The Catalog of Good Deeds

After the Fall of Adam and Eve, all of their descendants, us included, are doomed to all kinds of hardships and sorrows in life, which ultimately end in death. It seems that there absolutely no reasons for joy. But did the Lord God really create man to mock him so severely?

It is, of course, not so. For the sake of man’s salvation from sin, the curses, and death, the Lord Himself endured terrible sufferings and death on the Cross. All who sincerely believe in Him and try to fulfill His holy commandments are given blessedness and joy in this life and in the future, eternal life.

Having sinned, we immediately punish ourselves: Our body undergoes all kinds of illnesses, and the soul falls into sorrow and despondency. To dispel sadness, unbelievers come up with different entertainments for themselves, beginning with music, song, and dance, and ending with the unlimited consumption of alcohol or drugs. But in most cases, this multiplies sorrow. This isn’t about it being forbidden to man to listen to music, to sing, to dance, and to drink alcohol. All problems begin when man delights in nothing but these things: neither his family and friends, nor his work. “You are my kin and friend as long as you give me money and treat me to wine, with or without reason, and when you fulfill all my wishes. If you don’t want to listen to me, and make a feast for me or share financially, then you’re worse than an enemy.” But can you really live so bleakly and materialistically?!

How do we find true joy in life?

The first step is repentance—that is, awareness of our sins, our wrongdoings before God and others, and a sincere desire to fix our lives. This step is hardest of all for any person, because due to some strengths, it is nearly impossible to know and admit your weaknesses. One has two university degrees, another has a position of responsibility, or a stably high income, or is very beautiful. Another has none of the above, and is lazy and weak-willed. But only through self-knowledge can a man attain true joy in life. They knew this already in the pre-Christian epoch. Nosce te ipsum (“know thyself”) taught the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. And St. Ambrose of Optina in the nineteenth century loved to tell his spiritual children, who would turn to him with all possible problems and impatiently thirsted to immediately reach passionlessness and the heights of knowledge of God, “Know thyself—and that’s enough!”

Attentive, regular confession, which is best done according to the Ten Commandments of God, can attune us to self-knowledge. I must look at myself without any self-esteem and see how I sin against every one of the commandments. Everyone gathers a large bouquet of sins, which is not fragrant, but rather spreads the smell of death and makes our lives and the lives of those around us joyless, and sometimes turns it into pitch black Hell. Remember, the elders foretold that in the last times, in the monasteries they will live as in the world, and in the world as in Hell.

Go up to a drunkard and ask, “Are your drinking buddies really more important than your family? Look, your wife is suffering and your children wish you were at home, but instead, you’re drinking with some vagabonds who would sell you for a glass.” However, he picks their company, which, to him, is sweeter than the company of his wife and children. Is there really some kind of Divine punishment in this? No, the man himself is striving for Hell, he loves it there, his life does not have the light of the Lord, and he doesn’t want to go to Him.

Hardly does a man turn his face to God, when immediately, although sometimes with material losses, everything changes—he becomes peaceful and joyful.

The second step is that we must learn how to sincerely forgive those who have voluntarily or involuntarily offended us. Without such forgiveness, the remission of our sins and our personal repentance is impossible. The Lord speaks very clearly about it: For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Mt. 6:14-15). Usually a thousand excuses are found to prove our rightness and not to forgive. But for all our struggle for truth, we lose the most valuable thing in life—joy, and in the end, it turns out that we’re wrong. As one sage told one man, “You have much truth, too much truth, but little mercy, and that means you are wrong.” And the holy apostle James writes, Mercy rejoiceth against judgment (Jas. 2:13).

A multitude of objections will pour forth that it’s impossible to live that way; if you forgive everyone, you will stay as poor as a church mouse. Indeed, the majority of us, having weak faith, can barely sustain such a measure of forgiveness. But, it is at least necessary to strive to learn at first to forgive at least the small things, otherwise the mark of offence will be reflected on our faces, and there will never appear there even a glimpse of joy.

The third step is to accustom yourself to doing good and not only as a professional or service obligation, but as altruistic mercy in your free time. This is one of the most effective ways to attract Christ into your life. The Lord always gives His almighty help to those who selflessly help others. There is a double joy in this: Those whom you helped rejoice, and we ourselves, naturally, rejoice that we could support them.

Nowadays, gratuitous help is gradually becoming a rarity. In the first place, most people have self-interest. We should show at least a little selflessness and mercy in relation to others—and Christ Himself will immediately bless your life with joy.

The fourth step towards joy is to wean yourself off of bad habits of constantly judging others, even those who truly deserve condemnation. Christ the Savior calls us to this: Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again (Mt. 7:1-2). Why must we not judge others? St. Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia answers this question: “Those whom we call publicans and harlots, are, for God, caught thieves, while I, and all of you—we are thieves, but not caught. A detained and humiliated thief, and a harlot, known to all, covered with shame, humbling herself and repenting, are much higher than us, who, having good names, live hidden and suspect lives.”

Again, many say, “So, what should we do—let evil flourish, if we can’t judge anyone?” No, of course, we must fight evil, but there are various means of fighting. When we fight it physically or through verbal abuse, then evil, as a rule, has the tendency to spread even more. As life shows, you can’t always fight fire with fire. The holy apostle Paul exhorts: If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good (Rm. 12:18-21). Why is such advice given? God wisely arranges everything in life so that the greatest joy a person experiences is not when he triumphs over others, but when he triumphs over himself, his own laziness, negligence, sins, and passions. All Christians have the opportunity to be assured of this when they do not blame others for their own personal problems in confession, but sincerely repent of their sins.

The fifth step to joy is prayer. Some go to church to pray as servitude. Laziness overcomes us at home, and so as not to pray, we find every kind of thing to do. If we stand in prayer, then the mind is constantly scattered to secondary objects. He who has no experience in prayer will ask with bewilderment, “What kind of joy could there be in prayer?” But in fact, it gives great consolation. After all, prayer is not some psychological auto-training, as non-believers think, but an unseen connection with the source of our life—God. Only in conversation with Him can we glean inspiration in all of our usual tasks. With prayer, any task, even the most difficult, goes smoothly. And conversely, without it the very easiest task becomes unbearably complicated. That is why it’s so important to read the morning and evening prayers at home, and not forget about prayer before and after food, and before the beginning of any work. It is especially necessary to go to the Church of God every Sunday and on feast days. There, thanks to common prayer with others, our prayer is strengthened manifold. It is, perhaps, nearly impossible to see someone who would leave church after the Divine Liturgy with a sorrowful face. One of the important fruits of prayer is unspeakable joy, which is incomparably beyond what the world can give us with all of its entertainments.

By Archimandrite Marcellus (Pavuk)

Source: http://orthochristian.com/107616.html

Interview with Sister Margarete (Roeber), a nun at the Holy Assumption Monastery in Calistoga, California

With the blessing of her abbess, Mother Melania, Sister Margarete has been on a pilgrimage all over the world, visiting Orthodox communities in Greece, Jerusalem, Georgia, Poland, Estonia, France, England and Russia. She stays for some time in each country, seeking for an opportunity to understand the communities’ lives, to feel their spirit and to acquire new monastic experience. Sister Margarete told us that among all the destinations they considered for her trip, St. Elisabeth Convent was the only monastery that her spiritual mother had pointed out as a “must see”!

During her stay in our community, Sister Margarete shared with us why her entire family converted to Orthodoxy from a Protestant confession, how she made her decision to become a nun, what is special about monastic life in the United States, and also what brought her to St. Elisabeth Convent in distant Belarus.

Sister Margarete had turned 15 when her family’s pursuit of life in Jesus Christ began to encounter difficulties in their Protestant community. Fewer and fewer people really understood what was happening at the religious service: did it matter whether the congregation recited a creed together? Was the bread and wine at Holy Communion the Body and Blood of Christ? Did it matter whether members of the congregation had been baptized? Gradually, Sister Margarete’s family realized that no Protestant community they could find would have a unified understanding of these questions. Eventually, the controversy became so sharp that the whole family – Sister Margarete’s father, mother, sister, brother, and herself – converted from Protestantism to Orthodoxy.

– Even back in his Protestant years, my father, a teacher of theology, knew about the Orthodox faith and shared his knowledge with our family. And even though I was only 15 and my sister was 16, we understood his choice very well. He is Father Anthony now. He was ordained priest in 2015, after serving many years as a deacon.

Converting to Orthodoxy was not easy. Our family has German roots, and Protestantism is deeply ingrained into German culture. For us, accepting the Orthodox faith meant entering a completely different cultural sphere. In addition, parting with fellow parishioners, many of whom we had come to know very closely, turned out to be quite challenging. Our first years in the Orthodox Church were marked by mixed feelings: tremendous joy of practicing the true faith and the sadness of parting with certain people, complicated by the loss of a familiar worship environment. It seemed like everyone was expecting us to instantly adopt a whole new cultural identity and start behaving like Greek or Russian people -- which is, after all, impossible. Our chrismation into the Orthodox faith took place in an Antiochian parish. Fortunately, it was multi-cultural, which really helped us blend in.

Sister Margarete began thinking about monastic life at the age of 18. At that point she had never even seen a monastic, but the idea of following that path was already in her heart.

- Once together with a group of orthodox students we visited a monastery in Guatemala that took care of an orphanage with about 150 children. That was when I first met a monastic sister. Her name was Madre (Mother) Yvonne. I shared with her my interest in monasticism and asked her for spiritual advice. She told me that I should visit orthodox monasteries until I found one that would appeal to me and feel like family. I followed that advice.

Monastic life itself is hard enough, and as I learned more about the spiritual life, I felt that pursuing it within a completely new language and culture, be it Greek or Russian, was simply beyond my ability. Thus, for eight years I visited six different communities in the United States that serve in English. Finally, one fine day in 2007, God brought me to St. Barbara Monastery not far from Los Angeles, California where I met Abbess Victoria. That was the day when I clearly realized that my search was over – I saw in her my spiritual mother and a person whose spiritual knowledge can guide others.

Mother Victoria combines such practical qualities as confidence, sobriety, and stability with tremendous love. She is happy simply because you are with Christ. You could see it in her eyes, in her voice, even in the way that she would bless people.

In a surprising turn of events, however, Sister Margarete was only able to spend four months at St. Barbara Monastery. When she moved to the monastery in 2009, the construction of a new church and monastic cells was moving very slowly, and accommodation for the sisters was limited -- most of them had to stay in trailer-houses. When a government committee came in 2009, the sisters were given 30 days get rid of all the trailer homes on the property. This meant that of the 17 women living at the monastery, 10 of them had to leave, or the monastery might be shut down. The monastery’s bishop blessed the 10 sisters to move to the Holy Assumption, an old, non-functioning convent near San Francisco that was built by Russian nuns, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1940s. The bishop had been trying for several years to convince Mother Victoria to send sisters there so that monastic life could be renewed. But Mother Victoria would refuse, arguing that their community was still young, and a separation might prove harmful. This time, all that the bishop had to say was: “Sometimes when we cannot make a decision ourselves, God Himself makes it for us”.

– There is a tradition at our convent to sew your monastic habit yourself. On the day when we learned about moving to another convent, Mother Victoria gave me her blessing to set off dressed as a novice, and I had to make my novice’s dress in a hurry! The day before we left was the day when I became Sister Margarete. My Rassophore tonsuring took place three years later, at Holy Assumption Monastery.

Today, Holy Assumption Monastery is home for 12 monastic sisters, under Abbess Melania. For the first eight years that the sisters spent in the new monastery, Mother Victoria remained their abbess, even though she continued to live at St. Barbara Monastery. Mother Melania, the senior nun at Holy Assumption Monastery, functioned as Mother Victoria’s deputy, the “acting superior” of the community. Finally, in July of 2017, the bishop installed Mother Melania as abbess of Holy Assumption Monastery. The sisters still have a close bond with Mother Victoria and St. Barbara Monastery, but now the two communities are independent of one another.

At Holy Assumption Monastery, the day begins with Orthros at 5:30 AM, and the sisters try to refrain from talking until the end of breakfast. After breakfast, everyone goes to their obediences. The 6th Hour is served at 12 noon together with a short Panikhida for the departed. Then there is a shared meal, after which the sisters go back to their work routine. Vespers is usually celebrated around 6 PM, and after a short break, the sisters end their day with Small Compline.

Sister Margarete is currently assigned two obediences at her convent: she is a cantor and also an accountant. However, when there are only ten or twelve sisters living in a community, many people share responsibilities, and a sister can wake up thinking that she will spend the day working with papers or paying bills and end up working in the kitchen or taking another sister to the hospital, and the day will go totally differently.

After spending some time in Greece and Jerusalem, Sister Margarete has visited St. Elisabeth Convent and stayed for three months.

– At our new place of residence we cannot easily communicate with Mother Victoria and rely on her advice as much as we would before. By the same token, she understands that we are still young and have none of the experience that communities with long-standing monastic tradition have. So we need help to deepen our monastery’s spiritual life.

Mother Victoria views my pilgrimage as an opportunity to become familiar with the diversity of monastic traditions in Orthodox Church. It takes a while to immerse oneself into the life of a certain community, to get its feeling. You have to spend some time, carry an obedience and become a part of the routine.

We did not have many connections to Orthodox monasteries overseas when I began to look for places to visit. In fact, your community was the only one that Mother Victoria really insisted that I visit. Among other reasons, she is deeply interested in the interaction between the black and the white sisterhood here at St. Elisabeth Convent. This is a new model that could take root in our communities too, if God wills.

Saint Elisabeth, the heavenly patron of your community, is beloved by many Orthodox people in America, as she is a wonderful example of someone from Western culture embracing Orthodoxy. Being a German and a Lutheran, Grand Duchess Elisabeth consciously took the decision to accept the Orthodox faith and culture without denouncing her own cultural heritage. Many, many Orthodox girls in America are named Elisabeth.

– Throughout my entire journey I have felt a subtle connection with holy mother Elisabeth, and it would be revealed in miraculous things. At the time of my visit to Jerusalem, for example, I got lost as I was walking towards the Convent in Gethsemane. The gate leading to St. Mary Magdalen church was locked. I heard the church bells but I did not know how to get inside. I sat next to the locked gate, not knowing what to do or where to go. Suddenly, another pilgrim appeared, asked me if I was Orthodox, and opened the gate. That was how I first visited the Convent and even got a chance to attend the Divine Liturgy held solely for that particular group of pilgrims. I was blessed by an opportunity to venerate the relics of the Royal Martyr, and I clearly remember constantly addressing her in my prayers, and receiving the unique feeling of my prayer being heard. This memory gives me strength and confidence that Saint Elisabeth will not forsake us in her prayers and her help.

Compiled by Maria Kotova

November 23, 2018

St. Elisabeth Convent

There are dozens of children’s questions concerning prayer, icons, and church worship… in general, everything related to life in the Church. We’ve collected several of these questions and asked Archpriest Alexander Yelatomtsev, the rector of the Church of the Nativity of Christ in v. Rozhdestveno, Istra Raion, Moscow Region, and the spiritual father of Rozhdestvo Orthodox School, to answer them.

Why are icons painted in such a cartoonish manner?

You’ve found a very sensitive point in the life of the Church. Icon painting is a very important way of preaching the Good News, i.e., spreading the Christian faith. Unfortunately, icons don’t always reach such a high level of artistic perfection. Often, they are painted to suit the low taste of the person who orders them. Sometimes, icon painters aren’t skillful enough. If you look at the real icons, e.g., Holy Trinity by Andrei Rublev, icon of the Mother of God of Vladimir, icons from ancient Athonite monasteries, or Greek mosaics, you won’t find anything cartoonish about them.

Some icons seem to be too simple, as if they were painted by a child. Believe me, all true painters were dreaming of being able to paint like children but not everyone can do it. Only holy and pure souls are capable of portraying the saints’ faces with such artlessness and spiritual precision. Sinful adults are trying to fake that purity and simplicity, and that’s where the cartoonish icons come from.

Perhaps, you meant that people and animals in the icons look different than in real life? It’s made for a reason, not because the painter doesn’t know how to paint “realistic pictures”. An icon reveals the spiritual world, which is very different from our world. You can’t see it with human eyes, so a realistic manner of painting doesn’t describe it well. Which manner is better, then? The one that conveys the most important meanings, and conveys them symbolically, not literally. This language is the language of icon painting where nothing is painted aimlessly, where everything has its symbolism: colors, sizes, and shapes. There isn’t anything cartoon-like in this way of depicting holy images. If the icon isn’t realistic, does it mean that it’s cartoon-like?

The Prayer of Saint Macarius the Great (one of the evening prayers) contains the following words, “And cause me, uncondemned now, to sleep a dreamless sleep, and keep Thy servant untroubled by thoughts.” What does a dreamless sleep mean? Is it wrong to have dreams?

It’s great that you pay attention to words of holy prayers. The word “dream” has several meanings. Dreams (i.e., imagination) are beneficial for a child. It is great for a child to dream about journeys to distant lands, adventures, dangers, and love. That is how a child (or even an adult) expands his mind and takes on new roles, experiences faithfulness and betrayal, weakness and power, and pursues certain goals.

If the goals that you’re after are good, and if you do your best trying to achieve them, it means that your dreams weren’t in vain. If they remain abstract thoughts without good tangible results, then the word “dream” acquires a bad meaning and turns into an “empty daydreaming”.

The word “dream” in this prayer refers to memories and thoughts about your sins. Memories of your sins attract your attention, embarrass you, and smear your soul. The dreams like those can break into your sleep, and that is why we ask God to keep us free from them.

During the All-Night Vigil, the priest consecrates five loaves of bread as a way to remember how Jesus Christ fed people with five loaves of bread and two fishes. Why don’t we consecrate two fishes, too?

That’s an old tradition. I think I know the reason for it. Fish was a symbol of our Savior. The Greek word for ‘fish’ is ιχτυς (/ˈɪkθəs/). It has been interpreted as an acronym or acrostic for "Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ".

Greek English

ι Iēsous (Ἰησοῦς), Greek for "Jesus".

χ Christos (Χριστός), Greek for "anointed" (of the Lord).

τ Theou (Θεοῦ), Greek for "God's", the genitive case of Θεóς, Theos, Greek for "God".

υ (h)yios[10] (Yἱός), Greek for "Son".

ς sōtēr (Σωτήρ), Greek for "Saviour".

Due to the fact that fish hints at the Savior, first Christians often used fish symbols in their churches. However, fish is merely an image, while bread turns into the Body of Christ during the Sacrament of Eucharist. That was why the Church decided to use the more important object, namely, bread (five loaves, like it was in the Gospel) during the service. That is, on the eve of a holiday (bread is consecrated during the All-Night Vigil service on the eve of a holiday), the Church already prepares us for the Liturgy and reminds us of the heavenly bread.

What rules must a priest follow?

There are a whole lot of rules for priests. Speaking of external, formal rules, it’s hard to list them all: a priest must obey his bishop (that is, his ecclesiastical superior), manage his parish, build or repair a church, lead church worship diligently, etc. There are many rules of proper Christian conduct, which a priest must follow much more strictly than a lay person. For example, if a layman’s wife dies, church canons allow him to marry again. But a priest cannot re-marry. If he marries again, he will lose his priesthood because he is obliged to maintain the sanctity of marriage. According to Jesus Christ, one can have only one marriage in his/her life.

The external rules are rooted in internal rules. A priest must stick to the following three internal rules:

Love God

Love the Church

Love his flock.

I’d like to underline the fact that a priest must love his flock and not himself, so that God wouldn’t tell him in the end of his earthly journey, “You’ve tended to yourself well, but you’ve abandoned my sheep!” That is why a priest has to be very strict towards himself and compassionate towards everyone else. Again, compassion must not lead people to forget that the path to God is narrow and steep. The priest must walk up this path first so that it could be easier for other people to follow him.

Is it allowed to make small figurines out of church candles? Is it bad?

You can make the figurines but not out of whole candles: use stumps, that is, candle-ends. Candles were meant as an offering unto God, and that is what they should be used for. If you’re tired of standing and praying, you can make figurines—at least, it’s better than running around the church or chatting, but even if you make wax figurines, you should repeat to yourself, “Lord have mercy!”

Is it possible to pray without icons?

Yes, it is possible but it requires extra effort.

An icon is a window into the invisible world where God and his saints dwell. Looking through that window makes it more convenient to contact them. It is especially true if that window is good and transparent, that is, if you can clearly see through it and the faces of the saints really shine with spiritual beauty and purity.

If you don’t have this window, you have to get by looking at God “through the wall.” You will have to imagine that you stand before him and exert your mental capacities to get into the invisible world. It is harder but it’s a very useful experience, too. You should imagine God like they paint him on icons or stand before him as the Unfathomable and Unknowable One, while at the same time the Good One who listens to our prayers.

Afterword for Adults

What can be simpler than children’s questions, right? Isn’t it easy for us adults to show how informed we are and to open our uneducated kids’ eyes to something that we already know?

It turns out, things work differently. If an adult is able to follow his own flow of words, his own explanations, he will notice that complex words are useless but it is not always feasible to explain complex concepts in plain and concise words.

Additionally, a child’s question may contain something that he or she doesn’t say, something that remains beyond the scope of his question, something that he or she hasn’t yet formulated well enough or is afraid to ask, and you have to guess what the real question is. Sometimes you can’t respond to the real question but it’s vital that you understand what it is.

The question that impressed me the most in our today’s set of questions was the question about icons. The question was simple but straightforward, “Why are icons painted in such a cartoonish manner?” The author of that question is a 14-year-old teen, at which age people tend to react strongly to everything lifeless, inauthentic, and artificial. Cartoonish means fake, far-fetched, and unnatural. Cartoonish icons don’t meet the teenager’s demand to see the real truth. One doesn’t actually feel inspired to believe them and pray in front of them. In that sense, the realistic icons painted in the academic style can easily be seen as cartoonish because they represent only earthly truth but do not show the spiritual truth.

That spiritual truth is conveyed only with a language of symbols. Nevertheless, even that symbolic language can turn out to be a fake if you use it “not for real”: if you utilize known expressions and methods and don’t live according to them.

We always seem to fall prey to this “cartoon” when we talk about God in oversimplified baby terms. We live in that fictional world when we pray to a God the Father with a long and dense white beard looking at us from the clouds. We might even remind ourselves that no one has ever seen God the Father, and this is an iconographic symbol. It won’t suffice for a teenager, though. He needs an honest icon, spiritual truth, and discovered mystery.

There is something fake about our adult faith and our everyday Orthodox practices. That was why the simple question about icons stirred me up. I wish us all to demonstrate the real faith and true, highly spiritual Orthodoxy to our children.

By Archpriest Alexander Elatomzev
Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

Source: https://foma.ru/deti-sprashivayut-o-tserkovnoy-zhizni.html