The Catalog of Good Deeds

The Greek word "anathema" consists of two words: "ana", which is a preposition indicating movement upwards and "thema", which means a separate part of some- thing. In military terminology, "thema" me ant a detachment; in civil government "thema" meant a province. We currently use the word "theme", derived from "thema", to mean a specific topic of a written and intellectual work.

"Anathema" literally means the lifting up of something separate. In the Old Testament this expression was used both in relation to that which was alienated due to sinfulness and likewise to that which was dedicated to God.

In the New Testament, in the writing of the Apostle Paul it is used once in conjunction with "maranatha", meaning the coming of the Lord. The combination of these words means separation until the coming of the Lord; in other words - being handed over to Him (1 Cor 16:22).

The Apostle Paul uses "anathema" in another place without the addition of "maranatha" (Gal 1:8-9). Here "anathema" is proclaimed against the distortion of the Gospel of Christ as it was preached by the Apostle, no matter by whom this might be commited, whether by the Apostle himself or an angel from the heavens. In this same expression there is also implied: "let the Lord Himself pass judgement," for who else can pass judgement on the angels?

St John the Theologian in Revelation (22:3) says that in the New Jerusalem there will not be any anathema; this can be understood in two ways, giving the word anathema both meanings: 1) there will not be any lifting up to the judgement of God, for this judgement has already been accomplished; 2) there will not be any special dedication to God, for all things will be the Holy things of God, just as the light of God enlightens all (Rev 21:23).

In the acts of the Councils and the further course of the New Testament Church of Christ, the word "anathema" came to mean complete separation from the Church. "The Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes", "let him be anathema", "let it be anathema", means a complete tearing away from the church. While in cases of "separation from the communion of the Church" and other epitimia or penances laid on a person, the person remained a member of the Church, even though his participation in her grace filled life was limited, those given over to anathema were thus completely torn away from her until their repentance. Realizing that she is unable to do anything for their salvation, in view of their stubbornness and hardness of heart, the earthly church lifts them up to the judgement of God.

That judgment is merciful unto repentant sinners, but fearsome for the stubborn enemies of God. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God ... for our God is a consuming fire" (Heb 10:31 ; 12:29).

Anathema is not final damnation: until death repentance is possible. "Anathema" is fearsome not because the Church wishes anyone evil or God seeks their damnation. They desire that all be saved. But it is fearsome to stand before the presence of God in the state of hardened evil: nothing is hidden from Him.

By Saint John Maximovitch

Source: http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/anathema.aspx

Eustathios of Sebastia introduced monasticism to Asia Minor; he influenced St. Basil, who borrowed whatever was good in his innovations, including the monastic garments, monastic vows, and the special religious service (tonsure) that indicated the special status of a monk, superior to that of lay people, and subordinate to the clergy.

Among the many ascetical works of St. Basil, two are the most significant in terms of regulating the life of monasticism: the "Great Rules" (Oroi Kata Platos), and the "Brief Rules" (Oroi Kat' Epitomen). These rules regulate the life in the cenobitic monasteries: they extol the monastic life in common as the ideal Christian life, the "life of perfection," while at the same time indicating the dangers of the solitary anchoretic life. St. Basil's Rules became the Magna Carta of Monasticism, both in the East and in the West, throughout the monastic tradition. The difference is that while in the Christian East the anchorite spirit of St. Anthony continues to persist as the original monastic ideal, thus at times reacting against the organized monasticism of a Pachomian, cenobitic type promulgated by Saint Basil in the Rules, the Christian West, after the modifications to the Basilian Rules by St. Benedict, remains faithful to the cenobitic spirit of organized monasticism.

St. Basil set Christian perfectionism as the goal of monastic life. The monks were to practice Christian virtues together, especially love; to practice obedience to a spiritual father; to practice chastity and poverty, and share the common goods of the monastery. After they achieved Christian perfection, they were allowed to come back to the world and help others to achieve Christian perfection. Thus, the monks had the mission of "social workers" as well. St. Basil's institutions, especially his Basileias, which was at the same time an orphanage, a "kitchen for the poor," and a school for the illiterate was in practice run by monks. This was St. Basil's way of utilizing the monastic movement to benefit the mission of the Church in the world.

Following St. Basil's example, the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451), in its canonical legislation, placed the monastics in a given Diocese under the direct jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop. Only this bishop can allow the foundation of new monasteries in his diocese (Canons 4 and 8). Thus in the Orthodox Church the possibility of the creation of monastic "Orders," as we see them developing in the West during the Middle Ages, was once and for all eliminated.

Monasticism also spread in the West. Its origins go back to St. Athanasios of Alexandria, who was exiled to the West (399). His Life of St. Anthony was translated into Latin by Evagrios of Antioch (380). Two Latin monks, Rufinus and St. Jerome, who lived in Palestine, brought monasticism to the West when they returned, during the second half of the 4th century. St. Ambrose of Milan (d. 395) introduced monasticism in Northern Italy, and St. Augustine (d. 430) in Northern Africa, whence monasticism was transplanted to Spain. St. Martin of Tours (370) introduced monasticism into Northern France (Gaul), and St. Honoratus of Arles into the South. St. John Cassian founded two monasteries near Marseilles (415); he had become acquainted with monasticism in Egypt and Palestine, and was ordained a deacon by St. John Chrysostom in Constantinople. At. St. John's deposition, John Cassian returned to Gaul to establish monasticism there.

Source: http://www.goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith7103

The Great Canon is quite a surprising work. Did you know that earlier it was read on other days of the Lent? What is more, have you ever heard that its creation was not connected with the Great Lent at all? Besides, could you imagine how long the Divine Services lasted in the 7^th century?

1. The Great Canon is not the only work written by St. Andrew of Crete. He was the author of numerous canons devoted to the main feasts of the Byzantine Church. The total amount of the writings by St. Andrew enlists 70 works.

2. St. Andrew of Crete was not only a preacher (he was the author of the large amount of sermons) and hymnographer, but also a composer. The Saint wrote the chants, with which the words of the canon began.

3. St. Andrew of Crete is considered to be the originator of such church poetry genre as the nine-part canon. As a genre, the canon has replaces the kontakion style, which was a multi-verse poem in ancient times.

In fact, the services of that time were far much longer. The Great Canon is not the longest work of St. Andrew of Crete. In the 7^th century, when the Saint began his work, the form of the Six psalms was originated. Moreover, before that time the Psalter was read in full over the course of the matins service.

4. Before the 14^th century the Russian Church followed the Studian Statute in regards to the services, which prescribed to read the Great Canon during the fifth Week of the Great Lent. Sometimes the canon was divided into several parts, but sometimes the whole canon was included into the Sunday service. The tradition of singing the canon patially during the first four days of the canon existed in the Jerusalem church as well.

When the Russian Church switched to the Jerusalem statute, this tradition was adopted as well. The tradition of reading the canon on Thursday of the first Week is late by its origin.

5. At first the Great Canon was not bound to a specific period of time and the services of the Lent. Some researchers consider that St. Andrew wrote the Great Canon as his autobiographical repentance participation in the false council of the year 712. Under the emperor’s pressure the Saint and other members of the council had to sign the document denying the decisions of the 6th Ecumenical Council.

A new emperor came in a year, and all the members of that council did penance for what they had done and signed the resolutions of the Ecumenical Council. However, it seems that the guilt bothered the Saint so much that he decided to create a poem about repentance on the way to God.

6. The parts of the Great Canon, on which it is divided at the first Week of the Great Lent, are called the “methimony” in Greek, but in Russian language the word was often pronounced as “ephimony”.

Translated from: http://www.pravmir.ru/velikiy-pokayannyiy-kanon-i-svyatoy-andrey-kritskiy-eshhe-6-udivitelnyih-faktov/

Lent has begun. You finish the work day exhausted, stumbling into your darkened church. As you struggle to clear your mind of the worries of the work day, and the troubles that will meet you tomorrow, strange sounds enter your head:

“The place of bodily Eve has been taken for me by the Eve of my mind in the shape of a passionate thought in the flesh, showing me sweet things, yet ever making me taste and swallow bitter things.”

The words warp your tired brain, twist your imagination, sending you to your knees not necessarily in repentance but utter confusion.

What is St. Andrew of Crete doing in his Great Canon? Is he trying to confuse and bewilder? No, he is moving us through the Scripture using the moral sense of Scripture.

What is the moral sense of Scripture? When the Church reads the Scripture, she doesn’t see only the apparent sense of the text. She sees multiple levels of meaning, bringing the reader into deeper communion with Christ.

There are four main senses the Church uses when encountering God’s word. There is the literal, the typological, the anagogical, and the moral. The literal is the apparent literary meaning that one gets when reading the text. The typological is seeing the characters and events as images and reflections of Christ, His Church, and His saints. The anagogical is seeing the completion of all things fulfilled in the Kingdom of Heaven.

St. Andrew dips into the three above, but in his Great Canon, he is primarily using the moral sense. This sense allows you to discover the people and places of Scripture as instruments of repentance. In the moral, we find ourselves mired in sin, but there is hope because the goal of the moral is union with God and the transformation of ourselves into His image.

Examples will clarify what St. Andrew is doing. In the beginning of the Book of Joshua, Joshua leads the people across the Jordan into the Promised Land. After this miraculous crossing, Joshua memorializes the event by stacking up twelve stones, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. The moral sees beyond the physical event. The stack of stones becomes the Christian placing remembrances of God’s events in his or her life so as not to forget and wander away from God’s presence. The stones are also a reminder that the Christian should be a living stone, reminding the world of God’s presence.

An example in contrast is the city of Jerusalem throughout the Scriptures. In the literal sense, Jerusalem is the physical city. In the typological sense, it is the Church. In the anagogical, it is the kingdom of heaven, and in the moral, it is the Christian.

As a final example, before jumping into St. Andrew’s canon, let’s examine one event that St. Andrew will touch upon—the story of Jacob’s ladder. Jacob, exhausted from fleeing from Esau, makes camp in a deserted lonely place using a rock as a pillow. He is awakened from his sleep with a vision. It is a vision of a ladder reaching from heaven to earth, with angels ascending and descending, and at the top of the ladder, the Lord Himself speaks to Jacob. The Church reads this and sees God comforting Jacob and giving him hope. It is also a type of the Theotokos as the ladder that brings God to humanity. The moral view sees the ladder as the Christian struggle toward union with God.

To deeply understand the moral way of reading Scripture, there is no better teacher than St. Andrew, and his canon is the textbook. There are three basic approaches that St. Andrew takes.

Communion with Sinners. St. Andrew will see himself in the sins of the people in the Biblical story. More times than not, he will gaze upon their sins and condemn himself for being a greater sinner, a chief of sinners.

The Example of the Righteous. He looks at the righteous and sees how far removed he is from their way of life, and lunges toward them as a goal for his life.

The Mercy of God. In spite of the deep condemnation of self, St. Andrew won’t allow it to lead him into despair. But the spotlight the Scripture shines on his soul forces a cry to God, trusting in His mercy to save.

Here are a couple of examples from St. Andrew’s canon.

From Genesis:

“I have killed a man to the wounding of myself,’ said Lamech, ‘and a young man to my own hurt,’ he cried out wailing. But you, my soul, do not tremble, while polluting the flesh and defiling the mind.”

Lamech can be found in the world before the Flood, when life was violent and humanity was increasingly depraved. Depravity ran so rampant that the spark of salvation was quickly fading. The way of repentance was disappearing from the earth, and Lamech is an example. Not only does he kill, he does so indiscriminately for minor offenses then boasts of such violence. St. Andrew encounters Lamech and likewise sees the damage his sin is doing to his own soul.

Here’s another from Genesis:

“You know, my soul, of the Ladder shown to Jacob reaching from earth to Heaven. Why have you not clung to the sure step of piety?”

We referenced this story of Jacob’s ladder earlier, and St. Andrew echoes what others like St. John of the Ladder have seen in this story. The ladder is the path of piety whereby the soul unites himself to God. Yet, it spite of the salvation God offers, St. Andrew weeps for the many times he rejects that path rather than clinging to it.

Lest you think St. Andrew is only dipping in the Old Testament, here he pulls from the New Testament parable of the Good Samaritan: “The priest saw me first and passed by on the other side. Then the Levite took a look at my sufferings and disdained my nakedness. But stand by Me, O Jesus…”

St. Andrew takes the story of the Good Samaritan beyond the need to love one’s neighbor. His soul is the wounded man, wounded by his own sins. Nothing could save him, so he cries out, to the one who truly is the Good Samaritan, “Stand by me, O Jesus.”

St. Andrew plumbs the depths of Scripture, pulling out characters and events that force us back into Scripture. He mentions everyone from Noah’s sons to Esau, to Reuben, Job, Hophni, Phineas, Dathan, Abiram, Hosea, and the Judges.

During Lent, Old Testament readings take center stage. Let St. Andrew’s Canon be the doorway to our Lenten Old Testament readings. Read prayerfully like St. Andrew. Read with an eye not to doctrine or theological musings but toward repentance. Take your soul on a journey through the Scripture, finding the dirt in your soul and letting God wash it clean.

Source: http://myocn.net/read-bible-like-saint-andrew-crete/

Saint Alypius, one of the first and finest of Russian iconographers, was a disciple of St Nikon , and from his youth he lived a life of asceticism at the Kiev Caves monastery. He studied the iconography of the Greek masters, and from the year 1083 beautified the Caves monastery church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos.

If he learned that in some church the icons had become worn, he took them with him and restored them without charge. If people happened to pay him for his work, he set aside one third to purchase supplies for painting icons, one third as alms for the poor, and the remainder for his own needs.

St Alypius was never famous, and he painted icons only to serve God. He was ordained a hieromonk, and was known for working miracles even in his lifetime. St Alypius healed a Kievan man suffering from leprosy and decay of the body by anointing the wounds of the sick man with the paints he used for the painting of icons. Many of his icons were glorified by miracles, and sometimes angels helped him in the holy task of painting icons.

A certain man of Kiev who had built a church, once gave two monks of the Caves a commission to have icons painted for it. The monks concealed the money and said nothing to St Alypius about it. After waiting a long time for the work to be completed, the man went to the igumen to complain about St Alypius. Only then did they discover that he had not been told of the commission. When they brought the boards provided by the customer, it turned out that beautiful icons had already been painted on them.

When the church was consumed by fire, all of the icons remained unharmed. One of these icons the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, known as the Vladimir-Rostov Icon, was taken by Great Prince Vladimir Monomakh to a church he had built at Rostov.

Another time, when St Alypius lay deathly ill, an angel painted an icon of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos for him. On August 17 (around the year 1114), an angel came to receive the soul of St Alypius, and he was buried in the Near Caves. The first three fingers of St Alypius's right hand were positioned together, and the last two were bent to the palm. It seems that he died while signing himself with the Sign of the Cross.

One of the icons painted by St Alypius survives from the time of Sts Anthony and Theodosius of the Kiev Caves, and is now preserved in the State Tretyakov Gallery. This is the Sven Icon.

A twentieth century icon in the church of the Pskov Caves Monastery of the Dormition depicts St Alypius holding a copy of the "Assuage My Sorrows" Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos.

The Sven Icon of the Mother of God

The Sven Caves Icon of the Mother of God was written by St. Alypius of the Caves. On the icon the Mother of God is depicted sitting upon a throne, with the Divine Infant on Her knees. St. Theodosius is on the right side of the throne, and St. Anthony of the Caves is on the left. Until 1288, the icon was in the Kiev Caves Monastery, where it was glorified by miracles. In 1288 it was transferred to the Briansk-Svensk Monastery, which is dedicated to the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos.

At Briansk, Prince Roman of Chernigov became blind due to an unknown ailment. Hearing about the miracles worked by the icon written by St. Alypius, the prince sent a courier to the monastery requesting that the icon be sent to him. A priest journeyed with the icon along the River Desna. After the voyage, the boat landed on the right bank of the River Svena. After lodging for the night, they went to the boat to pray before the icon, but they did not find the icon where they had last left it. Looking around, they saw it on a hill on the opposite bank, resting in the branches of an oak tree. News of this reached Prince Roman, and he was led to the icon on foot.

The prince prayed fervently before the icon and vowed to build a monastery on that spot, donating all the land which could be seen from the hill. After praying, the prince regained his sight. First he saw the footpath, then nearby objects, and finally all the surroundings.

After making a shrine for the icon, the prince had a Molieben served, and laid the foundations for a wooden church in honor of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos. The tree on which the icon rested was cut down and used as wood for other icons.

The feast day of the Sven Icon of the Mother of God is also commemorated on August 17. The August 17 celebration was established in the year 1815 in thanksgiving for the deliverance of the city of Briansk from invasion during the 1812 Napoleonic War.

The icon was glorified by healings of the blind and of the possessed, and has long been regarded as a protector from enemies.

St. Alypius and the Miracle of the Dormition Icon

The Lord does not allow His faithful servants to be shamed. It often happened that the martyrs of Christ, ridiculed and mocked before the courts, unexpectedly performed a miracle, which instilled fear in the unbelievers. Either the idols fell or thunder destroyed the temples of the heathen or an unexpected downpour of rain extinguished the fire prepared for their burning or the torturers beat themselves with stones and rods and so forth. Thus, Antipater, the torturer of St. Myron, during the suffering of this man of God suddenly went insane and killed himself.

St. Alypius, the icongrapher, was already at the end of his life when he received an order from a man to paint the icon of the Dormition of the Most-holy Theotokos. As the feast was approaching, this man came several times to see whether the icon was completed. But the icon was not even begun, not even on the eve of the Feast of the Dormition itself when the icon was supposed to have been placed in the church. When this man returned home completely saddened, at once there appeared a young man in Alypius' cell who immediately sat down and began to paint the icon. He worked very quickly and very expertly. When the icon was completed, it shone like the sun. Showing the icon to the astonished Alypius, the young man took the icon and brought it to the church for which it had been ordered. The next day, that man who had ordered the icon went to the church and, to his great surprise, saw the icon in its place. Then that man came to the monastery and, with the abbot, entered Alypius' cell. "How and who painted the icon of this man?" asked the abbot. The ailing Alypius replied: "An angel painted it, and he is now standing here to take me away." And with that, he gave up the spirit.

Source: http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/08/saint-alypius-iconographer-of-kiev-near.html

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