The Catalog of Good Deeds

I went to Greece almost every summer during my child and teenage years and, without fail, would visit various monasteries during my stays.

During the summer’s major feast days — especially the Dormition of the Theotokos commemorated on August 15th — city dwellers and village folk alike would gather together in monasteries to celebrate, fostering a sense of community unity and love.

From our village’s main monastery built unbelievably onto the face of a mountain to the marvellous Meteora, something about the monastic life tugged at the strings of my soul.

Despite being largely ignorant of the monastic way of life, it nonetheless intrigued me: the mannerism of monks; the simultaneous detachment from, but love for, the world; the traditional black garments worn.

It was not until years later when I began visiting monasteries as an adult that I came to better understand this sacred pathway to Paradise.

I recently met a nun who encapsulates all that is good and healthy with Orthodox monasticism.

Humble; free from anger; devoted to prayer; blessed with discernment; obedient to the Church and Her leaders; and, above all, full of love, not just in word — as some are apt to be — but in deed.

In today’s society where self-promotion is especially pervasive, this nun was concerned with connecting people to Christ, not to herself.

Christ is “the Alpha and the Omega” (Rev 22:13) and we need Him to be the centre of our lives; as St. Paul instructs, “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ” (1Co 11:1).

Christ became incarnate (Theanthropos) so we can become “God by grace” as the Church Fathers teach. This door is not opened only for clergy, monks and nuns, but for all people who are mindful always of God and seek Him with humility.

Recall that although St. Paul exalts the virtue of chastity, he also writes, “For it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1Co 7:9). Our common quest is for holiness, be it in a monastery or marriage.

In addition to the many married saints of the Holy Orthodox Church, monastics have served as a guiding light and inspiration for hundreds of years.

If you study the lives of the saints of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church you will uncover countless men and women — from Anthony the Great and Xenia the Deaconess of Rome in the first few centuries of Christendom, to Sts. Methodia of Kimolos and Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia in the 20th century — who struggled in asceticism to reach human perfection.

As our Venerable Father John Climacus writes in his wellspring of spirituality and most edifying book, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, “Angels are a light for monks, and the monastic life is a light for all men” (Step 26:31).

The nun whom I was blessed to meet is like a full moon in the desert night, abounding with light (and love). For in today’s society, clergy and monks and nuns alike should focus on respecting the freedom of man and teaching God’s truth in a spirit of love, not on the praise of the people or other spiritual dryness (such as Facebook which often births excessive self-love).

This last point is imperative; the above instruction of St. John actually includes the following, “Therefore let monks strive to become a good example in everything, giving no occasion for stumbling in anything in all their works and words. For if the light becomes darkness, how much darker will be that darkness, that is, those living in the world.”

The good example in everything of this nun reminded me of why from a young age visiting monasteries in Greece with my family I came to love the liturgical life and centuries-long tradition of Orthodox monasticism.

Simple faith; brotherly love to and for all; self-sacrifice; and, a detached mind free from worldly cares and the anxieties produced by them.

The monastic life may be for few but those who have been called to it and carry out their responsibilities correctly become the salt of the earth and the light of the world (cf. Mt 5:13-14) - like my new mother and sister, the humble nun.

By Evagelos Sotiropoulos

Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/evagelos-sotiropoulos/why-i-love-orthodox-monas_b_6922862.html

Question: Why do we light candles in the Orthodox Church?

Answer: There are typically two types of candles that Orthodox are familiar with. First there are the genuine pure beeswax candles made from the combs of hives. Secondly, there are the paraffin wax candles made from petroleum. When the Fathers of the Church speak of the Orthodox use of candles, they are referring to the pure beeswax candles and not the latter. Paraffin wax produces carcinogens and soot when burned. In fact, one air quality researcher stated that the soot from a paraffin candle contains many of the same toxins produced by burning diesel fuel.

With this information in mind, we can better understand the six symbolic representations of lit candles handed down to us by Saint Symeon of Thessaloniki:

1. As the candle is pure (pure beeswax), so also should our hearts be pure.

2. As the pure candle is supple (as opposed to the paraffin), so also should our souls be supple until we make it straight and firm in the gospel.

3. As the pure candle is derived from the pollen of a flower and has a sweet scent, so also should our souls have the sweet aroma of Divine Grace.

4. As the candle, when it burns, mixes with and feeds the flame, so also we can struggle to achieve theosis.

5. As the burning candle illuminates the darkness, so must the light of Christ within us shine before men that God's name be glorified.

6. As the candle gives its own light to illuminate a person in the darkness, so also must the light of the virtues, the light of love and peace, characterize a Christian. The wax that melts symbolizes the flame of our love for our fellow men.

Besides the six symbolic representations above, Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite gives us six different reasons why Orthodox light candles:

1. To glorify God, who is Light, as we chant in the Doxology: "Glory to God who has shown forth the light..."

2. To dissolve the darkness of the night and to banish away the fear which is brought on by the darkness.

3. To manifest the inner joy of our soul.

4. To bestow honor to the saints of our Faith, imitating the early Christians of the first centuries who lit candles at the tombs of the martyrs.

5. To symbolize our good works, as the Lord said: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in the heavens." The priest also gave us this charge following our baptism.

6. To have our own sins forgiven and burned away, as well as the sins of those for whom we pray.

For all these reasons cited by our Holy Fathers, let us often light our candles and make sure as much as possible that they be pure candles. We should abstain from all corruption and uncleanness, so that all of the above symbolism is made real in our Christian lives.

At one point during the Presanctified Divine Liturgy the liturgist holds a lit candle, and facing the people he proclaims: "The light of Christ shines on all". Christ is "the true light who enlightens and sanctifies all men". Are we worthy recipients of this light? The saints themselves constantly sought after this light. Let us then also imitate the saints and like Saint Gregory Palamas continuously supplicate the Lord in the following words: "Enlighten my darkness".

Question: Is there any other reason why we light our candle in church?

Answer: Besides the higher spiritual reasons mentioned above for why we light candles, there is another simpler and practical reason: to make a financial offering to the church. When we go to light our candle, we should also give an offering for the various services and expenses of the church. The church gives us the candle as a blessing for our offering and allows us to ignite the flame of the symbolisms mentioned above.

Question: Should we light candles outside the church as well?

Answer: It is good and laudable to light candles at home when we pray, when the priest visits for a house blessing with Holy Water or Holy Unction, and even light a candle when we visit the grave of a loved one.

Question: Is there any other purpose to the candle?

Answer: When we light a candle in the church, we are making an offering to the church or to a particular icon to beautify it and show through physical light the symbolization of the uncreated light of God's house or the saint depicted in the icon. It is also customary for the faithful to offer pure beeswax candles at the Consecration of a new church.

By John Sanidopoulos

Source: www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/02/use-of-candles-in-orthodox-church.html

It all began with our forefathers, Adam and Eve. They received a commandment in paradise not to taste of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (cf. 2:17). The commandment not to “taste of this or that” is quite well known to any Orthodox Christian. This is the commandment to fast—the most ancient, beginning factor of family life.

As we know, the first family was tempted by satan, the forefather of all evil. That envier could not calmly watch their happy life. Adam and Eve broke the commandment of not eating. The Lord called them to account. Then they tried to place their own blame on someone else, as if they were not guilty at all. Not only that, but Adam blamed his wife, who, as he emphasized, he had received from God. That is how the fall into sin happened, and people did not repent of what they had done. The Lord deprived them of paradise, and gave them a penance.

Let us briefly recall the words of that penance from God. The wife was told: I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee (Gen. 3:16). To the husband, the Lord said, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return (Gen. 3:19).

Sorrows entered the life of human beings. Steadfast endurance of sorrows is an important part of asceticism.

Our task is to remember that sorrows came as the result of sins. We have to bear them without anger, without murmuring against God. It is painful to be sick, painful to die (to return to dust). This feeling of sorrow must be melted in repentance. Then those oppressive thoughts of death can become exalted; they can become the remembrance of death.

After the fall, Adam not only had to work—he had to work hard. That is how it was in his life, and that is how it is in ours. Every man has to think about how he will feed himself and his family. He must at times do work that is both hard and dreary.

Archimandrite Sergei (Shevich) often found that his parishioners were sometimes weighed down by the work that they had to do every day. Fr. Sergei pointed out to them that work for a married person is the same as an obedience for a monk. As we know, monks do not choose their obedience according to their own taste. The monastic does whatever he has been given the blessing to do. Be it unattractive and boring, obedience nevertheless accustoms a monk to cutting off his own will, and, accordingly, to do the will of God. For Adam and his descendants, God’s will is to live after the fall under non-paradisal conditions, not to complain about this, and to repent. They should also hope in God, Who leads people to His Kingdom.

For a woman, a time of particular trial is pregnancy. She has to think more about her child than about herself, to pay special attention to her own health, keep to a regime, and, perhaps leave a lucrative job for the sake of her child—to give up her planned career growth. This is her ascesis of self-restraint. This is not to mention the pain of childbirth, and the uninterrupted care and fuss over the newborn.

The infant’s parents have to deny themselves basic rest, and are sleep deprived. They worry about their little one, and pray during anxious times for their child’s well-being: “Lord, You know all things, and Your love is perfect. Take the soul of (name), and do what I wish to do, but cannot.”

And if the child was born handicapped… What faith in God’s Providence is needed in order to bear that heavy cross!

Almost immediately after the birth of a child a great labor begins—raising the child. Even if we take the non-religious side of the matter, we know that we cannot get by without God’s help. Fr. Gleb Kaleda was right when he insisted that the foundation of upbringing and education is placed in the family, while school and college serve only to supplement what has been done in the family. The supplement is important, but it only enhances the main thing.

Often we see that in school children are required to memorize information, but taught very little about how to think for themselves. Even less are they taught morals. What should be done in this case? The family can make up for the inadequacies of an impersonal and commercial education and upbringing—that is if the parents seriously take care of their child, and not only of his physical needs, but also his emotional needs. All this takes many patient years.

Parents are also called to care for the spiritual needs of their child. It would be good to teach the small child to pray (in the majority of schools and universities, he will not be taught to pray to God). But to do this the parents themselves need to know how to pray attentively, to understand the language of prayer, and to accessibly explain the essence of the church services to their child. As the child grows to school age, he should be prepared for his first confession. How can parents explain to him what sin is, and why he needs to tell the priest about his sins. Here one’s personal example is needed, the parents’ personal efforts on the spiritual path. If the mother takes the child to Communion but does not herself approach the chalice or go to confession, if the father goes only rarely to church, then it will be pretty hard to convince the child that all of us need the Church Sacraments.

In the home where there is no understanding of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, where everyone eats whenever they want (and even when they don’t want), it is hard for a child to assimilate the concept of fasting. “You can’t lead children to fasting if they are allowed to eat whenever they like, if they are allowed to run through the house with a piece of bread and sausage or a biscuit. Regularity of food intake is, if you will, the beginning of Christian ascesis… Through prayer before a meal a person learns to begin everything with prayer. If there are visitors in the house and it is not possible to pray in front of them, it is important that all members of the family cross themselves if only mentally… It is necessary to cultivate both the obvious and secret forms of everyday Christian life,” Fr. Gleb Kaleda used to say. Domestic life can become a good support for spiritual life, but it can also become a profound obstruction.

***

The passion of self-love stands out as the family’s worst enemy. Egoism is a dangerous enemy.

When a married couple does not want to yield to each other in anything, each morbidly guarding his or her own pride; if each continually counts the times that he or she did something for the family, then that family will little-by-little fall apart. If couples easily give place to anger, argue over trifles, and cannot peacefully live with each other’s close relatives, then they themselves feel wretched, and their children absorb their bad example. How hard it is to bring up children by our own example!

True ascetic labor is required of parents in order not to consign their children to the education of television, internet groups, or the streets. That is on the one hand; on the other hand, children must not be tortured with excess care. After all, super-care leads to infantilism, introversion, and sometimes even rebellion against parents.

The family is a school of love.

All Christian ascesis is directed toward acquiring love. Christ the Savior boiled down all the commandments to two: love of God and love of neighbor. St. Theophan the Recluse compares love to fire: if we do not throw logs on the fire it will go out; if love between husband and wife is not stoked with deeds of love, it will eventually die out. And what are these deeds of love? They are the deeds of basic care one for the other, obvious and unobvious signs of attention. They are the ability during arguments to overcome outbreaks of anger and to be the first to come and make peace. They are the ability to take your egotistical inclinations in hand, to correct your actions, always thinking to yourself “I am not the only one.”

Fr. Gleb Kaleda wrote very well and in detail in his book about the ascetical life in a family, The House Church. His book is firmly supported by Orthodox tradition that has gone down through the ages, but he does not close his eyes on the particulars of Christian life in our complex times.

By Deacon Pavel Serzhantov

Source: http://orthochristian.com/64414.html

I grew up in Binghamton, New York, in a parish where the church was the center of my life. I served as an altar boy and went to the Church School, which was huge! We had a teenage Bible Study group; the church had a basketball team (which I was not very good at). I ran the parish library. We had altar boy practice every Saturday – we sang the Liturgy and learned about serving the services – there were as many as 36 altar boys at a time! So, almost every weekend, I was in church for Saturday Liturgy, Vespers, Matins, and Sunday Liturgy… plus holy days, baptisms, weddings, funerals and everything else that came with life in the Church.

After high school, I went to college nearby and lived at home. I never had the problem of wondering, “What do I do when I’m on my own?” I worked out my class schedule so I could be at the Liturgy during the week when there was one. Church was the place to be.

I loved being in church, and I loved what I was doing in church – especially serving in the Altar and learning about the Faith. So it was only logical for me to want to become an imitation of my parish priest, Fr. Stephen Dutko of blessed memory, so that I could have, and give, that same kind of experience. I wanted to be like Father Stephen.

And so I did. I went to seminary right after college. I got married and ordained at 22 years old. I was assigned to my first parish, Saints Peter and Paul Church in Homer City, PA, and I was raring to go.

Then it all changed. After 29 days of marriage, my wife and I were in a car accident. She was killed instantly. I was in the hospital – in a coma. I came out months later, confused and bitter, guilt ridden and doubting. I was feeling all those kinds of things that a person would feel in that horrific situation. Why did God let this happen? It had to be somebody’s fault. All the confusion, all the anger, definitely made me think about not being a priest anymore.

However, I couldn’t conceive of not serving at the Altar. I could not conceive of living my life outside of that experience that I had had all those years. I just could not imagine that.

So, rather than walk away from the Church, I did what I really needed to do – and what I have counseled so many people, of all ages from the youngest to the oldest, to do when we have these terrible, tragic experiences. And that is to draw closer to Christ in the face of pain and agony and loss. When I did that, it was not just an inner, “me and Jesus” kind of experience. The Lord came to me, and began to heal me through the faces, the words, the embraces, the love of His people: the Church.

My spiritual father was one of them. He was tough on me. He told me, “Your faith just has to kick in.” One of the questions I raised was, “Where was God when all this happened?” And he said, “He was in the same place the day that Debbie died that He was on Great and Holy Friday, when His Son died.” He told me that even though that particular Tuesday when we had the accident might have been a Good Friday to me… still, Good Friday is not the end of the story… Pascha is. He reminded me that Christ triumphed over death – and I had to believe that my wife was a sharer in that victory and in the Resurrection.

So, I never left the Church. I never walked away from the priesthood. My first parish as a priest became a replica of what I had experienced in my home parish as a young person… and those people who I served as a young widowed priest helped me nurse back to spiritual health – as well as me helping them in their dark moments and in their difficulties. It wasn’t just me, as their priest, taking care of them. Guided by God, as His family, we cared for each other.

A famous Christian writer named Tertullian, who lived less than 200 years after Jesus, wrote that “A Christian alone is no Christian.” He meant that no one is saved alone… it takes the Church to save a soul. Whenever I look back on that incredibly painful time in my life, I am more and more deeply convinced that I never would have survived – not spiritually, and maybe not literally – without the Church. I do not mean just the Church as a building, although that is the place where we meet and pray and even play together. I mean, the Church as a community; the constant presence of the people of God – my spiritual father, my parishioners, my brother priests and their families, with all of the guidance, the prayers and the love that they have to share.

Even though my hope for you who read this is that you never have to go through what I went through, I pray that somehow, whenever you do experience difficulties, doubts, and obstacles, by God’s grace, your faith will “kick in.” I pray that you will seek, and find, the healing and the love that Our Lord offers us in the faces, the embraces, and the prayers of others — the love of Christ Jesus, shown within the community of His Church.

One of my favorite quotes in the Bible is from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, in which he asks the question, “What can separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom. 8:35). And he answers that neither height nor depth… nor life nor death… nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thanks to the Church, I am living proof that this is true.

By Bishop Michael (Dahulich) of New York and New Jersey

Source: http://www.pravmir.com/what-can-separate-us-from-the-love-of-christ/