The Catalog of Good Deeds

“We must force ourselves to do good.”

St. Seraphim of Sarov

Orthodox Christians do very little by whim. This is not to say that there is no room for genuine freedom or spontaneity in one’s life of faith. For as the Lord Himself says, “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)

Yet there is a big difference between living by the Holy Spirit and living by caprice. On the one hand, the Spirit of God often inspires believers with the gift of a marvelous, creative spontaneity that cannot be dictated by any formal agenda. Having brought the Ark into the city of Jerusalem, David the King spontaneously dances for joy, leading the way. In the book of Acts, the Holy Apostle Philip spreads forth the gospel, not according to any worldly plan, but by being so caught up by grace that he is like the wind, gusting forth from one place to another. “And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught up Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.” (Acts 8:39).

On the other hand, it must be stated that whim is born not of grace but of individual impulsiveness, which is an enemy of the spiritual life. All too often, many Christians fall into a whimsical, inconsistent type of shallow faith dictated by mood. When one feels cheerful and elevated, when the heart is full of light and joy and peace, one may choose, at that moment, to pray, or to read the scriptures, or perhaps even attend the Holy Liturgy. But when things grow dark and the inner man of the heart is lonely and sorrowful – trodden low to the ground, one finds it “impossible” to pray or read or worship.

Yet this is in actuality a delicately laid trap of the devil who knows that if he can convince believers that feelings are paramount, it is only a matter of time before they can be torn from the fold. So the point is this: Faith must be grounded and nourished by something deeper and more trustworthy than human emotions. Yet American Christians, by and large, have shown themselves to be especially susceptible to this kind of “feel-good” capricious spirituality which is its own benchmark of success. Millions of dollars pour into the pockets of religious charlatans who proclaim a one-sided gospel devoid of the message of the Cross and the hardship it necessitates. Religion is here to make people feel good. If it doesn’t, then why bother?

But here is where self-denial comes into play. Part of denying oneself for the love of Christ means, as St. Seraphim of Sarov says, to “force ourselves to do good.” In the most practical sense, this means doing the right thing, for the right reason and at the right time, not whenever one “feels like doing it.” Those who follow Christ and pick up their Cross know that this means the cutting off of the self-will, or more accurately, the complete renouncing of the “will-to-self.” “For not everyone who prays ‘Lord, ‘Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in Heaven.” (Matthew 7:21).

Obedience to prayer, fasting, and the liturgical worship of the Church functions as a good test of self-denial. Indeed, sometimes what the Lord loves more than anything else is a heartfelt prayer offered at the right time of the day (or week) – even when it is born from a thread-bare heart that is weighed down with weariness. The psalms not only bear witness to this truth by showing us how to praise God in all circumstances, good and bad, but also provide the “voice” by which every follower of Christ can pray in joy or in sorrow. “O Lord, my heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me.” (Psalm 55:4-5).

Those who surrender themselves to the life-long rhythm of the Church’s prayer, fasting, and worship are sooner or later blessed by a depth of soul that bears much fruit. Sooner or later they discover marvelous well of grace that is infinitely deep. As they plunge deeper and deeper into their heart of hearts, they are led to a place of total mystery, to a place where heaven and earth meet, to the living throne of Christ Itself. “For the Kingdom of God is within you.” But this never comes easily. It is a gift the grace given to those who know how to fight the good fight.

So again, it must be stressed that this face to face divine-human encounter cannot and will not happen all at once. Rather, it is given to those who have labored in the spiritual life, day in and day out, as true followers of Christ, by having remained with Him at the “foot of the Cross” – throughout good times and bad.

How tragic, indeed, that some have come see the Church’s regimen of both private and corporate prayer as a burden, as a repetition of rituals devoid of meaning and purpose. But those who worship the Lord “in Spirit and truth” know something different: that a whimsical faith is no faith at all, and that practicing one’s faith only when it is convenient or when one “feels” like it is to practice no faith at all.

By Fr. Paul Jannakos

Source: http://www.stlukeorthodox.com/nothing-by-whim/

Alms for a Drunkard

A young couple came to their spiritual father to donate him one thousand roubles. It was a lot of money at that time. The priest declined the donation. Instead, he told them to give the money to the first person they would meet while returning to the railway station. Surprisingly, the first person whom they meet was… a heavily intoxicated man.

The young woman asked her husband, “What shall we do?” The husband shrugged, “Let’s do what our spiritual father told us.” As soon as they gave the money to the man, he instantly came to his senses, “Oh! How can I thank you? You’ve saved me from death!”

It turned out that the poor man worked in a store, and an inspection discovered that exactly 1,000 roubles were missing in the store somehow. He couldn't reimburse the loss with his own money and faced a prison sentence. He was desperate and decided to commit a suicide. He was afraid so he drank a lot of liquor… The priest who saved his life in such an unusual way was Saint Seraphim of Vyritsa.

Don’t Judge Lest Thou Be Judged

Archimandrite Gabriel (Urgebadze), a famous elder canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church, shared the following story:

“When I was in the sanctuary one day, I heard other priests say about a certain priest that he was an alcoholic. I joined them in blaming the priest for alcoholism in spite of the fact that I didn’t know that man. I simply wanted to show off in front of the Patriarch.

I’ve got a lot of wine at home. I don’t drink it but one day I wanted to drink some wine, and so I did. When I was drunk, I went to the Sioni (the Cathedral of the Dormition in Tbilisi) and arrogantly burst in the sanctuary. I found myself standing at that very place where I had previously judged that poor priest. I stumbled but the Patriarch supported me, and luckily, no one else noticed that I was drunk. Later, I realized why it happened to me. When you judge someone, you judge God.”

Inebriated “Pilgrims”

There was an accident in the Pskov Caves Monastery in Soviet times: Drunk graduates of a military college came to the gates of the monastery at night, and attempted to break them. The night guard was terrified and called Archimandrite Alypius (Voronov), the namestnik of that monastery. Father Alypius had been a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. He put on his military uniform with lots of military decorations, hid that uniform under his monastic mantle and headed to the gates with the guard. A crowd of ten lieutenants broke into the monastery demanding to show them around the monastery and not to establish church rule on the Soviet land.

Father Alypius listened to them with bowed head. Then he suddenly looked straight into their faces and took off his mantle… The lieutenants were thunderstruck. The monk looked at them sternly and ordered one of the officers to give him his cap. He looked at the cap and made sure that the officer’s last name was inked on the inner side of the rim, as usual. He turned and briskly marched back to his cell. The embarrassed lieutenants followed him. They muttered their apologies and begged the archimandrite to give the cap back. Father Alypius didn’t utter a word.

The young officers had to follow the namestnik to his cell. He opened the door and invited them to come in. That night, he had a long conversation and shared a meal with them. He showed the lieutenants around the monastery and its ancient shrines and reliquaries. Finally, he hugged each one of them and gave each lieutenant a lot of money. They tried to refuse the money but Father Alypius said that the money collected by their grandparents and their mothers would be good for them.

A Shot of Vodka to Quench Grief

There was a priest whose beloved wife had died. He was so depressed because of his loss that he started drinking heavily. He remembered his wife in his prayers daily but unfortunately, he was becoming more and more addicted to alcohol. One day, a parishioner called that priest and told him that his wife had appeared to her in a dream and offered her a shot of vodka. “You never drank vodka when you were alive, did you?” the parishioner exclaimed in bewilderment. “Sadly, I have to drink it now,” the deceased woman said. She added, “Call my husband and tell him about it.”

The story impressed the priest so much that he quit drinking forever. Later, he became a monk and then a bishop of San Francisco and West Coast. We know him as a famous religious leader of the Russian exile Bishop Basil (Rodzyanko).

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

Source: https://foma.ru/4-istorii-o-ryumke-i-bozhem-promyisle.html

Ever burdened with our American consumerism and capitalism orientation to life (“How much will it cost?” “What’s my time worth?” “How will it affect my finances?”), it seems we often equate our ability to give hospitality with however much we’ve calculated we can spare. When we sense we can spare some change, some time or energy, then we feel able to bear being hospitable. But a quick browse through Scripture and the teaching of the saints confronts that self-absorbed interpretation of hospitality very quickly; for authentic love is not absent of hospitality. “And above all things have fervent love for one another … be hospitable to one another” (1 Peter 4:8).

Saint Theodoros the Great (Philokalia, Vol. 2, p. 32) instructs us in being hospitable: “When we receive visits from our neighbors, we should not consider this an irksome interruption, lest we cut ourselves off from the law of love. Nor should we receive them as if we were doing them a favor, but rather as if it is we ourselves who are receiving a favor; therefore, being indebted to them, we should beg them cheerfully to enjoy our hospitality. This is why the Apostle John says: ‘My children, let us love not in word or tongue, but in action and truth. And by this we know that we belong to the truth’ (1 John 3:18). “True love of neighbor naturally manifests in hospitality.

The mystery of hospitality lies in the unknown good fruit it will bear. The seeds planted by having someone to breakfast, drinking a beer together, our simply sharing time together over good conversation may bear spiritual blessings in ways we will never know. How many of us have been given hope, been encouraged, lifted up from despair, kindled with the love of Christ, inspired, and blessed in so many other ways by a simple act of kindness from another person? Let us remember the words of Christ, “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” (Mt. 25:40). As Elder Anthimos of St. Anne’s Skete reminds us, “Do not forget hospitality. You don’t know what this hospitality might render. By hospitality, Abraham hosted the Holy Trinity, and Lot entertained angels.”

Let’s us make practicing hospitality between Thanksgiving and Nativity a priority this year. We can host a gathering, or meal, just coffee and dessert. We can share our lunch at school or work, or simply ask someone how they’re doing and open our ears with compassion. Buy a pack of gum and share it with the first person you encounter.

Let’s turn off the ‘me’ for the Nativity fast and turn on the ‘we’. In doing so, we become enlightened to truth and real reality. Our neighbor then is no longer an inconvenience, an expense, a waste of time, or a drain on our energy or productivity. They are our path to salvation! And every encounter of hospitality becomes an opportunity to experience Christ. “And while they still did not believe for joy, and marveled, He said to them, ‘Have you any food here?’ So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb. And He took it and ate in their presence” (Lk. 24:41).

Whatever we’ve got, let’s share it!

By Archpriest Thaddaeus Hardenbrook

Source: http://www.pravmir.com/the-nativity-season-and-hospitality/

Children learn love of God from their parents. Every Orthodox parent wants their children to grow up attending Sunday Liturgies and staying active in the life of the Church throughout their lives, yet many parents don’t demonstrate the importance of having a relationship with God in front of their children. If you do not make God important, then neither will your child.

Children observe their parents. They see hypocrisy and know when you are not following through with the teachings of the Church during the week. They hear when you take the Lord’s name in vain. They observe when you don’t make prayer central to your day. They notice if you only speak of God on a Sunday morning.

Making the sign of the cross, lighting candles, and burning incense only on Sundays teaches your children to compartmentalize their own faith, thus leaving them defenseless in a world fulled with temptations and distractions from things that are of a spiritual nature. If you do not demonstrate the importance of prayer before your children, you will leave them defenseless in a world that hates Christ. Your children need to pray with you, read the Scriptures with you, be taught the Faith by you.

If you do not make your home a domestic church, your children will be lost to Christ, and Orthodoxy will not be lived out beyond your own grave, in the future generations of your family.

You men must be particularly careful in how you demonstrate your Orthodox faith to your children. Statistically, if a man is strong in his faith and strong in his witness to that faith by frequent church attendance, children will remain in the Church. Men need to take that leading role in their families as being men of God, demonstrating in their own masculine way that God is central in their lives. If you leave the instruction of the faith to your wives, you will be held accountable before the throne of God. It is not enough that your wife and children go to church. If you are not giving witness to Christ in your life, all will be lost to the next generations.

By the Very Rev. Fr. Tryphon

Source: https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/morningoffering/how_to_teach_children_the_love_of_god

There are just two Lavras in Russia: one is Holy Trinity Saint Sergius Lavra near Moscow; the other is St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra in Saint Petersburg. There are lots of visitors in St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra, both pilgrims and tourists. It seems that there isn’t anything new to be told about this Lavra. Is that the case? What do most people know about it except the most basic “tourist-oriented” stuff? Nowadays, during the 300^th anniversary of St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra, we would like to offer you several interesting facts about this monastery.

1. The place where the monastery was founded in the beginning of the 18^th century, was called Victoria because, according to one account, it was there that the victorious battle of Holy Prince Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky against the Swedes took place.

2. The first printing house in Saint Petersburg was opened in the monastery in 1720. The Slavic School “for teaching young children to read and write” was opened here in 1721. That school laid the foundation of a whole network of church-operated schools. Saint Petersburg Orthodox Theological Academy and Seminary has its origins in that school.

3. There are relics of Holy Right-Believing Prince Alexander Nevsky and a particle of relics of Saint Innocent of Irkutsk in St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra. These relics were taken away from the Lavra to the Museum of Religion and Atheism in 1922 and returned to the Lavra in 1989.

4. Many monks of the Lavra were persecuted for Christ’s sake. Almost all namestniks of the Lavra since 1917 until it was closed in 1933 were executed. Archbishop Prokopius (Titov) of Odessa and Kherson who was the namestnik of the Lavra since 1917, was killed by a firing squad, too. When Red Army soldiers attempted to seize the Lavra in January 1918, he refused to give them keys from the storehouses, which led to his arrest and subsequent release after believers’ protests.

Memorial Sign in honor of the New Martyrs, St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra

5. The memorial cemetery of St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra is the place of eternal rest for many famous people, e.g., Fyodor Dostoyevsky (whose last will was to be buried there), Vassily Zhukovsky, Nikolai Karamzin, Mikhail Lomonosov, Alexander Suvorov, Pyotr Tchaikovsky (who was buried there upon a direct order of Emperor Alexander III).

6. The Soviet government, which was based in Petrograd at that time, decided to confiscate the buildings of the Lavra in January of 1918. Alexandra Kollontai, the People’s Commissar of Social Welfare, issued a decree and sent armed soldiers to the Lavra. However, they were blocked by a religious procession of 500,000 locals who came to defend the Lavra. It’s hard to imagine a crowd of such size nowadays… The Soviet officials gave up. The Lavra continued to exist for fifteen more years.

7. St. Alexander Nevsky Fraternity, established in the Lavra on January 21, 1918, was a unique phenomenon for the post-Revolution Russia. In spite of the ban on missionary and social work of the Church, the members of that Fraternity continued their spiritual education and charity efforts in Petrograd illegally until 1932. When the God’s Law was excluded from school curriculum, the Fraternity members led by Hieromonk Leo (Egorov) rolled out an extensive project of Christian education for children and adolescents. The monks of the Lavra and lay brothers taught church singing and Church Slavonic to the children, held special meals and even special “children’s” Liturgies where children could sing, read, and help the priest.

Church of the Holy Annunciation of St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra

8. Holy Annunciation Church (the first stone church in the Lavra) is located on the territory of St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra but isn’t monastery property even now. It is used as a museum of urban sculpture now. The monastery attempts to get this church back.

9. However paradoxical it may sound, there is a Communist Memorial in the center of the Lavra. There are graves of famous proletarian warriors and heroes, party officials of the early days of the Soviet rule, party leaders, generals, and engineers near the entrance to Holy Trinity Cathedral on both sides of the alley that leads to the Metropolitan’s Office.

10. When the Lavra was re-opened in 1994, its first namestnik was Archimandrite Kirill (Nachis), a former prisoner of Nazi and Soviet labor camps. The current namestnik, Bishop Nazarius (Lavrinenko), actively uses modern technologies, such as Facebook.

Article and Photos by Vitaly Kaplan

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

Source: https://foma.ru/aleksandro-nevskaya-lavra.html

The issue of the time of the birth of Christ has been addressed by many people in the past, both scholars and theologians, so what I intend to do here is present an overview trying to bring some clarity to the topic for those who are really concerned that the 25^th of December may not be the correct time to celebrate Christmas.

Let me start by saying that there are two pieces of evidence, which people present in support of the position that Christ was not born in December:

The first one is the verse from the Gospel of Luke, “And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” (Luke 2:8) The argument from this is that December is too cold for shepherds to be in the field watching over their flocks! Hence, the proponents of this theory claim that Jesus had to be born in the spring. I read recently on an online website a second claim based on the same reason, which suggests that Jesus was probably born in the fall, before it got cold. I am sure that someone out there must have also claimed that Jesus was born in the summer, instead!

At first sight, any one of these times claimed by the different theorists may seem reasonable, but without more historical evidence they are just claims, because you cannot rule out the possibility that some shepherds could have been there watching over their flocks by night in the area of Bethlehem even in December. Shepherds had summer pens and then moved their sheep into the caves of the area during the winter. The sheep were not grazing in the field by night. The shepherds were just guarding their flocks; perhaps taking turns overnight, as the sheep were in their pens in the nearby caves. Although the weather in these parts of the world can be cold in December, it can also be warm enough for the shepherds to still take their flocks out during the day, but bring them back inside the caves at night where it is much warmer than in their summer pens – a practice prevalent in some places the Middle East even until today.

The second piece of evidence, which the proponents of an alternate time for Christmas present, is the fact that the ancient pagans celebrated on December 25 the birth of the God Sun. As a follow-up syllogism, they conclude that Christians adopted December 25 to cover up the pagan feast, ignoring the historical date of his birth. It is, in fact true that many pagan feasts were Christianized during the fourth century and subsequently, which makes this a reasonable claim. Still, this is no proof that the birth of Christ did not take place at some time in December, even if it was not exactly on December 25, and even if the Christians intentionally overlaid the birth of Christ over the pagan feast.

As we look for more evidence, we discover that the feast of Christmas was first celebrated at the beginning of the fourth century, first in Rome (in 336 AD) and subsequently in the Eastern parts of the Empire by the end of the fourth century, where we find a sermon by St. John Chrysostom explaining why celebrating Christmas in December and especially on December 25 is appropriate and has historical proof in the events of the New Testament.

St. Chrysostom, preaching at the end of the fourth century in Antioch, about ten years after the feast of Christmas was established in the East (as he himself informs us), offers a contemporary account of the reasoning behind the choice of December 25 as the day for celebrating the birth of Christ. He is addressing people who disputed the necessity of the feast (as an innovation) and also the time of its celebration.

He does not mention the effort to remove from the Roman calendar the pagan worship of the Sun, but lays out a very distinct biblical explanation. He starts with the time of the Census as mentioned in Luke 2:1-7 and points out that this was the first Census, which happened when Quirinius was governor of Syria. He also points out that whoever wants to know the exact time of the Census can freely search the ancient codices, which are kept in the public libraries of Rome, hinting that the time of the birth of Christ is easily verifiable from the public records. Chrysostom was a trained lawyer of the time with personal knowledge of government records.

He then continues his argument from a biblical perspective, explaining the Jewish tradition of the censing of the Temple in Jerusalem by the high priest, who would enter the Holy of Holies only once a year (Hebrews 9:7; Lev 16:29-34) during the Feast of Tabernacles in September. He points to the Gospel of Luke 1:8-15, when Zacharias was selected to enter the Holy of Holies to offer incense (perhaps there was no high priest that year and the group of Levites, who were on duty at the time selected by lot, according to tradition, the priest who would make the offering in the place of the high priest).

Zacharias entered the Holy of Holies to offer incense and there he had a vision of an angel of the Lord who announced to him the birth of his son, whom he was to call John. Soon after that, Elizabeth, his wife, became pregnant.

Continuing with the biblical narrative, Chrysostom points out that six months later, the angel Gabriel appears to the Virgin Mary and announces to her that she will bear the Son of God and also reveals to her that her cousin Elizabeth is already in her sixth month of pregnancy (Luke 1:30-37).

Chrysostom concludes that, Elizabeth became pregnant in the latter part of September (after the Feast of Tabernacles) and the Virgin Mary became pregnant six months later in the latter part of March. If we count nine months from that time we end up at the latter part of December, which is the time when Jesus was born. Hence, the celebration of Christmas on December 25 is justified.

The fact is that we do not know the exact day of Christ’s birth, but the Christians of the fourth century had calculated the time of his birth and concluded with December as the month. They were much closer to the original event and much closer to the people who had experienced it than any person of today. Their decision was biblically and historically based and it has to be closer to the real day than any modern guess.

It is possible, however, that the decision to establish the celebration of Christmas on December 25 and not on the 20^th or the 24^th, or whatever date would have been the real date of the birth of Christ, was intentional, aimed at quashing the pagan feast of the God Sun – although Chrysostom is silent about it in his Homily. It is indeed possible that the Christians sought to substitute the celebration of the birth of the God Sun with the birth of the Son of God. This seems to have become one more victory for them against the dwindling pagan religion that worshiped the creation rather than the Creator. They were comfortable that the season of his birth was the right one and December 25 seemed perfect to them.

Hence, for those who have been worried that they might be celebrating Christmas at the wrong time, please enjoy the joyful feast and find comfort in the fact that the Early Christians knew what they were doing when they decided that December 25 it is.

By Archpriest Panayiotis Papageorgiou, Ph.D.

Source: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2015/12/was-christ-really-born-on-december-25/

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