The Catalog of Good Deeds

An analysis of iconography based on eastern and western sources and traditions:

The Golden Legend's account of St. Mary of Egypt is based ultimately on a 7th-century Life by Sophronius of Jerusalem. According to the Legend, Mary was an Egyptian prostitute who at the age of 29 traveled to Jerusalem out of curiosity regarding the Holy Cross. Finding herself incapable of passing the threshold of the church where the cross was being worshiped, she repented her sins and became a solitary contemplative in the desert beyond the Jordan River, where she eventually died at an advanced age, her clothes having rotted away with the passage of time.

Two years before her death she had been discovered by a monk named Zosimus. In Sophronius her hair was short and white with age, a detail that Voragine omitted, and her skin burned black by the sun. Zosimus gave her his cloak and returned the following year to bring her communion. When he came back the year after that, he found her dead and buried her with the help of a lion.

How to portray a saint who wore no clothing

Mary's nakedness is an important part of the story, but exhibiting it in a sacred image was problematic. In the East, Zosimus' cloak usually hangs from one shoulder and covers her from the waist down, with her upper body either turned modestly to one side, as at right, or simply presented as if it were the chest of a man. The hair is short and white, as in Sophronius, and the body is gaunt. Images in the West follow a different strategy, giving the saint copious dark hair that falls over her body, covering it to mid-thigh, as in the first picture at right, or even to the ankles.

Hans Memling's portrait of 1480 draws on the eastern tradition for the cloak draped from the shoulder and abandons the long-hair strategy, leaving the saint's upper body exposed to view. In Memling's and almost all other portraits she has a fair young face, despite the statement in the legends that Zosimus found her blackened by the sun.

Attributes

The Memling panel also exemplifies an attribute often seen in portraits of this saint: three loaves of bread held in one hand. In the Legend she took these loaves with her into the desert and they lasted seventeen years.

She is also sometimes shown with a book. No books are mentioned in the Golden Legend account or in the much longer tale in the South English Legendary, but according to Sophronius she had a knowledge of scripture that came directly from God. The books in the images thus refer to this knowledge, even if actual books were not its source.

Narrative images

The Russian icon above covers the whole story from when Zosimus is told to go into the desert until he and the lion bury the saint and her soul is carried to Heaven. Among images that focus on single events, the last communion and the burial are the more likely to be presented.

Source: http://www.christianiconography.info/maryEgypt.html

The Rev. Gregory Joshua Edwards didn't always believe in God.

Growing up in Pennsylvania, Edwards avoided his family's Episcopalian beliefs and focused on academics.

Valedictorian of his 1996 high school graduating class, he served as student body president and editor of the yearbook.

He referred to himself as an atheist.

Then, as a student at Brown University, he began to question the meaning of life.

Edwards' spiritual inquiries led him to the Greek Orthodox Church, into which he was received in April 2003.

After graduating with a degree in religious studies from Brown in 2003, Edwards worked as a teaching assistant and master's candidate in the religion department at Florida State University. He volunteered with AmeriCorps, managing soup kitchens and building houses for people in need. In 2006, he enrolled as a doctoral student in the School of Theology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

On Feb. 22, 2009, he was ordained in the holy priesthood of the Orthodox Church.

Edwards, 38, recently accepted a position at St. George Greek Orthodox Church in New Port Richey. The church, at 9426 Little Road, welcomed him as its father in October.

I asked Edwards about his path to faith, what it means to serve others and his new position in Pasco County.

What appealed to you about the Orthodox faith?

When I was in college, I was an atheist, studying Nietzsche, Sartre, etc. At a certain point, I came face to face with a real existential crisis. Why was I here? What was the purpose of my life? Was it really only to get good grades so that I can get a good job, so that I can buy a big house, fancy car? I came to realize that there was a God, but I didn't know who he was. I wanted a relationship with him because I understood that he was life. But how can you have a relationship with someone you don't know? So I changed my major in college and began studying the history of religions.

I went back to the Protestant church I grew up in. But the Christianity that was being presented to me in the U.S. didn't ring true. Disillusioned, I began exploring Buddhism, and I was attracted by its mystical prayer and contemplation. But something was missing there, too. I had never even heard of Orthodox Christianity until it was mentioned by a professor in a course about the history of Christianity. She said that the same worship service that Christians were using in the 5th century was still being used today in the Orthodox Church. I had to know where I could find this. The more I read about the history of Christianity, the more I was convinced that the Orthodox Church had preserved the Christian inheritance in a way that western Christianity had not. I was especially moved by its unchanging doctrine and its focus on mystical prayer.

Why did you decide to pursue a career within the church?

Once I discovered where the spring for the water of life was, I wanted nothing else but to be near it at all times. Everything else, my promising worldly career, suddenly paled in comparison. I felt I could do nothing else.

What is most rewarding to you about serving others?

We Christians believe that Christ came "not to be served, but to serve," Mark 10:45. He who is God assumed the form of a humble servant. For me then, serving others is an imitation of Christ. I try to do it, however, not out of some religious obligation, but out of the radical freedom that God has given me by making me in his image and likeness, just as God himself became man of his own free will.

I'm not Greek, but I learned many things in my 10 years in Greece, one of which was the concept of philotimo, which actually can't be translated into English. It means something like "freely responding with sincere goodness to the smallest good done by another." When I look at how much God has done for me, I am moved by this sense of philotimo to serve Him and others.

What do you hope to offer your new church home going forward? What do you like most about the church?

I was fortunate to spend 10 years in Greece, soaking up the world view of the country where Christianity first blossomed in Europe, the land of Thessalonica, Corinth, the land which has preserved and maintained Christianity at great cost for 2000 years. I hope to be able to bring some of this experience to the U.S. and offer a translation to contemporary American culture. My goal is simply to try to bring authentic Orthodox Christianity and most important to try to embody it in my own person and life.

The thing I like most about the parish of St. George is its warm sense of community, its friendliness and openness to outsiders, including me, a former Protestant raised in Pennsylvania. We welcome everyone to join us.

Source: http://www.tampabay.com/news/religion/priests-spiritual-path-leads-him-to-st-george-greek-orthodox-church/2300825

“Oh, if only I could / At least to some degree, / Write eight lines I would / About passion’s properties. / About the / transgressions and the sins, / The running and the chasing, / The hasty inadvertences, / The elbows, my palms”¹— thus wrote Pasternak, aware that a precise, accurate word on the passions is difficult to give, and there can be few such words. Precise words on the passions slip out of your hands, like a wet and lively fish, and the passions themselves are interwoven together, knit together one with another, forming a repugnant unity. Obviously the word “passions” in the this case is used as a synonym for “disease of the soul,” and not as romantic longing or a noble fire in the blood.

That of which Pasternak confessed himself powerless was done long ago by Abbot John, called Climacus. This servant of God wrote not just eight lines, but an entire book on the passions and the battle with them. This book was born out of the experience of the struggle and victory, inasmuch as man, in his usual state, is found in backbreaking labor for sin, and, O woe!—he does not notice its evil. Only when man frees himself or begins to free himself is he given a view of himself from outside, and, therefore, the possibility of describing the process of inner healing.

This book is truly “about the transgressions and the sins, the running and the chasing,” and it begins with a chapter on the flight from the world. It’s the first of thirty rungs leading to Christ the King, and therefore it befits monastics in particular to read The Ladder. This book is also necessary for those remaining in the world and incapable of a full-fledged and irrevocable flight, but not as a handbook. It is necessary as an example of heavenly thinking while living in a fragile bodily shell. Perhaps, in Great Lent, when the marriage bed cools and is sanctified by abstinence, when there is no substantial difference between the food on the tables of monks and of the laity , a person not wearing a black robe, can read something from among the monastic books. To be engaged in such reading constantly and at all times can be dangerous for laity. The danger is that our lifestyle should correspond to our chosen reading. But if our books and our life differ, the soul bifurcates, suffering itself and inflicting suffering upon those around it.

So, not leaving the world in our body, we should be free from a worldly spirit to some degree. St. Symeon the New Theologian tells us that, “The world is neither silver nor gold, nor horses, nor mules, nor food, nor wine, nor bread. It is neither house, nor fields, nor vineyards, nor country homes. What is it? Sin, addiction to things, and passions.” If it is “the world which lies in evil,” then you can run, but you won’t get anywhere.

And the words of the wise better expose the sin living in man than those of others. The words of the wise put everything in its proper place, and give an exact value to those radiant forgeries that we ourselves are inclined to call virtues.

Climacus, for example, writes that zealous devotion in the world most often feeds upon vanity, as if upon some dirty and hidden runoff. It’s impossible to know anything about the spirit of a man, so long as he lives among people. A worldly analogy for such words can be the song advising, “Take some friends to the mountains.”² Any situation, carrying a risk or unusual heaviness, that demands a sacrifice and brotherly cohesion and does not promise a reward of flowers and medals, shows who is who. “There you will understand, who is who,” the song says. And the words of the saint: “I have seen how in the world they planted many different plants of the virtues, which were watered by vainglory as by an underground sewage pipe, and were hoed by ostentation, and for manure were heaped with praise. But when transplanted to a desert soil, inaccessible to people of the world and so not manured with the foul-smelling water of vanity, they withered at once.”³

These are barbed words, such as is becoming of words of genuine wisdom. The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd (Ecc. 12:1). The horror of the final and righteous Judgment may be not so much in that we sinned, and sinned a lot, but in that even our best impulses and efforts were deeply poisoned by sin and are unworthy of blessed eternity. That’s where the real trouble is, and I don’t know where healing might come from, if not from those salted with the wisdom of words of spiritual experience. One of those having love in themselves said that the books of the saints are worthy of the same honor as the relics of the saints, and maybe even more.

Or another example:

It’s hard to find a man who does not suffer, at least sometimes, from wanton lust. The corruption of lust rules in the world says the apostle Peter, and we do not have to read a lot to confirm the validity of these words. But how to fight it? There is fasting and prayer, but either we don’t know their strength, or our sin is so strong that we do not feel free. You can run from the world, plugging your ears and closing your eyes. But temptation will follow you everywhere, because it has made its way into your memory and its poisonous sweetness has settled in your heart. Here Climacus gives us unexpected advice: “Eagerly drink scorn and insult as the water of life from everyone who wants to give you the drink that cleanses from lust. Then a deep purity will dawn in your soul and the divine light will not grow dim in your heart.”⁴

That’s how it is. You suffer in secret in your heart from the adulterous thorns for a day, two, and more. Then your boss suddenly summons you, and sullies your good name, blaming you for all real and imaginary shortcomings. Then the fornication will permanently depart from your soul, giving place to bitter resentment, and God thereby delivers you from the chasm at the edge where you were standing. The resentment will pass; resentment is not so dangerous.

***

The so-called “mind of salvation” is necessary for salvation, without which all our work risks turning out to have been a sowing on asphalt and plowing in the swamp. The praying fool from the proverb really does break his forehead doing prostrations, and besides this unnecessary trauma he obtains no other fruit. Therefore, the crystallized experience of the Church should be in demand by us, and we must find time to become attentively familiar with it, with persistence, so we don’t run in the wrong direction and don’t beat the air (cf. 1 Cor. 9:26).

The Ladder is not the Typikon; it has a different value. There are no prayer rules written there, no defined number of prostrations or amount of food to partake of. More important things are disclosed there, the effect of which is not revealed to the superficial gaze. In fact, the reading of such books is healing from blindness. And we ourselves, no matter how many years the Lord metes out to us, will never understand our inner life with such depth and clarity as did Abbot John of Mt. Sinai.

Books such as The Ladder can be read for an entire life and digested slowly, according to the measure of our practical effort. In them breathes that wisdom which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy (Jas. 3:17). nion with God, a livetc. , so when said about oursleves feel free.the be even more. . ideist, and hte rnce in the owrld..

Archpriest Andrei Tkachev

Translated by Jesse Dominick

Source: Pravoslavie.ru

27 / 03 / 2017

1 In everything I want to reach... (Во всем мне хочется дойти...)

2 “A Song About a Friend,” by Vladimir Visotsky

3 Ladder 2.6

4 Ladder 8.45

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