pea, who can’t tolerate even the slightest discomfort. Our immunity to failures is too weak: every failure to accomplish our plans and expectations threatens to destroy the bubble of “societal optimism” and cause an epidemic of mutual frustration.

What would happen to those who are unsettled by weather or less-than-perfect cappuccino foam, if they were miraculously sent into the aforementioned 1990s? It’s fairly easy to guess, isn’t it?

There are few things about our time more disgusting than lack of stamina and courage and almost complete absence of people who are easy to deal with, rain or shine. People who you can lean on. People who don’t re-consider their responsibilities all the time. People who remain true to themselves. People who know both how to be abased and how to abound: both to be full and to be hungry, as Apostle Paul says. People who are happy not only when they get something pleasant but always, in spite of the most peculiar and tricky situations.

“Don’t resist evil,” “recompense good in return for evil,” “bless those who curse you”… Yes, it’s so far over our heads. Let’s try at least not to add evil to evil and to remain good even when things go wrong.

In other words, let’s not increase entropy. There’s enough entropy in this world already!

By Andrei Rogozansky

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

Source: https://foma.ru/davay-possorimsya-ob-odnom-iz-samyih-uyazvimyih-mest-sovremennyih-brakov.html

I have a question about something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’ve read that the Church canons say that you are not supposed to kneel or prostrate on Sundays, but I was wondering how strictly that’s interpreted in practice?

I currently attend a Romanian parish and among Romanians (as you probably know) it is customary to kneel during the Our Father, the Creed, the Gospel reading etc. and some people kneel throughout much of the liturgy. I personally think it is a beautiful sign of reverence but I was wondering why it has become customary and accepted in Romania but not in other places, and if the “prohibition” against kneeling on Sundays is really necessary or what the purpose of it really is?

I know some other parishes where people barely show any reverence at all so it still seems to me to be better to kneel or prostrate than to just be completely passive…

Question from a Correspondent in Europe

‘Since some people kneel in church on Sundays and on the days of Pentecost, with a view to preserving uniformity in all parishes it has seemed best to the holy Council for prayers to be offered to God while standing’.

Canon XX of the First Universal Council

The canons you refer to are the above, Canon XC of the Sixth Universal Council and Canon XV of St Peter the Martyr of Alexandria, all from the first seven centuries. So, yes, on paper, you do not kneel on the liturgical day of Sunday (Saturday evening to Sunday evening) and not between Easter and Pentecost (the kneeling prayers read at Vespers of Pentecost are the first when you kneel). Why? Because Sunday is the day of the Resurrection and the period between Easter and Pentecost effectively the afterfeast of the Feast of the Resurrection. If we are risen with Christ, then we are risen and so stand.

So much for the theory. What about practice?

One of the easiest ways to tell the difference between certain converts and Orthodox is whether they kneel on Sundays or not (especially on the Sunday of the Cross during Lent). Converts, whether of the zealot old calendarist or of the liberal new calendarist variety (extremes always meet), refuse to kneel because of their head knowledge, Orthodox kneel because of the movements of their hearts. As one person has said in answer to an uptight convert who insisted that Orthodox stand during services: ‘No they don’t: Russians stand, Greeks sit and Romanians kneel’.

Why this difference? It is all a question of piety – or lack of piety. Sitting is a lack of piety (unless the person is ill, heavily pregnant etc), which has entered the Greek Churches (including the Antiochian) only very, very recently. Pious Russians are horrified when Greeks and Antiochians sit during the Epistle. But kneeling is a great sacrifice. I admire those Romanians who kneel throughout the liturgy as an act of piety which accords with their temperament. I don’t think I could do it physically. Equally standing is also a matter of asceticism.

A common Russian practice among bishops and priests is to kneel at certain points during the Liturgy, for example during ‘Our Father’.

Certain converts, often of a Protestant background, tend to interpret the canons literally, according to the letter. Such individuals, it seems, used to be fundamentalists in their interpretation of the Scriptures, and quote canons as they used to quote chapter and verse, hoping perhaps to send their fellow human-beings to hell (and themselves to a very prideful heaven). If this is the case, then it is all pure phariseeism. (‘Do not heal or do good on the Sabbath day’).

Conclusion: Pray and then do what your heart tells you to do, observing those around you, so that you scandalize no-one. This is called humility and it stands above the letter of the law because it keeps the spirit of the law. When I as a priest see metropolitans and bishops, or for that matter pious laypeople, kneeling on a Sunday, I have no hesitation in kneeling with them. We should refuse to put ourselves above others. I only know that of Christ returns next Sunday, I will neither sit, nor stand, but be on my knees in front of Him.

By Fr Andrew Phillips

Source: http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/can-we-kneel-in-church-on-sundays/

I met Irakli Gogoladze in Samtavro Monastery. Out of the blue this young man of about twenty-five walked up to me and said, “You know, Elder Gabriel worked a miracle for me… I heard that a collection was being made of such stories. Could you please tell me who I could send this to?” I said reverently and happily, “I’m the translator and compiler of the Russian version of the book, The Elder’s Diadem…” Without letting me finish, filled with emotion he began telling me his story. I turned on the dictaphone and… listened to him tell me about one miraculous healing by Elder Gabrial (Ugrebadze). I would like to share this story with you, dear readers.

A miracle happened in my family through Elder Gabriel.

Elder Gabriel wasn’t yet canonized when I first heard about him. Our first “encounter” was when I was, I think, in the seventh grade and visited Samtavro Monastery with my friends. Still only a child, I was amazed by everything I saw at the elder’s grave—first of all by the unbelievable amount of people who came to venerate there. Without any real awareness of what I was doing I also approached the grave, and that was when my friendship with Elder Gabriel began. Bowing at the grave, I felt enormous grace. My heart was filled with love. Feeling this inner joy I wanted to shout as loud as I could, “I LOVE YOU ALL!” Nun Parasceva gave us some oil from the lampada over the grave of Elder Gabriel and explained how to anoint ourselves with it. I felt as though I had obtained some invincible power. And that is how it was!

A few months passed by, and disaster struck our home. My father fell sick with psoriasis. We made the circuit to all the hospitals but his was such a severe form and advanced stage that none of them would even receive us. After some time, through the intercessions of our relatives, my father was received in the Tbilisi hospital for skin and venereal diseases. The treatment went very slowly. The doctors said that he would need at least four months to completely recover. One night my father had a heart attack, and they were barely able to save his life. Then I remembered the elder, on whose grave miraculous healings take place. I ran home, took the oil from the lampada over Elder Gabriel’s grave, and came to the hospital. The doctors were not allowing anyone into his room, but when I explained the situation they agreed and allowed me in secretly. I went to my father, and he was sleeping. With my little finger I anointed him with the oil three times in the form of a cross, read the “Our Father,” and asked the elder with all my heart to heal my father. Then I left without a word.

In the morning, mother and I came along with a friend to the hospital. We went to my father’s room… to be more exact, we ran with horror when we heard the nurse’s shriek: “It can’t be!” We thought, well, it’s the end! My mother fainted. I was seized with trembling that I had no strength to control. I went into the room and saw my father sitting on the bed. I was stunned. He had no more rash on his body or face; his skin was like that of a newborn babe. Soon the head doctor came into the room—the same one who had allowed me to visit my father. I will never forget the expression on his face in that moment when he saw his patient with absolutely clear skin! The doctor began to weep and cross himself, saying, “Glory to God… Glory to that elder…” Then my father stopped us and asked what elder we were talking about. I wasn’t even able to start telling him about Elder Gabriel before my father told us about the dream he had that night. It was as if a priest with a gray beard came into the room and said to him, “Eh, my brother… Well, so far you haven’t once received Communion or had confession, but you have a believing son and wife who called me here. I can’t bear to see how they cry… Here, let me heal you, and you start living a religious life. Go to church often, confess and receive Communion. Then we’ll be friends… Otherwise, I’m not your friend. Get it?” He winked to my father, made the sign of the cross over him and left…

I wept—everyone in the room was weeping! Despite the fact that my father had never seen the elder in his lifetime, his description of the “priest” fit completely with St. Gabriel.

Glory to Thee, O God! Glory to thee, father Gabriel!

By Irakli Gogoladze

Source: http://www.orthochristian.com/90191.html

Byzantium... Everyone has his or her own perception of that legendary empire renowned for its great saints and emperors, marvelous icons and mosaics, magnificent Churches and palaces. Majestic Hagia Sophia is the wonder of the world and the epitome of Byzantine architecture. Besides that, Byzantine music is an undisputed part of the heritage of mankind.

“My Byzantium” album is a collection of chants, which should help modern listener contemplate on above-mentioned treasures of the ancient Byzantium. The album was created by Edward Lange, a soloist of the Festive Choir of St Elisabeth Convent in Minsk. Edward Lange is a graduate of Belarusian State Academy of Music who is known to have composed music with lyrics by Hieromonk Roman (Matyushin).

The current album features the singing style resembling Church and folk music traditions of the Balkan peninsular. The singer seems to intentionally prefer Serbian pronunciation for the chants performed in Church-Slavonic language. Unique timbre of the Edward’s voice does achieve the main goal of the album, i.e. revealing antiquity through modern sound.

I have to mention, however, that the album lacks Greek language. There is the word “Byzantium” in the title, after all. And the only chant performed in Greek language, “It is Truly Meet”, is ironically the shortest track of the album. Indeed, a lot of Slavic nations, including Serbia, Bulgaria, and Macedonia were part of the Byzantine Empire. Nonetheless, it was the Greek culture that constituted the Empire’s backbone. On the other hand, the use of Kratima, an old melismatic element of Greek Orthodox music, adds a touch of traditional Greek style to the album.

Above all, the album’s primary mission is spreading the faith among those people who are doing first steps in their search for God. It should be noted that jazz is one of music genres where Edward Lange is active too. So, I believe that many people from our modern secular society will obviously become curious to discover the “spiritual repertoire” of a young and talented jazz singer. In its turn, this may be the turning point in their spiritual life. Perhaps, one day they will cross the threshold of the Church.

You can visit the Catalog of St. Elisabeth Convent to listen to a short preview of the album.

By Vladimir Sypchu,

the chorister of the parish of

the Entry of the Most Holy Mother of God into the Temple

The Catalog of Good Deeds, 2018

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