Conversions to Orthodoxy
English Flowers of Orthodoxy 14
ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY – MULTILINGUAL ORTHODOXY – EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH – ΟΡΘΟΔΟΞΙΑ – SIMBAHANG ORTODOKSO NG SILANGAN – 东正教在中国 – ORTODOXIA – 日本正教会 – ORTODOSSIA – อีสเทิร์นออร์ทอดอกซ์ – ORTHODOXIE – 동방 정교회 – PRAWOSŁAWIE – ORTHODOXE KERK - නැගෙනහිර ඕර්තඩොක්ස් සභාව – СРЦЕ ПРАВОСЛАВНО – BISERICA ORTODOXĂ – GEREJA ORTODOKS – ORTODOKSI – ПРАВОСЛАВИЕ – ORTODOKSE KIRKE – CHÍNH THỐNG GIÁO ĐÔNG PHƯƠNG – EAGLAIS CHEARTCHREIDMHEACH – ՈՒՂՂԱՓԱՌ ԵԿԵՂԵՑԻՆ / Abel-Tasos Gkiouzelis - https://orthodoxsmile.blogspot.com - Email: gkiouz.abel@gmail.com - Feel free to email me...!
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Congo, 2021: African prostitute baptized an Orthodox Christian two hours before she passed away
Father Chariton Musungayi from Goma in the Eastern Congo:
"...It was six in the afternoon. It was already dark when a young woman unknown to me was knocking persistently on the door of my house waiting for me to open it. I responded, and I asked her what she wanted.
-Father, I want you to read me a blessing.' She looked very upset, she spoke abruptly. She did not tell me many things, she just asked me to pray for her. We went into the church and I read a blessing over her. She departed without saying a word, not giving me any other information about her life, nor explaining why she wanted me to read her a blessing. Three days later, she came to me again. She again asked me to pray for her. We entered the church, I read a blessing over her, and, when I finished, she asked me:
-Father, are you afraid of me?'
-No, I replied.
Her face was much calmer than before. She again departed without a word, with her head bowed down.
Three days passed and she once again came to me, late at night. When I read the blessing over her, I asked her to not come so late. She looked at me and I noticed her eyes were full of tears... She said to me:
-Father, I am a prostitute, this is my job. I do not move about during the day, because everyone knows who I am and I am ashamed to be seen in public. That's why I came and came again in the evenings. I come to you because I feel good when I enter the Church. I want to tell you that the first time I came here, I felt an inexplicable force inside me and that night I did not sin. I have nothing to do with the Church, nor am I Orthodox.
After that, she departed and I never saw her again. Sometimes I would ask the church guard if he had seen that young woman circulating in our city, and he always replied in the negative.
Six months passed, and one afternoon she came again, this time her body supported by a friend. She smiled when she saw me. I recognized her immediately. I brought her in, and made her lay down on a bench that we had in the Church. As her friend explained to me, she had asked for her help, saying:
-I want you to take me to the Orthodox Church, with the many ringing bells. I want you to take me there today, not tomorrow!
I looked at her and she said:
-Bless me, Father, bless me.
I immediately thought of something, so I asked her:
-Do you want me to baptize you, to become a Christian?
She replied:
-Yes, Father, you will give me much joy if you baptize me. God will help me.
I began the preparations for Holy Baptism. I also gave her a baptismal gown, and she put it on. After reading the Catechism, I baptized her, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, and I gave her the name Georgia. I also put a Cross around her neck; then I brought out the portion of Holy Communion that is kept in the Artophorion and she received Holy Communion. Her face was calm and happy.
She said:
-Father, I thank you very much. I give glory to God for this moment, which made me worthy to be baptized. The doctors were tired of my illness and they told me to go home. I beg God to forgive me for everything that I have done in my life. Please, father, I want to take this baptismal gown with me, so that they can dress me with it when I die. I do not want anything else!
I was amazed at hearing these words and gave her the gown. Her friend thanked me, she took Georgia and they departed. As they left, I looked at the time: it was 6:30 in the afternoon. Two hours later, I was informed that Georgia the prostitute had fallen asleep! God had called her into His heavenly Kingdom!
Our God is just. He had prepared her in a way that our mind cannot grasp. People spoke very badly of her; everyone regarded her as garbage - but not her Creator. We buried her, wearing her baptismal gown and the Cross that I put around her neck... How beautiful was our Georgia!
God’s notion of justice is one thing, and man’s idea of justice is entirely different. God does not desire the loss of a single soul, as long as they acknowledge Him as their Savior and Redeemer".
The event of Georgia’s baptism and her death was narrated to us in a letter by Father Chariton Musungayi from Goma in the Eastern Congo.
Source:
http://grforafrica.blogspot.com/2021/03/congo-prostitute-baptized-orthodox.html
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A letter from the first Taiwanese Orthodox Christian missionary Pelagia Yu to the Greek people
I am Chinese, born in Taiwan and my Christian name is Pelagia. I was a Protestant Christian, and it took me five years to become Orthodox. I love to read the Holy Bible and have all of its publications in the Chinese language.
I have visited Greece and discovered that it is a truly unique country. While travelling in your country, even before I arrived, on the plane I saw how different in temperament Greek people were, how cheerfully they conversed with each other, how they laughed and how they applauded the pilot after the landing, something unheard of for us Asians, who are more conservative and do not easily display emotion. I learnt after this experience that the expression of freedom requires passion and liveliness.
In Greece, I visited many churches, I participated in the Divine Liturgy, and when I received Holy Communion it reduced me to tears even though I did not understand the Greek language, because the Orthodox faith is the same, no matter what the language.
I would have liked to be born Greek, to have been born Orthodox, to have received Holy Communion and venerated holy icons from my years of infancy right up until my death.
I cry for me and my compatriots, because instead of Holy Communion, we eat and drink food sacrificed to idols.
I would have liked to be born Greek, so my ears may be filled with holy hymns.
I cry for me and my compatriots, whose ears are filled with the noise of sutras and the screeches of those who worship the idols.
I would have liked to be born Greek, so that I may smell the sweet aroma of incense.
I cry for me and my compatriots, who are constantly assaulted by the pungent smell of the smoke rising up from the sacrifices offered up to the idols.
I would have liked to be born Greek, so that my hands could touch the holy icons, the holy relics of the Saints and be filled with the love of Christ.
I cry for me and my compatriots, whose hands touch the idols and the things sacrificed to them, but who in reality are holding on to nothing.
I would have liked to be born Greek, so that I may light candles to Christ – not like here, where we burn money as an offering to the spirits.
I was searching for the Truth, using more than 30 different publications of the Holy Bible, which unfortunately, were all full of errors (translated by non-Orthodox).
I would have liked to be born Greek, so that I may read the Holy Bible in its original form!
I cry for me and my compatriots, because, although we have eyes, we are blind.
I would have liked to be born Greek, so that I may be able to see the grace of God all around me.
I cry for me and my compatriots, who are surrounded by temples dedicated to false gods.
Yes, I am Orthodox, but living in Taiwan, I have very limited opportunities to experience the Orthodox Christian way of life.
I cry for me, because I do not have the ability to show my compatriots the greatness of our faith. The people here want to see signs and miracles.
I cry for me and my compatriots, because we do not have the gift of hearing of and seeing so many miracles, so many holy words that you have seen and heard over 2000 years in Greece, and which you still see. Taiwan is not an Orthodox country, our feast days and holy days do not look at all like yours.
I am disappointed that in Greece, although you have so many beautiful mountains, you do not look after them, you burn them down. However, I am amazed that practically every mountain in Greece has at least one monastery. We have mountains filled with Buddhist temples and monasteries.
I would have liked to be born Greek, so that I may go and pray at an Orthodox monastery easily.
I cry for me and my compatriots. For the first time, I visited an Orthodox monastery dedicated to St John the Forerunner in Pelion. I travelled to Greece from Taiwan – 16 hours on the plane, a few hours on the train to Larisa and another hour with the monastery car, that was driven by one of the nuns.
I saw the ancient ruins of the Holy Monastery, I saw so many other places in Greece that have been abandoned and my heart bled. In Taiwan, we do not have such a wealth of archaeological artefacts, holy and beautiful places, but you do not appreciate them.
I cry that we do not have beautiful icons. I cry because I feel like Christ is weak and naked here.
Greeks, you think you are poor due to the economic crisis you are going through, but you do not know how truly rich you are.
Taiwan is a country with a huge amount of material development and progress, and yet it remains in the darkness of Satan and our spiritual life is empty.
In Greece, I saw a lot of people, especially on Sundays, drinking and celebrating and not going to church. But here in Taiwan our fellow citizens, mainly young people, even if they wanted to, find it impossible to come to church, because the only Orthodox church in the entire country is a small room on the 4th floor of a huge apartment building on the outskirts of Taipei. Many times, people cannot fit into the church and remain outside for the duration of the services.
My brothers and sisters in Greece, even though I am spiritually handicapped, I still have my legs active so that I can kneel before you and beg.
I pray that you consider me like the poor man Lazarus, so that you may throw to me some crumbs from the spiritual treasures you have, of the gifts you give to your churches, of the many little churches you build on all corners of your homeland.
Our Orthodox flock in Taiwan, as you know, is small – less than 100 people. We are not wealthy. We do not have the means to buy a decent place in the city that will be able to meet our needs for worship, catechism and teaching. Fr. Ionas conducts lessons on a regular basis, targeted mainly at the young people of our city and of course, open to whomever wants to come and meet us in person; those people that up until now have only had the opportunity to see the Orthodox Church in Taiwan through the Internet.
We do not ask for help to build an Orthodox church building here. It would cost millions. Please help us to buy a bigger place in the city centre, which we will convert into a church, for the sake of our nation, our brothers and sisters, who have never had the opportunity to hear about and know our Christ. We are a country of 23 million people! And yet we have need of your help.
My brothers and sisters in Christ, if the need arises, I will do whatever is in my power to repay a little of your love. I will do whatever is needed with all my heart and for the duration of my life.
I thank you. Forgive me.
Pelagia Yu.
Source: Translated by P.S.Z. This article was originally published in Greek in the Periodicαl “Agios Kosmas o Aitolos” (Issue 84 – first quarter 2011) and online at http://www.iersyn.gr/pelagias_letter.php (Tuesday 22nd February 2011).
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Japanese fighter baptized Orthodox Christian
September 29, 2012
From his childhood years he focused on the martial arts, which led him to study traditional Eastern religions, especially Buddhism.
After a period of many years, Tokashi Kishi came to know Christianity, the result of having read very many books. Christianity for Tokashi was another ethical teaching and appeared to him something like Buddhism.
After a visit to Russia he felt an inner desire to learn more about Orthodoxy. His desire to become a Christian became even stronger when he returned to Japan, where following his Catechism in the Japanese language, he accepted the Orthodox Church.
A short while ago he visited Russia again, and announced his desire to be baptized an Orthodox Christian. With the blessing of Metropolitan John of Belgorod, the Japanese martial arts fighter was baptized and received the name of Saint John the Baptist.
https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2012/10/japanese-fighter-baptized-orthodox.html
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2001: Abel-Tasos Gkiouzelis, Greece - My conversion from atheism and Protestantism ("No Name Church", "2x2's", "Workers & Friends") to Orthodox Christianity
Hi my dear friends! My name is Abel-Tasos Gkiouzelis (Abel-Anastasios Gkiouzelis) and I will tell you about my conversion from the Protestantism to Orthodox Christian Church (Eastern Orthodox Church).
I was born in Athens, Greece, in 1981 in the Protestantism, in the small Protestant sect of “Workers”, in the Worker Sect which also called “Church Without Name”, “Two by Two Church”, “Friends & Workers”, “The Truth”, “Christians”, “The Non-Denominational Church”, “Christian Convention Church”, “The Christian Church”, “No-Name Church”, “The Faith Missioners”, “Nameless House Church”, “The Damnation Army”, “Dippers”, “Go Preachers”, “The Jesus-Way”, “The New Testament Church”, “Pilgrims”, “The Reidites”, “Tramp Preachers”, “The Testimony”, “The Way”, and with at least 20 still concrete names, who was founded in Ireland on 1897 by William Irvine, Edward Cooney and Jack Carroll, for this reason also the are known and as “Cooneyites”, “Irvinites” or “Carrollites”.
Until 1997, 16 years old, Ι went regularly to meetings of “Workers” believing that this is the Truth. At home but also in entire building in which I stayed, often hosted all over the world preachers who call themselves “brothers and sisters Workers” and teaches that it is the first successors of the Apostles. Unfortunately, I could not imagine that there were “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves apostles of Christ”(2 Corinthians 11:13 ), which in deed make and women in “Apostles”, which is not testified in the New Testament.
In 1997, 16 years old, Ι started to find the meetings of “Workers” boring and so stopped going to them. The months went I began to feel hate for this “Christianity” those whom I had known since birth. My dislike for Christianity gave the baton to a complete disregard for God and indifference for God led me to atheism. And my soul, however, was actually empty. I felt a void that I wanted to fill ti with something. And I tried to fill my void with the rock music. I tried to imitate the life of hippies of the 1960s. I had the hippies as model in dressing, music and ideas. I was believing that there is not sin and that all permits. So, when the “Workers ” visited our house, I put deliberately hard rock music. I wanted with this way to show them that I had break away from their team. From their “Christianity”.
Deep my soul, however, I wished the faith in the God. But now I hated, I felt a repulsion for the Christianity. So I began to read for the ancient Egyptian religion of Pharaoh, placing in my room several Egyptian idols.
I had changed. I was not henceforth the “Worker meeting young boy”. The “meetings old boy” had changed. I tried to make new friends who would not know the old “meetings boy”. After one year, in 1998, 17 years old, I Knew experienced some Christians Orthodox persons, aged 20-21 years old, students in TEI-University of Athens, which is in the neighborhood, feeling very glad that I found this good friends company where one help and supports each other in difficult times. I was avoiding talk to them about God. I had enough discussions about God. The “Workers” occasionally asked me what I’m thinking about my future and jokingly, I replied that I want to be a hippie. And he tried to explain me what were the hippies and that this is not a good choice for the life of somebody.
Next year, in 7 September 1999 in Athens, where I lived, there was a great earthquake which was new to me. For several days were aftershocks and day by day more and accumulate within the fear of something worse leading evenings I could not, not to sleep, nor even to lie on the bed. One evening, while I was awake and the rest my family slept, thought to settle my library so as it turned from it all books and other things, deep in a shelf and powder I found in a small New Testament which he had given several years before.
I arranged the library and, as I had the whole evening in front of, I thought to read some New Testament, since not sleep nor did anything else. With that in spring in a random page and I began reading I was surprised. My heart was filled with calmness, courage and joy. All fright which I had accumulated in me from the first earthquake and repeated aftershocks disappeared immediately. Plus I do not feel fear of aftershocks. Immediately thought that God exists and that He just showed it to me!
The next morning I got happy phone my friends and I told them: “Do you know what to do to avoid fear the earthquakes? Still read the New Testament!”. They were surprised with what they hear. They never expected to hear something like that, because I never had left might appear my Christian side. So I began to believe again that God exists and Sunday for the first time after two years I went back to meetings of “Workers”. Everyone there was glad to see me and welcomed me with a warm “welcome”. So from then normally go again to meetings of “Workers” and particularly first of all.
One day I tried to talk to a girl person, called P., with whom were friends, about the meetings of “Workers” where I was going. I told her that every Sunday in the apartment building that I was living, we have some “meetings” where we read the Gospel and sung several Christian hymns suggesting her to come if she want it. P. with the thought that I found in some Christian sect that are now trying to muzzle proselytizing heresy, left shocked, turbulent, hurried, not knowing what to the fork and how to troubleshoot the call on heretical gatherings. And I could not understand why she left. I asked her the next day and received no answer.
One day P. asked me if I am baptized Orthodox Christian. I fell into embarrassment. I was afraid of saying the truth because I did not know how she felt. So I told her, “I don’t Know”. She replied me “You must Know if you are baptized Orthodox or not”. Cluttered and awkward again I said her that I would call in my house to ask about it… I asked my mother if I am baptized Christian Orthodox and she told me: “Don’t you know? What are you ask me? Of course you’re not”. I said to her, and she showed convulsed and embarrassed for once and formal learning that I’m not Orthodox Christian.
Next day my friends with a calm manner tried to talk to me, telling me that I was in the fallacy of heresy and the Christian Orthodox Church is the Truth of Christ. Then I stopped being the calm “boy of meetings” and I filled rage. I forgot that I discuss with someone who really loves me, with my friends, with-full of rage I began to speak against the Orthodox Church, accusing it of not properly clergy, not knowing that there are reverent and proper clergy. My friends embarrassed about the behavior of me and they stopped the discussion and they tried to calm down me.
The next day on when I had calmed down, my friends company from TEI-University tried again to explain to me that I am in heresy. I answered them again filled rage, talking them with hate about the Christian Orthodox Church, leading my friends company to grieve much for the bad behavior of me, for the bad behavior of their friend. I understand that I spoke badly but my ego will not let me admit it.
Next day, my friends again for other one time, with calm manner and love of Christ tried again to explain to me that I was in fallacy. But it was very difficult from them because they did not know the Holy Bible by heart. While they started with calmly about the Christian Orthodox Church and while I still full of rage prepared to respond to them I though in myself:
“I know that these persons really love me and they have demonstrated it too many times to various problems and difficulties in TEI (University) etc. Also never they have told me lies. Never they have derided me. Regarding the Christian Orthodox Church about they are trying to talk to me at this moment… I know nothing about the Christian Orthodox Church. How can I be sure how all that they say to my are wrong? First I must go to see what is the Christian Orthodox Church and after I will can to have a conclusion…”.
So, instead of angrily replied, I replied them with calm and I assured my friends that I will go to looking for where is the Truth, going to see what is the Christian Orthodox Church, too.
After few day, I decided to go alone in the Christian Orthodox Church of my neighborhood and while I stund from a Picture-Icon of Christ and Virgin Mary I maked (I was doing) my Cross and I said to Christ:
“My Christ I don’t Know if the place, the Orthodox Church, in which I find this moment is correct. Also I don’t Know if the way with which this moment I pray, that I pray with Your Picture-Icon and that I make-doing my Cross, is correct. However, I Know that You say in the Holy Bible, “If someone knocks Me I will open him” give me an answer where is the Truth. Is it in the “Workers” or in the Christian Orthodox Church? And if You give me an answer I will not deny You! And before you see to me where is the Truth I will not discuss with any Christian Orthodox clergyman in order to explain to me what the Orthodox Church teaches or any “Worker” in order to explain to me what the “Workers” are believe. I will wait to see me where is the Truth. Please, answer me where is the Truth and I will not deny You! Amen”.
From that day my friends didn’t told me again about the Christian Orthodox Church. Some day just told me that I will must make-doing my cross whenever I passed in front of a Church. And I accepted. And I started to go alone on a Sunday the Orthodox Liturgy prayed sincerely to see God ‘s Truth and one Sunday alternately I went in meetings of “Workers” praying again warmly to see me our God where is the Truth. Also, each night knelt to bed before lying down, praying again to God to see me the Truth. My friends did not tell me anything on this matter, but they knew from me that I was going to the Christian Orthodox Liturgy, too.
One day, early in 2000, offer my friends if I wanted to go one day excursion to Aegina Island (Greece) to visit the Monastery of St. Nectarios. And I answered “Yes, let’s go”, thinking that it had nothing waning.
Over the monastery of St. Nectarios I asked them to stay a little lonely. I took a walk and I went to the place where was the tomb of St. Nectarios. I saw some persons to kneel in front of the tomb of St. Nectarios and to prayed. It seemed strange to me, but I did impressions.
When empty the small chapel with the tomb of St. Nectarios and I stayed alone I knelt and said to the Saint: “St. Nectarios, if you are live in the heaven with God and hear me and if the Christian Orthodox Church is the Truth, help me and show me…”.
After a few minutes I got up and went to meet my friends who waited for me at the exit of the monastery. Just my friends saw me, they thinking that something awful happens to me. And with interest asked me, “Are you Ok? You somehow appear… Does you happens something good or something ugly?”. Full query, I ensured them that all it’s well, realising however that I felt a calm which rather it they had distinguished my friends who uneasy asked me if I am fine of not. I ensured them one more time that all it is a joy and that only that I done it was prayer as doing all there in the Monastery. The calm which I felt I didn’t interpreted and I didn’t reported it to my friends. Just I knew that I had felt it.
The next day when we came back in Athens I called P. to tell her my impressions from the monastery of St. Nectarios of Aegina Island. Before I called her I knew very well that the day before we had gone to St. Nectarios of Aegina. When, however, I called P. I said her that we had gone to Monastery of St. Andrew (Apostle Andrew) of Aigina! But there isn’t “St. Andrew of Aigine”. There is only St. Apostle Andrew. And there is not any Monastery with the name of St. Andrew in Aegina.
My friend P. thought that I was made (that I was doing) jokes and she was wondering how can I don’t remember where we had gone just the day before. I had completely forgotten the name of St. Nectarios and I insisted that we go to the St. Andrew of Aegina. When P. reminded me that we had gone to the St. Nectarios of Aegina and not to the St. Andew, immediately I remembered where we had gone and with amazement how could I forget I said her, “Oh, yes, I’m sorry”.
The months are going on and I was going one Sunday to the meetings of “Workers” and one Sunday alternately to the Liturgy of Orthodox Church, praying always hotly to the God to answer me where is Truth. All these months I and my friends from TEI-University did not have any discussion about where is the Truth. They did not wanted to pressure me. Simply they prayed for me knowing that no prayer does not go lost. Even smallest.
In the summer of 2000 my friends company of TEI-University, offer me if I wanted to going to Church of the Virgin Mary in Tinos Island, Greece. I accepted thinking again that it had nothing waning. In Tinos Island (Greece) stayed for two days because it was far away. The first day we visited the church-chapel of the Virgin Mary in Tinos Island that there is the miraculous Icon of Virgin Mary. I went front to the Icon of Virgin Mary where she has the Christ in her arms and with heartfelt prayer I said: “My Jesus Christ, show me where is the Truth and I will not deny You!”.
After, while we left from the church-chapel of Virgin Mary, my friends stopped in a bench outside from the Church that there sold small candles, Icons of Virgin Mary, books etc. and I was waitting them. Someone from my friends told me: “If you want buy a small Icon of Virgin Mary”. So I bought one small icon of Virgin Mary.
In the evening we went to our rooms at the hotel and I put the small icon into a sachets on the nightstand and light up a candle wax. I lied in bed and fell asleep without even noticing. In the middle of the night I woke suddenly startled and immediately I saw that the candle towards the bedside table had melted and the wooden nightstand catched fire (it was on fire). I got up quickly and awestruck with a cloth, put out the fire. Since then I looked at the sachets the small icon on the nightstand, I thought that possibly the Virgin Mary help me to wake up so suddenly and promptly anticipating the fire before it spread further.
The next day when we came back in Athens, I hung the small icon of Virgin Mary on a wall inside my room. I didn’t believe yet that the Christian Orthodox Church is the Truth Church of Christ, but something told me that Virgin Mary had helped me to woke up in time before to expand the fire. And for these reason I decided to put the small icon of Virgin Mary in my room. So I waited for with distress how would react my parents when they will see the small Orthodox Icon. After some hours at evening my parents were saw the small Icon and for first time they occupied that their son (me) relates himself with the Christian Orthodox Church. They told me with anger and neurously to throw out and I tried to explain them that I didn’t doing something wrong-bad and that I has every right to have in my room everything that I want. The troubles were continued on a daily basis. For the fear to they throw the small Icon of Virgin Mary when I was absent from the house was taking with me the small Icon and when I came back I was hanging it again.
One night my mother insisted that I throw the small icon. She said to me that “if the icon of Virgin Mary tomorrow morning it will here in your room I will throw it”. And, this time, I told her calmly “You can doing what ever the God illuminated you… “, thinking to myself that if God accepts Orthodoxy as Truth He illuminated her not to throw it. And if God accepts the “Workers” as Truth illuminated her to throw it. And so I understand what the Truth is.
When the next morning I woke up at 7:00 to go to TEI-University, I saw that my mother went to her job and she hadn’t throw away the small Icon of Virgin Mary. I felt very glad that she didn’t throw the small Icon but… I was not yet isconvinced about where is the Truth. So, I left from my home to go in University. I left the small Icon in the wall. The midday I came back in my house, and I realized astonished that the Icon was absent. My brother and my sisters came back at home and someone of them was hiding the Icon under a book. I fount it and I didn’t tell them something about the small Icon of Virgin Mary.
At 14:00 I was distressed because I could not unterstand where is it the Truth and I began to prepared in to meeting at 15:00 my friend P., in the centre of Athens, in Plaka, for a time-walk. But when I was absent my mother at 15:30 would returned from her job in the house. And I thought if it would be supposed to left the icon hung in my room or I would must be took it with me from the fear to throw my mother the Icon as to told me previous evening. So I decided to left the small Icon in the house and whether that will happened (if she throw the Icon or not) that will was a proof about where it is the Truth. With the hope that the God answer me where is the Truth, I maded my Cross, I kissed the small icon of Virgin Mary and I left it hung in the wall.
So I met in Plaka of Athens my friend P. and as we walked at some point P. said me that she did not feel well and that dizzy. She had indeed pale and I told her to sit down on a bench that was near there and I went to buy her an orange juice. As I put my hand in my pants pocket to pull out money to pay, knowing that in my pocket I had only money and keys, I thought it catch a shaped object “Q”, that is object with like crick. Over the agony, I paid with no attention, I paid the orange juice and gave it to P. and she drank it and she assembled.
They continued to walk in the Plaka of Athens, and after half an hour, whilst just walked in silence for something specific, I wondered to myself if it was my idea of what I looked it catch in my pocket half an hour ago shaped “Q “, like something with crick and spontaneously I put my hand in my pocket to municipalities if indeed caught something or was just my idea. Surprised to discover that in my pocket was the small icon of Virgin Mary, and “Q” which in shape was caught was the crick that the small icon has to hang!
Immediately I told to P. what happened but she did not believe me. She told me whether I took the small icon with me like other times and that I did not remember it. And I replied her that I took it this time with me and that even left the small icon at home as a criterion to where is the Truth. My friend P. didn’t believe me and she said to me: “Ok, when you come back at home, you hang the small icon again to see what your parents tell you”. So the afternoon as I came back home I was hang the small icon and when my parents saw it created a fuss. The evening before lying down to sleep, to corp the icon for fear my parents throw away.
The next morning I left for TEI (University) and I took together the small icon and when I returned home in the evening I hang it again in the wall of my room.
When my mother saw it, made a great fuss and she said me with angry: “I told you that if you would hang the icon again I throw it. But you hung it and I take it and after you went and took it from me, inside my bathrobe”.
When I hear these words, I was surprised. I know that something supernatural had happened, but in any case I don’t expect that will confirm it and my mother. And I told her exactly what had happened, stressing that I didn’t took the icon from her bathrobe, but miraculously founded in my pocket. My mother quickly went to my room and corp the small icon by opening the windows to be discarded. I run anticipating before she throw it.
With all these I just believed that our God showed me that the Christian Orthodox Church is the Truth. So I decided to talk with an Christian Orthodox clergyman-priest. I went in the Orthodox Church of my neighborhood and I spoke with priest Father Andrew, narrating to him the whole story of how I believed to Cristian Orthodox Church. Father Andrew listened to me carefully and he said to me in the end: “You have every right to believe what you want but because you live with your parents in the same house, is better to you have the small icon with you together, not to sag it for not having troubles at home. And in the future, God first, in your home you will bore what you want”.
Since, I had the small icon with me together and I went every Sunday only to the Orthodox Church.
My father before married and maked family had become “Worker” with the result can be interpreted the Holy Bible in the Protestant way, ie misinterpreting and omitting several passages hagiography (verses). So he called me with a view to demonstrate how through Holy Bible proves that the Orthodox Church is not the Truth. I had hoped that I could be proved otherwise. But I knew nothing of anti-heretical hagiographic (verses from Holy Bible) argument.
My father began arguing that the holy icons are idolatry and I answered him that it is not idolatry because we don’t worship the wood or the pictured saints and the veneration that is honorable and not worship, something with which my father did not agree. Then my father began to show various hagiographic (verses) without which he argue was against holy confession, Priesthood, fasting and, as well, against the Saints and the Virgin Mary. Unfortunately, although I know that it is not right, I didn’t not know how to prove it hagiography (verses), preferring not to answer at all.
The days went by and every day my father asking me to show me and other hagiographic passages (verses) which, as mistakenly claimed, proves that the Orthodox Church is wrong. Sometimes I went to talk with him, because he insisted and sometimes not, because I know that my father misunderstand the Holy Bible and that I was not at a position to prove it because I didn’t knew about Holy Bible. One morning as I was leaving for TEI-University, I was stopped by my father to show me something in the Holy Bible. Began to bring me back argument against Orthodoxy and this time he managed to convince me that Orthodoxy is located in fallacy.
So I convinced that Orthodoxy is wrong heading into TEI-University thinking if I should made to the company that eventually became convinced from his father that the Orthodox Church is wrong. So, under punching my hand and thinking that I agree with my father that Orthodoxy is false, I decided that I will tell it to them.
In TEI-University I met my friend P. and I told her that I was convinced from my father that Orthodoxy is wrong. So P. without anger but with emphasis and tears in her eyes said to me: “Are you forget everything that Virgin Mary did to you? Are you forget everything?”.
When I listened these words severally mentally shaken and immediately I said to myself: “She has right. I asked Christ to show me where is the Truth and He showed me, knowing that I will be continuous war must remain solid and will come also the time during which learn and how through Holy Bible proves that the only Truth is the Christian Orthodox Church”. So when I returned at noon in my home, with these same words that I said to myself, I said to my father confessing that the Orthodox Church is the Truth regardless at the moment I do not know how to prove it by Holy Bible.
The days passed and I keeps going steadily every Sunday to the Orthodox Liturgy and I felt to grow up in more a leaf in favor of the Orthodox Church. So one day I said to Father Andrew that I would like to be baptized Christian Orthodox. Fr. Andrew answered me that “To be baptized Christian Orthodox you should really believe rather than at the barrel e.g whether to marry an Orthodox girl or for other reasons”. I assured him that I really believe that the Orthodox Church is the Truth and that the Orthodox Church is the Church that founded by Christ and I wants with my heart to come in His Church and I don’t doing it for other reasons”. So, Fr. Andrew said me that we should find a godfather.
Unfortunately, months went by, and we didn’t find a godfather. Father Andrew wanted to baptism me but he was told me that he wanted to find a trusted person for godfather and I answered him: “God will find someone”.
One morning in late March 2001, I passed outside a church-chapel near the neighborhood and thinking that it has ever been in this church decided to lit a small candle. The small church was dedicated to St. Apostle Andrew. As prayed into the small church the vicar priest of the church, Father Emmanuel asked me: “Who are you? Where are you from? Are you from this neighborhood? We haven’t seen again here”. I surprised, I took his blessing (I kissed him hand) and I told him that I’m a neighbor. After I told him my story, about how I believed and that I want to be baptized Orthodox. Fr. Emmanuel surprised looked the sacristan-woman who was also there and told her that if I desire they can indeed baptized me there. Then Fr. Emmanuel explained to the resurrection that I be baptized must truly believe and not barrel for any other reason. And I assured him that every day more and a leaf growing in favor of Orthodoxy.
So, by the Grace of God after two weeks of catechism, on 7 April 2001, Saturday of Lazarus I baptized Christian Orthodox, with godfather the son of Fr. Emmanuel, in this church of St. Apostle Andrew.
On the occasion that I was baptized in a chuch (chapel) of St. Apostle Andrew and “St. Andrew of Aegina” which I had said instead of “St. Nektarios”, I thought that maybe St. Nektarios had helped me to believe and be baptized, as I requested him. So, I bought a book of his life in order to ask more about his life. As I read surprised found that the folk name of St. Nectarios, before he became a monk was “Anastasios”. Like me. And after when the St. Nectarios became a monk named “Lazarus”. And I baptized “Saturday of Lazarus” (feast day of St. Lazarus). And that then St. Nectarios became a priest named “Nektarios”.
Almost immediately I remembered an incident from the time when I was at school, about 1993, 12 years old. In the time of Gymnastics I sat with peers who were discussing something and I heard them without myself taking part in the discussion. Suddenly, without myself to the will, inconsiderate, I switches them from the discussion by asking so spontaneously: “Hey Guys, how about we become when we will are 20 years old?”.
My classmates started laughing about this question and I realizing that I told something “wrong” by talking and I tried to fix it by saying “uh… e… I say how I am when I’m 20 years old”. Realizing, however, that I said something irrelevant to discussion I didn’t asked again.
Just now, after 8 years I found that those which I said at the time in high school was not an ordinary recklessness. Because on 31 March 2001 I was 20 years old (I was born 31/3/1981) and after one week, on 7 April 2001, I baptized Christian Orthodox.
I thought all of them can be simple coincidences and that really St. Nektarios had helped me to believe in the real Truth. In to the unbroken apostolic succession Orthodox Church. In the Church founded by Christ. And for which he said “I build my Church, and the gates of hades will not prevail against it”(Matthew 16:18 ). I remembered that one of the names of “Worker Sect” is “The Truth”. But the “Truth” of “Workers” is false. It’s a lying “Truth”.
With the Grace of God, I continued to damage the spiritual life in the Orthodox Church, in real Truth. However, the devil did not remain inactive and before spending two months from my baptism, the devil began to sow heretics thoughts against the embassy of the Saints. So I started thinking why would I pray to the Saints and not only pray directly to Christ. Although I know that these thoughts were heretical and wrong, I could not with anything to get it out of my mind. I kicked again and again. I felt clearly that the devil makes war of putting all these thoughts, but I could not doing nothing. So, I asked for help from God.
On the afternoon of 8 May 2001 while I was in the Church in the evening prayer of the feast of St. Christopher and continues all these heretical thoughts, when I saw the icon-image of St. Christopher started patiently enter thoughts against this particular Saint. The icon-picture of St. Christofer to pass a river, having at the back of Christ as a child. I could not understand how this is done, from the moment the St. Christopher lived in the 3rd century A.D..
At the end of the Vespers a lady gave to me an identical plasticized small icon of St. Christopher saying me that the St. Christopher is a patron of drivers. I was perplexed and asked her to learn about the life of St. Christofer. She told me that he was idolatry to originate cannibal tribe, but he was very good and virtuous. He was big with great physical strength and so very often help disability, elderly and children to cross a raging river much of the area where they lived. One time as he tried to lift a child to spend it on the opposite bank found surprised that despite his power, he could not lift it. After he was revealed that this child was the Christ, and appeared to congratulate him for a job well help and love which offers fellows. And then St. Christopher believed in Christ, was baptized and became worthy to Witness and now he is a Saint Martyr who killed for Christ.
I was glad for the life of St. Christopher. The heretical thoughts continued and I begged St. Christopher to help me to stop the bad thoughts. I did not like to bore thoughts against the Saints. I feel that someone else whispering bad thoughts constantly in my mind. And I realized that he was the devil. While the bad thoughts like “Why do you pray to the Saints and not only to Christ?”, continued, and I could not stop them, begging God to help me.
This time (2001) I went to TEI-University and I worked in McDonalds (2000-2002) of the centre of Athens, too.
So, in May 2001, after a few days, when I finished from my work-McDonalds at noon and I led for my home with my car, I realized that from fatigue sleepy and my eyes closed. As I tried to hold open unwisely thought the Avenue of Athens-Corinth from which I was going is a straight and that we would be able to keep my eyes open and while running at higher speed to be faster, I would arrive in a fourth at my home well. As I started to cross the avenue and increasing speed to reach home sooner, my eyes closed and hastily exposures. I opened the windows of car and the music radio.
I thought it was a quarter that should have patience and barrel would reach. As I began to drive in the bridge of Kifisos I heard a loud collision while I thought someone crashed while I opened my eyes, which I were not understood that it was closed and I saw broken panes. And then I saw that I had crashed myself. Immediately I came out and I was surprised when I saw where I was. Moving up the bridge of Kifisos without realizing I had fallen asleep and crossed the entire bridge asleep, and that part of the avenue after the bridge crashed in cars that were stopped In first traffic light after the bridge and causing pile. The frond of my car crashed very match but had not anything happening to myself.
So, straight my mind went to the St. Christopher and generally the embassies of the Saints. Immediately I realized that I had helped by St. Christopher and that Christ accepts our pray to the Saints, who after death is not in a stupor as they say the heretical, but also they live after death, they can hear, they can see, they can understand and help people. Like the Prophet Moses had died though (Deuteronomy 34:5) he appeared in the Transfiguration of Christ (Matthew 17:3-4 ) and as though Abraham who also died in about 1800 B.C., from heaven “saw it and was glad”(John 8:56) (he saw the Incarnation of Christ). And so by Grace and the help of God completely dissolved from my mind the heretical thoughts against the Saints.
After, I began to feel the desire to get to know other young persons that are conscious Orthodox Christians inside the Church and I began to pray to God to send me some persons. And God answered immediately with a reply which He had “preparation” many years ago. Our family dentist who had come in my baptism and has extended family, said me that her children go to a priest in the center of Athens, who engaged in anti-heretical and apologetic work of the Church and that every Sunday makes speeches on youth in style Q & A (questions and answers), where they were asking questions about faith and disbelief and he answered to them. And she offer to go there, me too. And she told me that I will have the chance to meet a lot of new young persons from the Orthodox Church and yet I can ask the priest various questions that I have been on the Orthodox Faith.
So, on June 2001 I went to meet the priest who called Father John. Father John asked me to tell him my story of how I believed and was baptized and happily I recounted his. When I finished my narration Fr. John said to me: “You believed in a miracle. But that the Orthodox Church is the only Truth is not only established through the wonders but also only from Holy Bible. Because and the devil can doing wonders. And Buddhists do wonders and many others with the power of the devil doing wonders. But God loves you and He maked a wonder in your life to believe Him”.
I surprised with what I heard and I asked Fr. John to explain me that reveals this up during the Holy Bible. Also wondered how my parents just read Holy Bible and being outside the Church and Fr. John replied that they misunderstand the Holy Bible.
Then he mentioned the words of Christ Himself who said of his Church that it will establish and will not be interrupted when your work forever and ever: “I will build my Church, and the gates of hades will not prevail against it”(Matthew 16:18). Roman Catholics were detached from the body of the Church in 1054 AD and the Protestants left from Roman Catholics on 1517 AD. And then as now established at least 33,000 different Protestant heresies where one does not accept the other and all claims that the Church had stopped Her work and its restarted when themselves founding the protestants sects. So the words of our Lord “build my Church, and the gates of hades will not prevail against it”(Matthew 16:18 ) match only the Christian Orthodox Church. The Christian Orthodox Church is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Christ and His Apostles on 33 A.D.. Also, the Christian Orthodox Church has the Apostolic Succession.
The Christian Orthodox Church is also called Eastern Orthodox Church, Orthodox Catholic Church, Orthodox Church and Orthodoxy. (But, be careful: Christian Orthodox Church is not same with Coptic Orthodox Church, Eastern Catholic Churches, Church of Armenia, Oriental Orthodoxy and Eastern Christianity, that they are also called Monophysites, Copts and Chalkedonians and they are heretical false sects because they left from Christian Orthodox Church on 451 A.D.)
On September 2001 I started going in speeches for young people which they have Fr. John in style A&Q. I asked many questions, quite benevolent wonder which I had on how all those who teach the Orthodox Church, having abolished the Protestants like Holy Icons, Virgin Mary, Priesthood, Confession etc., it turns up during the Holy Bible.
Fr. John answered to me many questions but because I had a lot of questions told me to come after speaking to his office to give me an anti-heretical book. And he gave me one that automatically negate the heretical protestants teachings with only hagiographies passages (verses) from Holy Bible. So I read the anti-heretical this book and God blessed me to believe the Christian Orthodox Church from the Holy Bible, too.
After a few months, on 2002, I learned that Fr. John want to build a monastery in Attica, Greece, which will deal divine confession and apology against heresies, atheists, buddhists etc. with anti-heretical books. And Ι said to Fr. John that I want abided by his monastery.
So, on 29 November 2002, the eve of St. Apostle Andrew, I came officially escorted of Fr. John, and I waiting and making daily prayer to God given us a place monastery.
In the summers of 2002 and 2003, I worked with my father as painters. These two summers I had gone with my father to Mykonos Island (Greece) to paint a new hotel. There I asked as to whether there is some local Saint and I learned about St. Manuel of Mykonos, who was married in Mykonos and he was martyred in Chios Island, Greece. The memory day of St. Manuel is on 15 March (+1792).
So, I asked Fr John to pray every day to St. Manuel of Mykonos and he said me: “Ok, pray to help us to find a place for our monastery”. So I prayed to Christ, to Virgin Mary and St. Manuel of Mykonos to help us to find a place to build monastery.
After 5 years, with God’s Grace we found a temporary place for Monastery and on 25 November 2007 I went to lived there. And to show me our God, for another one time, that the Saints of God helps us and that we must invoke them without any hesitation on 15 March 2008, the feast day of St. Manuel of Mykonos, I was tonsured an Orthodox monk with the name “Abel” that gave me the Bishop of Piraeus in honor of St. Forefather Abel (Adam’s son in Old Testament) noting surprised that on 29 November where I desided on 2002 to be a monk, is the feast day of another Saint who called St. Abel of Valaam, Russia (+1831).
After 6 years, on 2013, we find a place from monastery and now we went there.
Every day and every night I pray for all the people to coming inside the House of Christ, to the Orthodox Christian Church (Eastern Orthodox Church).
I wish you all the best!
Abel-Tasos Gkiouzelis
Email: gkiouz.abel@gmail.com
Feel free to email me...!
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Conversions of murderers to Holy Confession
The late Preacher and Father Confessor Archimandrite Venedictos Petrakis (+1961) reports:
"Through the preaching and the Sacrament of Confession at least ten planned murders were prevented!
One of those who renounced his murderous plans, as soon as he came out of the church after confession, began to say to those who were in the square: 'Everyone, run to Father Confessor to make you human!' He himself, not only did he disown murder and forgive his enemy, but he also managed to bring him to confession.
In another village, an old woman whose only son had been murdered, as soon as she came out of the church after confession rushed to the shop, approached the murderer of her son and forgave him, and she even urged him to confess! The murderer, deeply moved, proceeded to the Sacrament of the Holy Confession in tears!
In another village of the same area, some people who had come under orders and decision to execute me, also repented and confessed...".
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The conversion of Fr. Nikolaοs Loudovikos from atheism to Orthodoxy with the help of Saint Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia, Athens & Oropos, Greece (+1991)
Fr. Nikolaos Loudovikos, Greece:
When I was 20 years old, I was an anarchist...
I had long hair, I had earrings and I was tyrannical to
spiritual people, my teachers...
They sent me to a Christian boarding school and I caused havoc...
One day, at the urging of an uncle, I decided to visit Saint Porphyrios...
I thought I would meet a naive old man, but I was quickly proved wrong...!!!!!
As soon as the Saint Porphyrios saw me he said:
"Ηey you, you want to believe, but your strong mind won't let you...!
But one way or another, know that He loves you, Christ is waiting for you and will win you over one day...!!!
Hey, come tomorrow and we'll talk !"
The next day I went to talk to him...!
As soon as the Saint Porphyrios saw me he said:
"Hey you, do you like poems? Because I'm a poet, too.
Shall we go to the forest to recite to you?"
He took me by the hand and started reciting poems...!
As I listened, I burst into tears and cried. Why...?
Because the poems that the Saint Porphyrios was reciting were my poems...!!!
The ones I had written and hidden in a notebook, believing that one day I would publish them...
I was shocked!
INS
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A young man in Athens, Greece, in 1963, during the summer months was tempted in the flesh beyond his strength. He made up his mind to put an end to the struggles of abstinence, for as he said he could no longer bear the weight of the flesh. He thought of his Elder, the Elder Amfilochios Makris of Patmos Island, Greece, but he was too far away to help him. He left his aboad and headed towads the center of Athens. It was getting dark. The journey took an hour. He kept on praying but the flame of the flesh would not cool down. So, the young man who had never been to the cinema before, said to himself: "Let me start with an X- rated movie", which was then showing at the Rex cinema. He bought a ticket and stood near the advertising posters. Inexperienced as he was, he understood almost nothing. As he squinted to look, he turned his face away in case someone he knew saw him. And there beside him was the figure of Elder Amfilochios with tears in his eyes! That's where it all stopped. He returned home and wept bitterly like Peter.
INS.
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The conversion of an Australian man from Hinduism to Orthodoxy with the help of Saint Gabriela Papagiannis missionary of India, from Greece (+1992)
Saint Gabrielia Papayanni (+1992), missionary of India:
«Once, in India, there was a very great "master", of those so called guru (at the time I was working in the small hospital that belonged to his ashram - his "monastery"). One day, a very cute 26 year old youngster from Australia came to the ashram, having brought with him a big box. He showed up where this great "master" was, surrounded by people who heard him speak... When this young man entered, he blushed with joy and excitement, looking at the "master" the way we look at, if I may say, the icon of a Saint! So after the "master" took a good look at him, he said: "So you're the one who came from Australia? What have you brought us?" The poor guy could not speak from excitement, and yet the other one insisted: "Did you bring us bananas? Did you bring us fruit? Did you bring us sweets? What did you bring us?" The poor guy began to open the box and took out papers and more papers and more papers... "Hey, show us now what you're going to give us." In the end he took out tapes and the tape recorder he had brought to record the voice of this great "master"! "Oh!.... Is that it? Is that all you've got? Go show him his room!".
So the poor guy went to his room, sat down, locked himself in and didn't want to come out at all. He was shocked! He expected to see a man who had almost deified him, and now he saw him waiting for bananas and fruit like a commoner, finally telling him to go to his room since he hadn't brought anything... But the poor guy had come to capture the guru's voice and send it back to Australia (... for everyone to admire his achievement, because of course, in all this there was a little bit of ego...) The young man, as you may have gathered, was in real shock. The next day they tried to get him out of his room to go and listen to the teachings, but he did not want to.
One day he told me: "You tell me that when God wills something, it is done, and that when you leave yourself free in God's hands, He does it for you, and that the only way to reach God is through Christ, who takes you by the hand and educates you and takes you where you need to go; and all you have to do is leave yourself in His hands." "Yes," I said to him, "as long as you really let go of yourself in Him!" Another day he said to me: "You say that we must leave ourselves completely in God's hands, and then... Fine! So let's go the two of us with no money to a mountain, to an unknown place, to see... Will we find food and shelter, as you say?" "No question about it! Of course we will!" "So you're sure?" "I am sure." "If I see this, I will believe in Christ and give up all the "masters" and all the gurus."
But my children, the Bible says "do not tempt the Lord your God, and do not seek a sign". But then I had such a longing and certainty that this young man, having been born in a Christian country, must not lose his Christ. What could happen now? So I said to him, "Yes, we will go." We only had enough money for the train and for sleeping the first night; very little, a rupee (something like a hundred drachmas). The next day we would wait and see what would happen. I was so sure! It was as if I was going to a familiar place... Well, this young man had brought some fruit and we took it along with us.
The next day in the morning, we set off for the mountain. We climbed and climbed and climbed... And it was noon. At one point we sat down on a hill to rest. He said to me: "No miracle yet." I said, "You're in too much of a hurry. I told you that tonight, God willing, we will find a place to stay." "Fine", he said. But not before long the sun began to set, for we were on a mountain where it was setting fast. We looked down into the valley, and to tell you the truth, I was beginning to think that somehow... the miracles I was expecting were a little late in coming, but God knows best ... He turned to me and said: "And now what do you say?" "I say tonight we'll sleep where God wants us to sleep." And not before long, as dusk approached, just as the sun was about to set, we saw a tropical hat slowly coming up from below the hill, then a face, and then two Indian figures. Soon we saw that the face with the tropical hat was a woman wearing glasses; she seemed to be old and European. The two Indians were young girls. Gradually their faces were coming up until they finally reached us.
"Good evening." "Good evening." "Where are you coming from"? "We're coming from down there." "Where are you going?" "To friends". He glared at me. He might have wondered whether I was lying. "So where are you from?" "I'm from Greece and the young man's from Australia." She said:"And I'm from Holland. I was brought up in America and these two Indian girls you see, are two of the six daughters I've adopted here and I've helped them study nursing. What do you do for a living?" I said: "I teach physiotherapy and now I've just finished from a hospital." "Ah! God sent you. Are you perhaps free to come to our house tonight? These two girls of mine are on leave for a month. Maybe you'd like to teach them a little..." I said, "I'd love to... But I have this young man with me and we were going..." "I've also adopted a boy. They'll share his room, and tonight we'll all be a family." "Thank you and God for bringing us together. The young man from Australia, indeed, was completely dumbfounded...
God had worked his miracle and I was elated! At that time I had an indescribable excitement. India was my great adventure with the Faith of God, for I had gone there without knowing anything, in a foreign country and in a foreign language. Anyway, we arrived at their little house in the mountains. It was a nice house on a hill. She told me how she had left for other places when she was young, how she had lived there for so many years, and that it was only her friends who supported her because she didn't belong to any organization and all that, and how God had blessed her.
That night, the Australian guy was so moved that he told me with tears in his eyes "My sister Lila, sit down at the piano and let's play all the Christmas songs now! Christ has just been born in me!" And I sat at the piano and we started singing in high summer all the Christmas songs! And the girls started singing with their mother and her son and everybody... And this guy, Alan, was literally in the bliss of God.
But you see, God performs his miracles as and when He needs to. Because this young man was so misguided in other directions and because God wanted him, He did all of this for us. And I was so sure that he couldn't be lost like that, at 26, with all these workouts that cause squint and all sorts of other things, when they are not... Anyway. We stayed there for a fortnight. I showed the girls what they wanted, and then he went back to Australia. This lady, the missionary, had invited me every summer ever since and I used to spend some time with her. They never forgot that story, especially when I told them what happened to that young man later because his story wasn't over...
Another year had passed, and another, and he was back to the workouts and the others there. I had gone far away, up a mountain and no one could find me. As he told me later, he remembered what I had told him and thought: "Just as Sister Lila says yes when she is invited, so will I say yes this time and wherever it takes me", for again he wasn't happy there. So he got up and went to the place where he thought he would find me, where we first met. But they told him "She won't be coming back this year, she's up on the mountain." Now look at this coincidence! Someone came to where I was and said to me "You know, Alan from Australia is in that place." "Oh", I thought, "I'll send him a letter to come here", not knowing the recent troubles he had gone through... And as he was waiting for an invitation from someone else for a big change in his life or I don't know what, here comes my letter. It was the only invitation he got!
Back on the road, he came to that mountain where there were no Europeans, only he and I. So he came and said to me: " What happened then was good and holy. But in the meantime, I saw a lot of things not being done the way you said. That is why I came back to India, in search of the Truth." "But I've already told you, my boy, that the Truth is not a theory, it is Christ who said, 'I am the Truth'. What else do you want? Do you want more miracles?" "But you say you always live in miracles." "Yes, I live in miracles. The fact that you are alive and came back, that we have our eyes and our feet, all this is a miracle. You see where I work with the lepers? You see the blind? You see all these sick people here? Why them and not us? Did you ever ask that? By Grace, we have it all! By Grace! In spite of all our sin! By Grace we are as we are. By the Blood of Christ's sacrifice! Don't you understand that? And as we were talking, an old man came crying... "Run, my boy is seriously ill in the hospital. Come on!" And off we went. This little village was very small and the hospital was not very... The doctor said to me: "You've come to see the boy. He fell from a scaffold and it seems to me that his spine is broken and that he will be dead by morning." We saw the boy. He was eighteen years old. I was so moved to see this boy that I started to stroke his forehead a little, and I said to his father :"No. God's miracles are great! The boy will live. Don't worry."
"Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here I am." (Isaiah 58:9)
At that moment, the boy opened his eyes a little. His father expected him to die. But when he heard that his boy could live, he turned to me and said: "Hey, if my boy is going to live, give me some money to go eat, because I'm hungry." The instinct of self-preservation! I said: "I don't have any money, this guy will give it to you", and the young man from Australia gave it to him. We left. The next morning he said to me: "Let's go and see if the boy is still alive." When we got there, we found the doctor at the door and he said: "I'll tell you one thing, you'll be surprised. Nature sometimes plays games like this! The boy is well and this morning he set off on foot with his father to their village, ten miles away." Hey... The Australian guy this time almost fell down! He was really overwhelmed. He turned to me and said: "Now, I believe in the omnipotence of God. I believe in Christ! I am a Christian in my soul! I'm going back to Australia! I have found what I was looking for!"
The young man left... The years went by. I left India, too... I went to Bethany, became a dokime and one day I got a letter from this young man again, saying: "My great pride has brought me to despair. Three young women almost drowned while swimming, and because I was a very good swimmer, I jumped into the water and rescued them. But I had such a great pride that I loudly announced it to the whole world, and in the end I lost my mind and they put me in a mental hospital. I got out afterwards, they said I'm fine, but I don't feel good. Now what do you advise me to do?" At that time I had met Father Lazarus, the English Orthodox in India. I said to him, "Go back to India. But this time go straight to Father Lazarus, I beg you." I sat and wrote to Father Lazarus. The young man went to him...
When Father Lazarus wrote to me, he told me that for a whole year the young man was just looking at him. He attended the Divine Liturgy every day but didn't speak to him at all. Ηe was an enigma. One morning he said to him: "Father, I've known Sister Lila for so many years, but she never asked me whether I had been baptized, nor if I was a Christian. She must have thought that, since I was born in Australia, I would be. But I am not baptized. I'm not even a Christian! Please, baptize me!" Father Lazarus' joy was great. He baptized him and named him Adrian. He changed his name from Alan to Adrian. He received his blessing and went off to become a missionary... These are the great and astonishing miracles of God!"».
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An Orthodox priest from Exeter, England, tells us his own unique story of how he came to know Orthodoxy
One of the priests of the parish of Exeter, England, the eldest one, told us his own unique story through which he came to know Orthodoxy:
I was in Paris, it was raining and I had to go somewhere to stay dry. I saw a door near me and entered. I can't say I saw the exterior of the church because it was raining; I just saw the door and entered. If it hadn't rained, I wouldn't have gone in! Opening the outer door abruptly, I tripped and fell into another door and so I got into the church. Not wanting to disturb anyone, I sat back in the corner and watched. Once I became more confident, I went ahead because I wanted to know what was going on, where I was. I saw the icons, the crosses and thought it must be a church. I wondered if it was a synagogue, because I'd never seen vestments worn in such a way. I liked the vestments, the incense, the whole visual impression of the service, and I didn't want to leave. I heard the choir in a completely different language, not even French. It was Slavic. I was sitting and looking at the icons. And if they had told me then that in eight years I would be doing the same thing as a Deacon, I wouldn't have believed them at all.
While I was in the temple and I saw the way in which the service was taking place, the order of the priests and the faithful, I felt that heaven was there and I thought: 'If there is a God - because I was wondering until that moment if there was - this is the way He should be worshipped.' Since then, in our parish, they say that 'Nicanor went into the temple to be protected from the rain of heaven and he found himself in Heaven! I always say to anyone who comes to the Orthodox Church for the first time, 'Enter the temple, go to the middle of the church and you will see in front of you the gates of Paradise!', which is nothing but the iconostasis.
Before I became Orthodox, I was a believer in the English sense of the word: God was always there! I knew how to pray when I wanted to. Besides, for I happened to come from a military family, I had the mentality that 'if God is good enough for the Royal Navy, then it is good enough for me!' That was the depth of my theology!
I went back to England and heard that there was a bishop in London, Antony Bloom, but I didn't pursue the matter. One day I was watching a film on television about the French Revolution. At that time the television programme ended at midnight and it was the custom on the BBC to invite someone to end the day. The epilogue that night was some prayers presented by Bishop Bloom of the Russian Orthodox Church. I was about to turn off the television, but I tripped on the carpet in front of it and so I could not turn it off. Listening to the prayers, I was surprised and sat down again to watch the rest. Then, the icons from the church in Paris came to my mind!
I did not have his address, but I wrote him a letter saying 'I heard you on television a week ago and I am interested in becoming Orthodox. Could I meet you sometime?' I wrote on the envelope 'Bishop Antony Bloom, Russian Church, London', I knew nothing else. After all, there wouldn't be many such churches in London! Finally he replied and I met him for a whole afternoon. Later he suggested that I contact a priest. I was in correspondence with him on matters of Orthodoxy, so we had something like a correspondence course in Orthodoxy! We continued this communication for quite some time and one Easter I became Orthodox and after a few years a Deacon".
ANT. INS.
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Reason #1: the ever-changing church
This series of articles are from the “Becoming Orthodox” blog.
This is the first in a series of posts highlighting reasons why I have converted to the Orthodox Church. They are listed in no particular order. Some are big, important reasons; others may be small, wonderful but non-essential reasons. I hope they offer food for thought.
A few months ago I read an article in Christianity Today that highlighted a Christian movement in Mexico. It’s been awhile since I read the article and I can no longer recall the particulars, but one line really stood out: “How will the church in Mexico continue to change?” asked the columnist.
If the church is the pillar of truth (1 Timothy 3:15), then it should be unchanged since the day that it was founded by Jesus. Yet in any particular church group (save one) you will find numerous changes. Roman Catholics have a pretty long history, but they change the rules all the time. Protestantism is no different, being that it was borne out of a desire for change; a desire that certainly continues to this day when we have thousands of different denominations.
I’m disturbed by all of these changes. Truth doesn’t change. Neither should the Church.
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Evangelism and Culture
by Fr. Michael J. Oleksa,
Missionary in Alaska
The most obvious gospel paradigm for the theme evangelism and culture is the parable of the sower. The seed is the Word of God.
But as St. Maximos the Confessor wrote in the seventh century, the Word of God is constantly revealing himself, becoming “embodied.” The Word establishes the created universe, the heavens tell his glory, the firmament his handiwork, for it is by the Word that everything that was made came into existence and is sustained in being. The Word is embodied first of all in the entire cosmos. The Word in the Cosmos has been misunderstood, after all. It was as if the Message revealed by the Word was written, as C.S. Lewis once said, in letters too large for us to read clearly. In the pre-Christian societies, he was wrongly identified with Neptune, Zeus, Adonus, Apollo, or in the modern world with the forces of the natural world, with the “laws” of chemistry, physiology, genetics.
So in the second embodiment the Word became easier to decipher. The Word of God is also embodied in the Holy Scriptures, in some ways in amore focused and understandable form. Even there, the possibility of misinterpretation arose, and the Scribes and Pharisees were constantly criticized for missing the intended meaning of the Law and the Prophets.
So ultimately, at the fullness of time, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He is called “Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” He is called “the Messiah.” “the Christ,” the Way, the Truth and the Life.” He calls himself “the Living Bread,” “the Son of Man,” “Living Water,” “the Good Shepherd.”
All of this is the Word of God, the seed in the parable of sower- and more. The gospel is also the Church, the mystical body of Christ, and the scattered seed can refer to the evangelical establishment of the church as the faith spreads geographically throughout the world. And fullness of the gospel, of the Christian faith, is Orthodoxy. The seed then means all these-the Word of God in all embodiments, the Gospel of Repentance, of the Kingdom, the sacramental and iconographic presence of Christ, the Truth of the Orthodox faith. And none of these existed in a vacuum. The seed always requires a specific place, some oil, in which to grow.
The Word of God as scripture must be expressed in human language, and language is culture. The gospel of the kingdom must be preached in human words, and words are culture. The presence of Christ must convey, manifested with signs, symbols, art, music, liturgical action, sacrament, and all this is culture. The Truth, like the seed, needs soil in which to grow, and the soil is culture.
The seed in the parable is scattered and some grows, some does not. But even the seed that reaches maturity produces different harvests, some thirty or sixty or a hundredfold. The same truth, the same gospel, the same Christ, when introduced into specific cultural context produces a unique harvest, for different soils have different levels of fertility. Climatic conditions vary from time to time and place to place. The reception of the Word of God varies accordingly, not only as individuals hear the gospel, understand the Truth, confront Christ, enter the church, but as cultures do as well.
No one plants without expecting a harvest. The results the church anticipates and for which it prepares, the goal of all that it says and does, is revealed in the gospel passage read on more Sundays during church year than any other: John ch. 17.
It is no accident that the church presents our Lord’s prayer for unity to us more often than any other, for this is the ultimate goal of his life and mission, the fulfillment of the gospel. In the end, the scriptures tell us, Christ will be “all in all.” He will hold us, all people of all races, nationalities, ethnic groups, political parties, religious sects and creeds, and with all others, our friends, neighbours, and the enemies Jesus Christ commanded us to forgive, to bless, to love. For those who have loved and served him- and the neighbour the have abused, despised, rejected, exploited, hated- will be their sorrow, humiliation, their torment, their hell. Heaven and hell are not places we “go to,” but spiritual conditions we are already in.
We must become one, the way our Lord prayed to his heavenly Father, as the Holy Trinity is one, in total humility and love, each of us fulfilling the will of the Father as the son and the Holy Spirit perfectly and eternally do. This is the end toward which the church labours and strives. The church plants the seed in order to reap this harvest. No one can be the image of the Holy Trinity alone, as isolated individual. While only human beings, by an acct of faith and commitment, can be saved, no one is saved alone. There is no such thing as an individual salvation, for salvation is to enter into the community of interpersonal love, love of God, fulfilling his will in all things, and the love of one’s neighbour, the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.
This is the goal, the harvest the church expects, awaits, and in which it invites all humanity to participate.
The church’s vision, her soteriology and eschatology, while focused on Christ, is not exclusively Christocentric but Trinitarian. And the essence of his interpersonal unity-in-love, the possibly for many persons to be one, is revealed in divine love, tri-personal Agape, which, which makes the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, the three equally divine persons, one. We must always keep the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians in mind in all the evangelists think, say and do. There is no place for coercion, persecution, intolerance or violence in planting the seed, in announcing the good news to the nations, for these tactics would render the ultimate goal, total Agape, unattainable.
Syncretism and inculturation
Perhaps no question is more heatedly discussed in various ecumenical mission conferences today than the attempt to distinguish theologically between syncretism and inculturation. Within the World Council of Churches, the problem, it seems to me, is that there are different kinds of seed. In this context, the temptation to syncretism is inescapable.
What is syncretism? It has been difficult if not impossible for many Protestant theologians to arrive at consensus, a definition of exactly what constitutes syncretism, but the historic, patristic Orthodox tradition offers us clear guidelines. The church, during the period of ecumenical councils, sought to express its faith in terms intelligible to Hellenic culture without being distorted, without being “contaminated” by it in the process. This was no easy task, and it required five centuries and seven councils to accomplish it. Syncretism was successfully voided. The church, guided by the Holy Spirit, did not add to its doctrines, practices, beliefs, anything extraneous or incompatible with the faith of the Apostles, the witness of sacred scripture, the Truth revealed in Christ.
Syncretism is precisely the introduction into Christian doctrine or worship elements that are incompatible with the fullness of the Apostolic tradition.
Thus, when we learned Chinese Protestant theologian attempted to include within her presentation at Canberra general assembly of the World Council of the Churches an act of reverence to the Chinese goddess of mercy, the Orthodox were correct in rejecting such an inclusion as syncretistic. There is no place for “goddesses of mercy” in Christian doctrine or piety. (Orthodox missionaries, however, encountering a culture with a personification of a merciful feminine principle might attempt to present this pre-Christian intuition as typologically prefiguring the Theo-okos.
If syncretism must at all costs be avoided as distorting or corrupting the gospel message, inculturation, on the other hand, is inevitable and necessary. However, inculturation is only possible when the evangelist knows the Orthodox tradition and can therefore discern what is and what is not compatible with it. Inculturation is the planting of the gospel, the seed, the presence of Christ, in the unique soil of new culture, and allowing it, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to mature at its own pace, to produce ultimately a new, indigenous church.
The Alaskan Orthodox mission
When, for example, the Valaam Mission analyzed the spirituality of the Kodiak native peoples in 1795, they expressed a willingness to tolerate certain aberrations (such as polygamy) for a short time, to discuss others (the belief in the inua/yua) and to overlook still others (for example, fasting norms).
Polygamy endured for one generation after the baptism of the Kodiak Alutiiqs. This was a necessary accommodation, since to require the separation of multiple wives from their husbands would have created severe social upheaval and economical hardship for women and children. Fasting norms could not be enforced in a land of hunter-gatherers whose food supplies were never stable or predictable, and starvation was an annual possibility.
Only today, after two centuries, is fasting being gradually introduced. Everywhere, however, the reception of the gospel ended inter-tribal warfare and the enslavement and mistreatment of the prisoners. This was seldom recognized or even noticed by later observers, who had not complained that the Orthodox natives had not absorbed much doctrine, had not memorized much scripture, and thus had not, in their estimation, been properly evangelized.
Belief in the Yua persists. The Yua, in Yup’ik Eskimo culture, is the spirit that makes a living thing to be alive. It is the life force, which in pre-contact times was believed to be conscious but interpersonal. Animals and human beings have essentially the same Yua, and differ only in their outward physical form.
Animals have abilities that surpass those of human beings. They see, smell, and hear what we cannot. They have strengths and capabilities that surpass ours. They are not viewed as inferior beings, but in some ways as superior creatures. Their sensory input permits them to know things that we cannot perceive. To be changed into an animal in all native Alaskan folklore is viewed not as a curse (typical of European stories; – “the Frog Prince,” “Beauty and The Beast,” werewolves, etc.), but as a promotion. Some Alutiiq stories end with the hero deciding to remain an animal and “live happily ever after.” This belief in the intelligence, sensitivity and even superiority of the animals made traditional Alaskan peoples reverent towards the game they needed to kill in order to feed themselves, in order to survive. And it is the universal beliefs that since the animals know more, see more, hear more, sense more, they are willing victims who offer to the hunter. But they only sacrifice themselves to feed those human beings who treat them reverently, respectfully, not only during the hunt, in the act of killing the and butchering them, but in the way the meat is thoroughly eaten, wasting none of it, and how various parts of the animal (such as the pelts) are used. The unusable remains must also be treated respectfully, returned to the habitat from which the animal was taken. Recycling is an ancient practice in the Arctic.
Orthodox missionaries did not discourage this belief that life in all its form should be treated reverently. Their Alaskan converts heard the Paschal gospel from within the context of their traditional worldview, and saw Christ in the whole created universe, the Word of God in the Cosmos, in a way even the missionaries had not seen him before. The life of the world, the life of all, yes-all the Yua are really him. And the first chapter to the Colossians took on a meaning that was always there, but had gone unnoticed, or at least under appreciated, for centuries.
The seed found especially fertile ground, for the text “He is before all things and in him all things subsist” affirmed that what the Alaskans had intuited centuries before was now affirmed in the gospel. Only now they knew his identity. Alaskan Orthodoxy affirms a cosmic dimension to the Christian faith that many, perhaps most, modern Christians fail to grasp. John 3:16 is probably the most widely memorized verse in the New Testament, few who study the Bible in English translation grasp its full meaning the way most Eskimos do. The original text speaks of God’s love for the world, and most suppose the Greek word here is oikoumene, the inhabited earth, the human beings, and indeed the evangelist could have chosen this word. In fact, however, he did not. This famous verse affirms “For God so loved cosmos the sent his son.”
In the missionary context of the industrialized world, where secularism is in some instances giving way to a revival of “paganism” or the emergence of “new age” spirituality, or an interest in oriental religions, the theology of St. Maximos, in which the “logoi”: of God are affirmed, in which the created universe plays a mediating and sanctifying role in God’s divine plan, which the cosmos is to be blessed, reclaimed, transfigured and transformed, sanctified and blessed to become “the Kingdom of our God and His Christ” presents a Christian alternative.
The Alaskan church goes forth in procession each January for the great blessing of water, in most places walking on the frozen river, standing on the ice in subzero temperatures, to sanctify the one small piece of the cosmos on which their lives have always depended. The river is their highway, their cleansing, their supermarket, their home, their life. In their pre-Christian past they thanked the animal spirits for offering themselves, sacrificing themselves to feed the people, and put their inflated intestines and bladders through the holes in the ice in order to recycle their Yua. Now they go to the river and bless the waters, putting the cross through a cruciform hole in the ice; it is Christ they bless, Christ they thank, for his sacrifice, prefigured in the cycle of the natural world as they understood it.
This not, I would submit, syncretistic, for these patterns were always there, in the liturgical life of the church. The gospel texts were always there, within the hearing of all believers. But the Eskimos have discovered a meaning hidden from those of other cultures and they offer this meaning back to the church. This the pattern of all genuine inculturation-the missionary, and, through the evangelist, the whole church, discovers heretofore unnoticed or disclosed treasures of her own sacred heritage.
When Navajo Indians of the American southwest were asked to make a film about production of their famous rugs, they submitted a video depicting a sunrise, wild flowers blooming, rain falling, sheep grazing, wind blowing, the sun setting, and finally a few seconds showing a half-finished rug on a traditional loom. The producers who had commissioned the film were confused and disappointed. They had expected to see wool being spun, dyed and woven, and none of this was included in the video. But to the Navajo, it takes more than wool, vegetable dyes, a loom and a grandmother to make a rug. They assumed a much wider frame of reference: The sun must rise. The rain must fall. The flower must bloom. The sheep must graze. And if all is harmony, you can get rugs out of it. It takes the whole cosmos to make a rug.
It this not equally true of our Eucharastic Gifts?
We so often perceive it as merely bread- flour, water and yeast. But what does it take to produce that flour? The sun must shine. The wind must blow. The rain must fall. The earth must be fertile. Human beings must appropriately interact with it. And if all is in harmony, you can make bread. On every altar, in every church we offer the universe in joy and thanksgiving back to God. But our frame of reference can be too small.
Christ fed thousands with only a few a few loaves and two fish. Those who witnessed this considered it a miracle. Our Lord also said, “The son only does the works he sees his Father do.”
The Father is always taking a little wheat and feeding thousands, but we fail to see it, we don’t get the message. He is taking some seeds each spring and making food in every wheat and corn field, but the pagans said it was Apollo or Zeus or Minerva or “Mother Nature” at work, and secularists say it is all “natural processes.” So the Son does the same thing he sees his Father do, but on a smaller scale and a faster speed, and suddenly the miraculous element becomes evident. It is the same Word of God made manifest and the feeding of the thousands will have its full impact when we can recognize it continuously in the miracle of the cosmos, the Word written in letters so large we could not read the message before.
Be reminding the church of the cosmic dimensions of its faith and mission, the Greek evangelized become evangelists. In the Patristic age, Greek language, Greek culture, Greek philosophical language enriched the life of the church forever.
As the seed, the gospel, the church, as Christ’s presence enters into the context of other cultures, these too offer something back to God. The same seed, the same faith, the same Orthodox truth, implanted in another culture produces a unique harvest, a Serbian, a Romanian, a Russian, a Ukrainian, an Albanian, an African, an Alaskan, an Indonesian, a Korean or Japanese (or even an American), expression, each the product of the same holy faith, yet each irreplaceable and unique.
Father Alexander Schmemann defined in his most famous book, For the Life of the World, what it means to be Christian.
“A Christian, “ he wrote, “is someone who, wherever he/she looks sees Christ and rejoices Him.”
I read this book many times. I was blessed for several years to attend Father Alexander’s lectures. I read Holy Fathers. But it was my Eskimo parishioners who revealed to me the depth of the passage, revealed to me the cosmic dimension of the prologue to the gospel according to St. John, showed me the magnificence of the Apostle Paul’s Christocentric experience and vision. This is what inculturation means for the church. Unlike syncretism, which distorts the gospel, corrupts the faith, renders a Christian harvest impossible, inculturation enriches and deepens and expands the genuine apprehension of the Apostolic faith, to the glory of God and building up of his holy church. The church, while resisting any syncretism, delights and rejoices in inculturation.
Conclusion
The church scatters the seed, offering the gospel to all, and in so doing, discovers the new harvest dimensions of the faith it had not consciously known, noticed or appreciated fully before. Evangelism enriches the church. Inculturation blesses the church. Our Greek patristic legacy is the historic evidence of the creative process. The seed always needs soil in which to grow-the gospel always needs a culture in which to be planted, and the Holy Spirit produces various harvests in each culture and in each of us.
Evangelism and Culture. 1995. International Review of Mission. Authentic Witness Within Each Culture. Section 1; Conference on World Mission and Evangelism (Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 1996). LXXXIV No. 335, October 1995. The World Council of Churches. 387-393.
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“BIBLE ANSWER MAN” HANK HANEGRAAFF JOINS ORTHODOX CHURCH
Known to millions as the “Bible Answer Man,” 67-year-old Hank Hanegraaff and his wife were received into the Orthodox Church this year on the great feast of Palm Sunday, at St. Nektarios Greek Orthodox Church in Charlotte, NC.
Mr. Hanegraaff can be seen kneeling with a lit candle under a priest’s epitrachelion in the picture to the right. His wife’s hands can be seen as well. The picture originates from the Facebook page of the parish, but has been removed after an influx of comments, including negative remarks from those who appreciated Hanegraaff’s work as a Protestant.
The Bible Answer Man addressed his conversion to the Orthodox faith on his program yesterday, in response to a caller who had seen remarks claiming that, in becoming Orthodox, Mr. Hanegraaff had left the Christian faith. He responded:
«I am now a member of an Orthodox Church, but nothing has changed in my faith. I have been attending an Orthodox church for a long time—for over two years, really, as a result of what happened when I went to China, many years ago. I saw Chinese Christians who were deeply in love with the Lord, and I learned that while they may not have had as much intellectual acumen or knowledge as I did, they had life. And so I learned that while truth matters, life matters more, and I remember flying back from China after spending time with just common people who had a deep, intense love for the Lord, and wondering, “Was I even a Christian?”
I was comparing my ability to communicate truth with their deep and abiding love for the Lord Jesus Christ… One man, by the way, said to me, truth matters but life matters more. In other words, it is not just knowing about Jesus Christ, it is experiencing the Resurrected Christ. As a result of that I started studying what was communicated by the progeny of Watchman Nee with respect to theosis and that drove me back to the early Christian Church.
And I suppose over that period of time I have fallen ever more in love with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It’s sort of like my wife—I have never been more in love with my wife than I am today, and I’ve never been more in love with my Lord Jesus Christ than I am today. I’ve been impacted by the whole idea of knowing Jesus Christ, experiencing Jesus Christ, and partaking of the graces of Jesus Christ through the Eucharist or the Lord’s Table. And that has become so central in my life, but as far as the statement that you mentioned, that I’ve left the Christian faith—nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact I believe what I have always believed, as codified in the Nicene Creed, and as championed by mere Christianity».
After reciting the entire Nicene Creed, he concluded, “In other words, I am as deeply committed to championing mere Christianity and the essentials of the historic Christian faith as I have ever been.”
Hank Hanegraaff has served as the president and chairman of the board of the North Carolina-based Christian Research Institute (CRI) since 1989, when he also took over previous-president’s radio talk-show “The Bible Answer Man.” The show includes answering questions about matters of Christian doctrine and history and Biblical interpretation, and denominational particularities. He has been an outspoken critic of non-Christian religions, new religious movements and cults, and heresies within conservative Christianity. He is also the author of over twenty books. His The Complete Bible Answer Book—Collector’s Edition is a compendium of the most common, and the most difficult, questions regarding Christianity, culture, and cults that Hank has received over the past three decades.
It has been noted that Hank has been speaking about the Orthodox Church more on his show lately, referring to it as “fantastic,” and “the early Church.” In 2016, Hank interviewed Fr. Themistoclis (Adamopoulos), a Greek Orthodox priest, to discuss his journey from Marxist rock star to Orthodox monk. Fr. Themi works tirelessly with the poor and suffering in Sierra Leone, where people are still suffering from the effects of a recent Ebola epidemic. The interview can be listened to here.
In March, Mr. Hanegraaff answered a caller’s question about the Orthodox teaching of theosis, ably explaining the doctrine of man’s sanctification on both a Biblical and Patristic basis. “We become Christ-bearers since His Body and Blood are distributed throughout our limbs, as Cyril of Jerusalem said… The whole idea being that we become by grace what God is by nature… We become, as Peter put it, partakers in the divine nature,” the Bible Answer Man explained. A full video of the call can be seen below:
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The miraculous conversion of three atheists to Orthodoxy by Saint John of Kronstadt, Russia (+1908)
There are, however, as a counterbalance, completely opposite cases, such as that of three non-believing youths who wanted to mock the miraculous power of Saint John of Kronstadt of Russia (+1908):
Two students asked him to pray for the healing of a friend of theirs who lay down and pretended to be ill. However, after the visit and his prayer, they found that the supposedly sick man could not get out of bed. He was completely paralyzed! He finally got well and got up, but only when all three of them sincerely repented.
ΥΤ. INS.
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Ancient Rhythm
By Robin Galiano Russell, USA
Converts to Orthodoxy are drawn by its unchanging nature, aesthetic beauty and spiritual mystery
Orthodox churchgoers line up at the end of service to kiss the cross being held by Father David Hovik in Arlington, Wash. After six months of catechism studies, Hovik and 104 members of the independent Grace Community Church converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and became the St. Andrew Antiochian Orthodox Church. Meg Robinson lights a candle for her uncle and grandparents before service at St. Andrews Church in Arlington, Wash.
The Eastern Orthodox Church, as far removed from a nondenominational or evangelical congregation as you can get, is attracting a growing number of converts who are drawn by the tug of an ancient faith.
Converts are trading in their PowerPoint sermons and praise bands for the ancient rhythms of a liturgy that hasn’t changed in thousands of years – a pendulum swing from the casual, seeker-friendly services that have dominated contemporary evangelicalism.
Their numbers are still small compared to megachurch growth patterns, with 1.2 million Eastern Orthodox Christians in the United States. But adherents say there has been a surge in people drawn to the faith.
The Antiochian Orthodox Church, the most evangelistic of the American Orthodox churches, has tracked conversions for several decades. The number of its churches in the United States has doubled in 20 years to more than 250 parishes and missions. About 80 percent of its converts come from evangelical and charismatic backgrounds, 20 percent from mainline denominations.
Those who convert say they are drawn to an aesthetic beauty and spiritual mystery in Orthodox worship that are often lacking in their own Protestant services. It’s like entering a time machine that allows congregants to worship as the early Christians did.
Not that it doesn’t take some getting used to. Orthodox services are based on the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which can last two hours or more. Congregants stand much of the time, while priests in vestments offer incense and chant the Psalms.
‘Startlingly different’: Frederica Mathewes-Green, a former Episcopalian and author of Facing East: A Pilgrim’s Journey Into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy, said the experience of Orthodoxy was ”startlingly different” from anything she had known in Western churches. But it clicked when she saw it was directed toward God rather than her own emotional needs.
”It called us to fall on our faces before God in worship and to be filled with awe at his glory. I could never go back. I now find Western worship tedious and sentimental. To me, the contrast is jolting.”
Mathewes-Green also prefers the Orthodox view of the Christian life as a healing process and a journey, rather than a one-time ”sinner’s prayer.” She and her husband converted from a liberal Episcopal Church in 1993 and helped found an Orthodox church made up mostly of American converts.
”It’s not about getting the sin-debt paid, the ticket punched and now you wait around to die and go to heaven. Orthodoxy is a transforming journey where every day the Christian is being enabled to bear more of God’s light. That’s exciting,” she said.
Stan Shinn, who was raised in the Assemblies of God denomination, recalls feeling nearly overwhelmed when he stepped inside Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in North Dallas for the first time. What looked good on paper – definitive answers to his search for early Christian worship and doctrine – had taken him to a ”very bizarre and strange” church with icon-filled walls, heavy incense and Byzantine chanting.
”I felt like there was a gauntlet thrown down in front of me,” he said.
He and his wife, Janine, and their three children converted in 2002 from their nondenominational church to the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Like the Shinns, those who convert are joining 350 million Orthodox Christians around the world.
First-century church: “Orthodox” means ”right belief.” The Orthodox Church traces its origins back to Jesus’ apostles and first-century practice. The Roman Catholic Church makes that same claim, but the two branches of ancient Christianity differ in ecclesiastical hierarchy and a few doctrinal points.
Catholics believe the pope has ultimate authority, while Orthodox Christians say their council of bishops is more in line with Scripture and church tradition. Orthodox Christians also disagree with the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which states that Jesus’ mother was born without sin herself. The two branches of ancient Christianity split in 1054.
Today, the Orthodox community is led by patriarchs and a hierarchy of bishops who must be celibate. Unlike Catholic clergy, Orthodox priests can marry before ordination.
Archbishop Dmitri, 81, leads the Archdiocese of Dallas and the South for the Orthodox Church in America. He grew up as Robert Royster in a Southern Baptist family in Teague, Texas, but converted to Orthodoxy as a teen because he wanted more out of faith.
”Everything was true, but it was not complete. It wasn’t that I needed to repudiate it. I just went on to find the rest of it,” he said.
The Orthodox consider themselves to have a bond with other Christians but believe they have a more accurate understanding of the faith. At a recent daylong festival in Dallas about Orthodox Christianity, Dmitri encouraged people in other denominations to cling to the elements of the historic faith that their churches uphold, but added an invitation:
“‘If you find there are holes at the bottom and you have to abandon ship, then head for one that’s still afloat,” he said.
In search of history: Conversion to Orthodoxy often begins with an intellectual quest, Shinn said. He began searching when he saw modern churches abandoning historic Christian tenets, such as the Nicene Creed, and stripping their sanctuaries of any religious symbolism to be more seeker-friendly.
”The elements of Christianity were disappearing before me like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. What kind of Christianity would my grandchildren inherit, and would the Gospel even be recognizable?” he said.
The ancient liturgies, chants, incense and sacraments used in Orthodox services, he discovered, were not taken from medieval Catholicism – as his Protestant upbringing taught him – but from early church worship.
”It all caused me to re-evaluate my core assumptions. Instead of me judging history, I decided I wanted history to judge me and tell me what should I practice,” Shinn said.
The unchanging nature of the Orthodox Church is a strong draw for ”serious Christians” who are tired of Protestant individualism yet disagree with the Catholic Church’s teachings, said the Rev. Peter Gillquist, chairman of missions and evangelism for the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.
Minority faith: Converts become more familiar with the church through catechism classes and the guidance of spiritual godparents (individuals and couples in the congregation who mentor new converts). If they’ve already been baptized in another church, they also must be chrismated, or anointed, to be received in the Orthodox Church.
Americans who convert to Orthodoxy know they will be part of a minority faith. That doesn’t bother the Rev. Anthony Savas, of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Dallas, who grew up Orthodox among Mormons in Salt Lake City.
”It’s wonderful to practice the ancient Christian faith in an environment that doesn’t know what to do with it. A minority can be a beacon of light, like the apostles, who took it beyond their own country,” he said.
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Holy Virgin Mary, AIDS and Billy Bo (Vassilis Kourkoumelis) - How the most famous Greek homosexual of the 1980s was saved
Maybe some of you older ones will remember a face, a nice lad. He was gay, fashion designer, the famous once Billy Bo (Vassilis Kourkoumelis). We happened to hear from the lips of his spiritual father what his course was, which not many people tell, nor was it written specifically in the books published about him. Everyone wrote about the trips he took in Mykonos with celebrities, the adventures he had as a person. Thirst for life, thirst for love. But he didn't know where to find her and was looking for her on the wrong paths.
At some point the disease visited him. (Billy Bo was the first famous victim of AIDS in Greece.) "The disease is a bad thing," most people say. But sometimes it's for the best... And when the disease came and rang a spiritual bell, he heard the bell. Others just don't hear it at all and they die with the disease, whatever disease and they have not received spiritual notice of anything. He heard the bell, which means he had good evidence inside.
And the cleric narrates: "I see a child, a boy, like an angel he was, with the nice leather clothes all over. He walks into the church and says "Father, I want to confess." And took a look to see if it was a boy or a girl. He was tall, but he also had another beauty that looked like a woman's..."
So he started and confessed with remorse. He started to come, after a rule set by the clergyman, to socialize, to church, to pray, until he slowly collapsed and the priest was forced to go and confess him and to commune him at his home, in Kolonaki.
When the priest first entered the house, he thought he had entered some museum! It was a space decorated only with models, with photos of fashion shows etc., etc. Every time he would come after, a photo would leave and put an image (icon) in their place... In the end you thought you were entering a monastery.
When he left for America to look for treatments, he ordered an iron cross, big, breakable to fit in the suitcase, to put behind the door of his hospital room, to see the Cross of Christ and to pray.
The treatments didn't work, he came back, and the great downhill, the ruin, the road to death began. The blessed death, we would say. Because if we didn't die, guys, we would suffer for many years! So what about ?
And the cleric recounts: "At some point, I went on Saturday morning and communicated with him. The time comes when it's time for me to leave and Vassilakis says to me: 'Father, do me a favor, come after midnight today to commune me. Because I will leave before dawn, Virgin Mary warned me!' I said should I believe him, not believe him? Let me do him a favor, since the man asks for communion."
So, the priest went around 1-2 in the dark night and befriended Basil. And indeed God took him before dawn, at dawn on Sunday, as Virgin Mary had informed him! The priest was telling us these things and says: "Wish, my children, that I have Vasilakis' fees."
That's who Jesus is! That's what the church is, that doesn't confuse people. He doesn't tell them "bye bye" as they go off a cliff. This should not be happening. But on the other hand the Church doesn't let anyone down either. And it shows before people the way to theology.
So did Billy Bo. He didn't just get saved, but for the Virgin Mary to go and say "Get ready, you're coming," that means Vasilis went in a good position too! And we have countless such examples, from the ancient Christian years to this day...
SOURCE Unmuted excerpt from a speech by the priest Georgios Schinas
Homosexuality - Orthodox Blog
Translated from Greek
✚ Eternal Memory ✚
Vassilis Kourkoumelis
"Billy Bo"
(1954-1987)
Ask About The Orthodox Faith
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Arizona: Prayer for an Orthodox Christian Convert on Death Row Soon to be Executed
Frank Atwood, who is convicted of kidnapping and killing an 8-year-old girl named Vicki Lynn Hoskinson in September 1984, has always claimed to have been innocent of the crime. While in maximum security prison, he converted to Orthodoxy and was baptized with the name Anthony through Saint Anthony's Monastery in Arizona. He has studied and prayed and been in correspondence with well-known Orthodox figures in Greece, such as Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol, who visited him in prison a few years ago but was not allowed to see him, as well as Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, who wrote the piece below. Frank has recently issued the following statement prior to his upcoming execution by lethal injection. Let us all pray for him, at his request, and the request of the Metropolitans.
* * *
My name is Frank Atwood, and I am scheduled to be executed by the State of Arizona at 10:00am, on June 8, 2022. I am sentenced to die for a crime I did not commit, but I will let the evidence, supported by experts, and arguments advanced by my attorneys speak to my innocence.
I will at long last experience freedom from the earthly bonds that have crippled my body and caused me excruciating pain. And I will no longer live in a world in which others are caused pain by my very existence.
To the family of Vicki Lynn Hoskinson, I can honestly say that while I know you will never believe that I did not take her ... I did not! That, however, does not change the fact that your pain is as real as anything possible in this lifetime can possibly be, and my profound prayer is that my death will give you and yours some form of relief and closure from your unending misery and torment.
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Prayer for a Man on Death Row
By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
A few years ago I started a correspondence with a death row inmate in America, Anthony, who was accused of a very serious offense, which he denies he did, and it seems that he is right, and he was sentenced to death. He himself made several appeals to the American Justice System and remained in a maximum security prison for many years until the final decision was finalized.
The occasion of our correspondence was the study of my book Orthodox Psychotherapy and other related books, which were published in English and they impressed him.
He sent me the first letter, I answered him and his other letters and answers followed, which now that I have collected them, extend to about 100 pages typed in large size.
Because he was waiting for the final decision to determine the day of his execution, he was preoccupied with various spiritual issues.
He was baptized Orthodox in prison, he was living in repentance, prayer, he did vigils and the prayer rope, but mainly he was interested in how to acquire noetic prayer of the heart, so that when he was executed he would pass through the "tollhouses", as he wrote me, and meet Christ in Paradise.
With the answers I sent him I tried to guide him in the spiritual life in this difficult period, to empower him to face death bravely. It was a surprise for me and something moving to correspond with a death row inmate and prepare him for death!! Such an event has never occurred to me in my life, while practicing the ministry of spiritual fatherhood for 50 years, to prepare with the appropriate sensitivity someone for his execution, in such a long time of ministry. As it is known in Greece, the death penalty has been abolished, which is why we do not have such experiences. Someday this correspondence will be published and one will see the way this blessed man thought and how he accepted my guidance.
A few days ago he sent me a letter and informed me that his execution was finally scheduled to take place at the beginning of June, that is, in a few days. He wrote to me that now the security measures are stronger.
In his letter he has three requests. With one he asks me to pray that something be done so that he does not drink from "the cup of execution".
The second request is: "If God, in His infinite love and wisdom, knows that it is best for me to be executed in order to pass through the tollhouses and enter Paradise, I beseech you to pray that I have strength to the end, to be brave and to have trust in God!"
The third request is to give him "final advice". He writes: "I would also very much like to hear any final advice you can give me. Please! The time is short, so please email me as soon as possible. I will continue to remember you and Nafpaktos in my daily prayers!"
I did my cross and answered appropriately.
The reason for publicizing this fact is that I very much ask those who read this text to pray for my friend Anthony, whether to suspend his execution, if possible, or to proceed with bravery and trust in God and, of course, to his meeting with Christ, who loved Him through the prison of the highest security.
Let us pray: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on Your servant Anthony."
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ARIZONA: A FINAL CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN ANTHONY (FRANK) ATWOOD AND METROPOLITAN HIEROTHEOS OF NAFPAKTOS BEFORE HIS EXECUTION
Frank Atwood, named Anthony in Baptism, has now been tonsured as a schema monk with the name Fr. Ephraim. He is scheduled to be executed at 10 AM local time today in Arizona. Good Paradise!—OC.
My dear Theological Master
Metropolitan (Elder) Hierotheos,
Good Paradise!!!
About the court. We had the hearing to ask for the pardon (requesting life imprisonment) on May 24th. With optimism, I thought that the probability of success was 1%! Of course, they refused this mercy. In regards to this, the glory of God is victorious!!! Beloved Elder Paisios brought about two dozen monks and nuns, along with over 150 believers who live around the Monastery. Some monks testified to the great inner transfiguration that God has done in me, so the more the "mercy council" and the government tried to make me look bad, the greater my miraculous transfiguration seemed! God has decisively been victorious! ...
Metropolitan Athanasios told me that if God permits my execution, He has accepted my repentance, and I am ready to leave for Paradise. Sarah and I rely on this wise word. For me, I am saddened by my negligence in prayer, and, of course, for Sarah it would be shocking to be alone without me. Please pray for our strength in Christ.
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The Lure of the Mystical Path
By Alice Tallmadge, Correspondent
Originally published in The Oregonian, Sunday, April 9, 2000
From Ashland to Portland, the Orthodox tradition is drawing Oregonians to its ancient depths
EUGENE — The Saturday night buzz is revving outside the doors of St. Eugene Orthodox Church in the Whiteaker neighborhood. Motors race. Doors slam. Nearby taverns begin to fill with eager revelers. But inside the walls of the humble, dome-topped church, an otherworldly peace reigns. Pungent incense hangs in the air. Gold-flecked icons, lit by flickering tapers, line the dark red walls. Women, their long hair covered with scarves, stand on one side of the small nave, men on the other.
They take turns filling the room with plaintive, old-world chants. Other worshippers stand quietly, hands to their sides, heads bowed.
“This is how we worship, to stay concentrated in prayer,”
said St. Eugene member Sarah Cowie.
“We believe that, during the service, God pours himself out. If you get quiet enough in your mind, you can feel, palpably, his presence.”
The 70 or so members of St. Eugene aren’t immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe or Greece. They are Eugene-area residents, most of them converts from Protestant sects, who have found solace and sustenance in a tradition that dates back 2,000 years to the early Christian church. Cowie and other St. Eugene members are among the growing numbers of Oregonians who are converting to Orthodoxy.
For years, St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Portland, established in 1895, was one of few Orthodox churches in the state. In the past 15 years, churches or missions have sprung up in Albany, Ashland, Milwaukie, Oregon City, Eugene and in several Portland neighborhoods. According to the Orthodox Church of America, an umbrella organization for certain Orthodox jurisdictions, at least 150 new parishes in the United States have sprung up in the past 20 years. Nationally, they estimate there are now 2 million to 3 million Orthodox believers.
Faith trumps understanding in the ancient, mystical tradition, which is steeped in rituals such as a sung liturgy, reverence for icons, fasting, sacraments and daily dedication to the spiritual life.
Something more real
One of the tradition’s most powerful attractions to Westerners is its rejection of immediate gratification and living only for the self, said Cowie. She converted 14 years ago after spending years seeking a tradition that would satisfy a spiritual longing she herself could not describe. Orthodoxy offered something different, she said. Something bigger. Something more real.
“It’s very, very deep,” she said. “The people who are attracted to Orthodoxy are people… who are looking for something more, who see the shallowness of our materialistic society.”
Orthodoxy doesn’t ignore the mind and the intellect, Cowie said, but sees the intellect as being seated in the heart.
“There is a mystical presence that actually draws us on.”
A hunger for meaning
Youths seem to be drawn to the ancient tradition. When Cowie’s daughter was a teen-ager, Cowie gave her free rein to decide for herself which religious tradition spoke to her. Her daughter, now 21, is an Orthodox nun in a California monastery.
“Our children are staying with the church,”
said Cowie, who teaches parenting classes at a Eugene nonprofit agency.
The Rev. Michael Boyle, a priest at St. Eugene, said that for some youths the church fills a void that entertainment and other social institutions do not.
“Younger people are hungry for authentic Christianity. They are dying inside for something that is real, authentic and that challenges them to have a spiritual life as a Christian,” he said. “Orthodoxy has not lost the mystery. It does not try to answer every question that comes up. It’s real. People feel God.”
The tradition’s emphasis on ritual, prayer and self-examination spoke to an unmet spiritual hunger Rebecca Jaquette and her husband had both felt for years. Like Cowie, Jaquette had experimented with different Christian approaches to worship before she found Orthodoxy. Brought up Presbyterian,
“I felt like I didn’t have any tradition,” Jacquette said. “My husband and I knew how to speak ‘Christian-ese,’ but inwardly we felt we were just going through the motions. We didn’t know what we were really doing with our lives.”
From the moment they began attending Orthodox services in Portland, something felt right, Jaquette said.
“And as we continued in it, we felt we were worshipping more fully, that we found a place where there was a rhythm to life that was really important.”
Now members of St. Eugene, the couple is happy to have rituals and traditions to pass on to their two children, ages 5 and 6 months.
“This is what they will know,” Jaquette said.
A split at the beginning
The Eastern and Western Christian traditions split apart in what is known as the Great Schism of 1054. The two branches took very different routes. Whereas the Roman Catholic tradition adhered to a strict hierarchy headed by the pope, the Orthodox Church stayed away from placing one individual at its head. Over the centuries, a host of Orthodox jurisdictions developed. Different ethnic groups, including Greeks, Serbians, Albanians and Russians, added their own customs to the traditional rituals. Still, at the core,
“we are all of the same faith,” Evangelatos said.
Michael Spezio, a UO graduate student and a Presbyterian minister, has studied Orthodoxy and has traveled to Mount Athos, a Greek peninsula populated only by monks living in centuries-old monasteries. Spezio said he has come to understand what Orthodoxy contributes to the broad spectrum of Christianity.
“I have an appreciation for the mystery that moves through the tradition,” he said. “They don’t seek to intellectualize every last thing. The seek to experience, but not to dissect that experience.
Incorporating the senses
Despite its focus on spirituality, Orthodoxy doesn’t reject the physical realm, said St. Eugene member Catherine Larson. During services the five senses are nourished and purified: candles for sight, incense for smell, bread and wine for taste, kissing of icons for touch, chanting for sound. Church members often fast, but they also join for feasts and communal meals.
“The beauty and theology of Orthodoxy seems more elemental, more practical,”
she said. Unlike Catholicism, Orthodox priests who intend to serve parishes must be married before they are ordained.
St. Eugene, said the head priest, the Rev. David Lubliner, is named after a 4th-century Egyptian saint who is celebrated for his selfless hospitality and kindness.
“Emperor Constantine called him one of the three great lights of the world,”
he said. The church, which also houses a small bookstore, plans to continue its patron saint’s hospitality. It will open a drop-in tea house and plans to help cook for the group Food Not Bombs, which prepares meals for the homeless several times a week.
Coincidentally, the church is situated at the site of another establishment that served wayward pilgrims on the path of life. The former Icky’s Teahouse welcomed social outcasts, runaway youth, substance abusers and anarchists, once even holding a benefit concert for Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
Today the just-completed stucco church, which took church members two years and hundreds of hours of mostly volunteer labor to build, nuzzles up close to Whiteaker’s social diversity. To the south is an AA social club. To the north a dance studio thuds with flamenco initiates. Nearby is a row of artists’ studios, a Mission homeless shelter, local railroad yards and a notorious drug and skin market strip. St. Eugene will be a place of peace in the center of that swirl, Boyle said, both for its members and anyone on the street looking for a place of rest.
“I know that, through prayer, grace is sent, and that grace resides in the physical building itself,”
he said.
“As people enter from the street, they sense it. They sense holiness, something different than anything they’ve sensed before. And that is part of our purpose, to bring down that grace from heaven.”
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1996: Dr. Pelikan, USA - Lutheran Scholar Converts To Orthodoxy
I first met Dr. Pelikan at, of all places, an All American Council. I had just come down from Alaska, and stood a lonely outpost in front of the diocese of Alaska table, waiting for some of my brethren from the 49th state to arrive. There I was, a newly ordained priest in the Orthodox Church in America, standing in a sea of cassocks, and knowing absolutely no one. As I stood there, examining the display, a voice says to me, “Hello!” I turned and saw Dr. Pelikan smiling at me. As a former Lutheran, I knew him and his writings very well. The next 20-30 minutes were alive with bright and happy conversation as we exchanged brief anecdotes about mission, Alaska, seminary, Orthodoxy, and who knows what else. That kindness so warmed my heart that the rest of the AAC was a joy. He took me from feeling exceptionally alone, to exceptionally ‘included.’ Memory eternal, Dr. Pelikan. – Fr. John A. Peck
* * *
Most stunning perhaps was, in 1996, the conversion of Jaroslav Pelikan, Yale University’s celebrated church historian and Luther scholar. Here is a man who has co-edited 22 of the 55 volumes of Luther’s Works in English, and then late in life he “moved East,” as some theologians like to say.
“I was the Lutheran with the greatest knowledge of the Orthodox Church,” Pelikan reportedly quipped, “and now I am the Orthodox with the greatest knowledge of Luther.”
He is has also been quoted as saying,
“When the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod became Baptist, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America became Methodist, I became Orthodox.”
Presumably, his implication was that the former two denominations were on the verge of losing their doctrinal clarity.
But he does not talk to the media about this move that exemplifies a trend of sorts among some Protestants and Roman Catholics.
“I have received hundreds of requests for interviews and decided not to respond to any of them,” he told UPI Tuesday.
Some former associates say that he simply does not wish to hurt his former Lutheran coreligionists. But a ranking OCA cleric gave a clue:
“Pelikan said he joined us after he had read a work on the Cappadocian Fathers for a fifth time in the original Greek.”
INS.
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Athanasius Yoo, M.D., B.D., Korea: Why I Became An Orthodox Christian
My long pilgrimage to the Mother Church has been completed. As I think back over the long road of this pilgrimage, I become filled with deep emotion. For by the grace of God, I, a stray sheep, have found the lovely bosom of the Good Shepherd, the true body of Christ, – the One, Holy Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Therefore, it is my conviction that my humble retrospections should in nowise come to naught to those who are outside of the true Church of Christ.
I am a Korean and a medical doctor by profession. My father was an Elder of the Presbyterian Church in Korea and my mother a very devout deaconess of same. Consequently I was brought up in an unusually religious atmosphere.
My mother hoped that I would become a minister of the Presbyterian Church. But I had no interest in that profession because the example of the Protestant ministers at that time was much too superficial and did not impress me as being Christian at all. And so I entered medicine instead, finished medical school and began practicing in Seoul, Korea. I continued my medical practice until the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire. The fall of Japanese imperialism, and the subsequent independence of Korea, impressed me greatly with the frailty of life and of the world.
After a period of sincere prayer and meditation, I decided to dedicate myself to the ministry. I entered the Presbyterian Theological School in Seoul, Korea … with deep conviction and fervent faith for my newly chosen profession. Soon after, however, I was confronted with the malignant teaching of higher biblical criticism and of rationalistic modernistic doctrine. The evil shadow of Harnack and Deissmann, the poisonous sabotage of the Tubingen School, the narcotic abomination of Schleichermacher and Rutschul dominated the School. The revival of twentieth century Arianism and Nestorianism was promoted and the so-called “social Gospel” emphasized. Moreover, the Second Coming of Christ and the doctrine of everlasting life were counted as convictions of the ignorant. Had I not entered this Theological School, I probably would have kept my peace of mind. But once I had learned the false theology of this school, I lost my peace of mind. Indeed, I found it impossible to accept these heretical Protestant teachings without going against my conscience and good faith.
As a result, I began to look for more conservative Protestant teachings in order to find consolation . . . but I could not find any. With deep unrest and despair, I began reading some Roman Catholic theological books and my interest in the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church concerning the Virginity of the Virgin Mary, the Apostolic Succession, and Transubstantiation, was greatly aroused. However, because of the lack of books, my reading in Roman Catholic doctrine was limited. In the meantime, I continued my theological studies at the Presbyterian seminary and after my graduation from there was advised to be ordained. But I refused ordination because I now felt that the ministry of the Protestant Church lacked Apostolic Succession and was therefore null and void.
After much thought and hesitation, I finally became a Roman Catholic in 1950. Up until this time I had no contact whatsoever with the Orthodox Church.
Upon studying Roman Catholic doctrine, however, I found many false teachings in it also. Those that bothered me especially were the following:
1. The withdrawal of the cup from the laity during Communion.
2. The Doctrine of the Infallibility of the Pope.
3. The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
4. The Doctrine of Purgatory.
5. The Doctrine of Indulgences.
6. The universal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome.
7. The exclusive Latinity in the Mass and in other services.
If I refused to accept the above doctrines, I would be under anathema. And so I remained in a state of confusion. In order to resolve the problems I had about the Roman doctrine, I began studying the writings of the Church Fathers. These along with scholastic theology, I read for a long time. My conclusion from all these studies was that the Roman Catholic Church, too, had gone astray as had the Protestant. In doubt, despair, and agony, I decided to go to the United States in order to escape my doctrinal troubles. I arrived in the United States in 1955.
In the United States, I studied advanced medical science and also continued my theological studies. For the first time I was given the opportunity to read into Eastern Orthodox theology. Up until this time I had had no contact with Orthodox Christians or with any Orthodox Church. Thanks be to God, however, for He led me by His Holy Spirit to the primitive, conservative, and most pure and virgin faith of Christianity! For I discovered that in the Orthodox Church, Christianity with all its richness and essence was to be found. In the bosom of the Orthodox Church, my despaired soul found a resting place, a heavenly harbor! With great joy and hope, I decided to become an Orthodox Christian about a year ago. At first I hesitated to make a hasty decision for fear of disgracing myself by frequent changes of denominations. But gradually I became convinced of the validity of Orthodoxy.
By the Grace of God, I was convinced that I must serve Him through the priesthood of the Orthodox Church. And so I began following the way of the Cross, willing to sacrifice anything. Through the kindness of His Eminence, Archbishop Michael and His Grace, Bishop Athenagoras of Elaia, I was given permission to study Orthodox theology at the Holy Cross Orthodox Theological School in Brookline, Massachusetts, in preparation for the priesthood. My desire is to return to Korea as a medical-priest missionary after my ordination into the Orthodox Church, and join the Orthodox mission which already exists in Seoul, Korea.
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2011: Number of Orthodox Christians in Ireland doubled over five years
According to the latest 2011 census there are over 45 thousand Orthodox Christians in Ireland, reports Interfax-Religion.
This figure is two times larger than it was in 2006 and four times larger than in 2002. Thus according to the official data Orthodoxy is the fastest growing religion in Ireland, says the website Russianireland.com.
The largest center of Orthodoxy in the country is Swords, the county town of Fingal, where 1168 Orthodox Christians reside according to the 2011 census data.
The census also showed that the majority of the Orthodox Christians in Ireland are Romanians (26%), followed by Irish (20%) and Latvians (12.5%).
“Orthodoxy is not something new or strange In Ireland; it has always existed here. It is well-known that Irish Christianity before the 11th century was very similar to ours. But after Ireland was conquered by the British this denomination had been intentionally removed by the Pope. That is probably why many Irish perceive Orthodoxy as something special and dear”, said the Rector of the Patriarchal representation of the Russian Orthodox Church in Dublin, priest Michael Nasonov.
According to him, there are seven parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ireland already.
The most common religion in Ireland is Roman Catholicism (3.86 million people, 84.2% of the population), followed by Protestantism (over 134 thousand people) and Islam (over 49 thousand people).
http://orthochristian.com/57148.html
INS.
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Saint Paisios of Holy Mount Athos, Greece (+1994) and the Tibetan Buddhism young George from the Far East
George, a young man of sixteen or seventeen, came to Mount Athos to go from one monastery to another. Though Greek by blood, he had been raised abroad from early childhood among Tibetan Buddhist monks in their monastery. He had made a great deal of progress in meditation, and he had become an accomplished sorcerer, able to summon any demon he wanted. He was also an expert in the martial arts. Using the power of Satan, he made impressive displays of his abilities: he broke hazelnuts in his palm, and tossed away the shells while the nuts remained attached to his hand. He could read closed books. He struck large rocks with his bare hand, and they shattered like walnuts.
Some monks brought George to the Elder Pasios (Saint Paisios) so that he could help him. George asked the Elder what powers he had, what he could do, and the Elder answered that he himself didn’t have any power, and that all power is from God.
George, wanting to demonstrate his power, concentrated his gaze on a large rock in the distance, and it shattered. Then the Elder took a small rock and made the sign of the Cross over it, and told him to destroy it too. He concentrated and performed his magic, but he couldn’t shatter it. Then he started trembling, and the satanic powers―which he thought he controlled―since they weren’t able to break the rock, turned against him and hurled him to the opposite bank of the river. The Elder picked him up in a miserable condition.
“Another time,” recounted the Elder, “while we were talking, he suddenly stood up, grabbed me by the arms and spun me around backward. ‘Let’s see Hadjiefendis get you lose, if he can,’ he said. I felt it was like blasphemy to say that. I moved my hands a little, like this, and he was jerked away. He jumped up in the air and tried to kick me, but his foot stopped near my face, like it had hit an invisible wall! God protected me.
Elder Paisios and the young George from the Far East“At night, I kept him there, and he slept in my cell. The demons dragged him down into the pit and thrashed him for failing. In the morning he was in a bad state, injured and covered in thorns and dirt. He confessed, ‘Satan beat me up because I couldn’t defeat you.’”
The Elder convinced George to bring him his magical texts, and he burned them. “When he came here,” the Elder recalled, “he had some sort of charm or amulet with him. I went to take it, but he wouldn’t give it to me. I took a candle and said, “Lift the leg of your pants up a little.” Then I put the lit candle against his leg―he yelled and jumped up. “Well,” I said, “if the flame from a little candle is for you, how are you going to endure the fire of hell that you’re going to end up in because of what you’re doing?”
The Elder kept the young man close to him for a little while and helped him, so long as he was willing to be obedient.Elder Paisios and the young George from the Far East He felt such compassion for him that he said, “I would leave the desert and go out into the world to help this boy.” He made an effort to learn if he had been baptized and even found out the name of the church where his baptism had taken place. Shaken by the power and the grace of the Elder, George wanted to become a monk, but he wasn’t able to.
The Elder would refer to George’s case to show what a delusion it is to think that all religions are the same, that everyone believes in the same God, and that there’s no difference between Tibetan Buddhist and Orthodox monks.
The place of magic in Buddhism is unknown to many Westerners, who for the most part have been introduced only to a modernist Buddhism that excludes such content. A useful corrective is provided by the scholar Georges Dreyfus, the first Westerner to receive the Geshe degree of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism.
“Unlike modern intellectuals, Tibetan scholars are never tempted to reject magical elements and often engage in these practices, though they may view them as limited in their effects and not relevant to the soteriological goals of the tradition. In this regard they are also unlike modern Buddhists, who are profoundly uncomfortable with the magical practices that exist in Asian Buddhist traditions” (pp 303–304). George Dreyfus, Sounds of two hands clapping. The education of a Tibetan Monk Dreyfus discusses at length the Tibetan Buddhist practice of propitiating the “mundane” “dharma protectors”. “These violent spirits have taken an oath … to protect the Buddhist teaching. Despite this commitment, they are not completely tamed and are prone to quasi-human emotions such as anger, jealousy, and so forth. Hence, they are partial and can be enlisted in morally unseemly actions such as helping practitioners to secure worldly advantages or even kill an adversary” (p. 299). In fulfillment of their oath, meanwhile, the spirits “protect the person or the group, often by violent means,” from“‘ enemies of Buddhism’ (bstan dgra)“ (p. 300). Although “many Tibetans feel the tension between the reliance on these deities and the normative ideals of the tradition,” they “figure prominently in the ritual life of Tibetan monasteries…. But most of the rituals devoted to these deities are not performed in public but in the House of the Protectors (dgon khang), a separate temple devoted to them” (p. 300). Indeed, “Tibetans are often unwilling to introduce outsiders to [the practice’s] secrets. Temples are always open to anybody, but the House of Protectors is often less accessible and can even at times be closed to non-Tibetans” (p. 302).―eds.
From the Book: Elder Paisios of Mount Athos
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Blessed French Mother Nun Mary Magdalene Le Beller, hermitess of cave of St. John Climacus of Tholas (Wadi Et-Tlah), Sinai (+2013)
"A saint does not shine outwardly. All of his riches are within, in his soul."
Blessed Mother Nun Mary Magdalene Le Beller of cave of St. John Climacus of Tholas (Wadi Et-Tlah) was born in France.
Mother Mary Magdalene met the elder Elder Sophronius and Saint Porphyrius and matouska Lubuska of St. Petersburg where blessed her to live in the Sinai desert.
She visited the Holy Land and stayed for a little while where she is orthodox baptized on the River Jordan. Then she prayed to St. John of Scale, to show her the way of her salvation and the place for her lonely life. And she led her steps in the Sinai desert. She lived near the cave of St. John Climacus of Tholas (Wadi Et-Tlah). When St. Paisios the Athonite last visited Sinai, he gave her the blessing to live in the desert after having examined it and bless the typical prayer. She lived great rejection, many considered it crazy and fallacious.
The cave of St. John Climacus is about a one hour hike from the village of St. Katherine and probably 1.5-2 hours hike from the monastery. The trail is adventuresome amongst large boulders the size of small houses.
After suffering from a painful disease, she reposed in the Lord in her cell at the age of 67-68 on Thursday December 12, 2013, the feast of Saint Spyridon the Wonderworker and Bishop of Tremithus, at 13:00 pm.
Her relics repose in the cemetery of the monastery of the Prophet Moses of Pharan. She was humility and love incarnate.
INS.
* * *
The most-venerable Eldress Mary Magdalene, known in the world as Marie Madeleine Le Beller, was from Paris and went to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage and was baptized an Orthodox Christian when she was forty years old at the Jordan River in 1986. There she prayed to St. John of Climacus, to show her the way of her salvation and the place for her solitary life of total dedication to God. She went to the Sinai desert, and lived near the cave of St. John of Climacus in the Valley of Tholas approximately 8km from st. Katherne’s monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai.
For the first six months at Sinai, Mary Magdalene slept outside among the boulders and rocks, having only a sleeping bag, with scorpions and poisonous snakes as her only companions. Many considered her to be a crazy and delusional woman. She had sold her home in Paris and bought a piece of land from a Bedouin just below the cave of St. John of Climacus. There was already a carob tree and a well. She built five cells , a small chapel on top of rock, planted olive trees and a few apple trees, a vine, a garden, and built a small cistern. She also built a wall all around it.
In this place Mary Magdalene lived a simple life, tending to her garden, making prayer ropes, and later in life she occupied herself with woodcarving which she used to decorate her chapel with icons.
Initially she would go to the monastery every Sunday, but later on she would go every fifteen and on great feast days in order to receive Holy Communion.
Some fathers from the monastery of saint Katherine took pity on her and protected her, but many rejected her and made her life difficult. Once they forbade fr. Paule to accept her confession and did not allow her free hospitality at the hostel for women. She had strong faith and recalled the blessing the she had received from elder Sophrony, st. Porphyrios and matushka Lubuska the fool for Christ of st. Petersburg to be there. It seems that those fathers who did not like her thought that she should not live alone in the desert, and should have stayed at the female monastery in Faran, where she should first have lived at least for a year and a half in obedience. However, st. Paisios the Athonite, on his last visit to Sinai , when he visited the monastery in Faran, gave the nun Mary Magdalene his blessing to live in the desert after examining her and blessing her rule of prayer.
She would go to Jerusalem every Holy Week and Bright Week, then return to her cell at Sinai. After the Pascha of 2009, she no longer went to Jerusalem.
On the 18th November in 2012, a Sunday, she went to Crete to be examined at the Venizelio Hospital, and was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer.
From there she went to Moscow where she knew the bishop who oversaw the hospital of the Russian Church. There they did prolonged medical examinations and asked her to undergo surgery and chemotherapy at the largest medical center against cancer in Russia. But she did not accept, desiring to die at her beloved skete. She went to saint Seraphim of Sarov’s Hermitage, washed herself in his spring, and took great courage.
She returned to Sinai via Italy, where she visited the Church of saint Nicholas in Bari, and there she met a Russian woman named Euphrosyne, whom she asked to attend to her at Sinai. Euphrosyne responded positively and accompaniedher to Sinai, where she attended to the eldress till the end, without any material benefit. Euphrosyne was a gift of God because she spoke only Russian, which Mary barely spoke and understood. But they had excellent co-operation and was a good caretaker to her (for about ten months ), winning over the love and the respect of the fathers.
After Pascha of 2013 Mary could barely move anymore, let alone go to the monastery, but she bore the cross of her painful disease with great courage patience, without medical assistance and hospital care.
On the 12th of December in 2013, a Thursday, at 1:00 PM, eldress Mary reposed in the Lord in her cell, next to the cave of St. John of Climacus. Fr. Paule of Sinai rushed to her and had served a Divine Liturgy in her skete to commune her before her blessed repose.
The next day, after Fr Paule served another Divine Liturgy, they had her body brought to the local hospital to confirm her death. There she was kept frozen until the issue of a burial permit from the French Consulate. Then a strange thing occurred that brought admiration from those there. A snowstorm took place covering the area in white snow. The monastery therefore sent fourteen workers, all Christin Copts, to carry her body along the rugged terrain in the middle of a blizzard to her skete. Although it would take two hours to reach her skete from the motorway (which under normal conditions would take an hour), when they raised up her sacred relic it took them just 45 minutes later the snowstorm began again.
The permission to bury her was given on the night of December 17, 2013. She was buried the next day, a Wednesday, at the cemetery of the female monastery of the Prothet Moses in Faran according to the wishes of the fathers of the monastery of saint Katherine, even though it was her wish to be buried at her skete. No one who was near and dear to her attended her burial except Euphrosyne , who had served her with great self-denial. A German obstetrician who was known to her changed her garments for the burial, and stayed up all night beforehand to read the psalter over her body, but she had left for Jerusalem before the funeral.
Archbishop Damianos of Sinai and hieromonks Michael and Eugenios did the funeral, with four nuns of the monastery in Faran.
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Miracles of the Archangel Michael the Taxiarch to Mother Stavritsa the Missionary (+2000)
My name is Stavritsa Zachariou, and I am a Greek American. In 1969 I went to Africa as a missionary. I am 75 years old, and 15 years I spent in Africa, near our suffering brothers, sowing the seed of the Gospel. I stay by myself in Nairobi, Kenya, and from there I go to Kampala, Cameroon, and other places, where the seed of the Gospel of Christ needs to be sowed.
I am a missionary of the Archdiocese of America. With the help of God and of benefactors, we built 12 holy Churches in [Africa]. We built the 10th holy church in honor of the Archangel Michael, and I wanted to paint his icon from the prototype from the north gate of the Patriarchate. As I was finishing the icon, when I went to the post office, I received a letter from Fr. Soterios Trampa. I know Archimandrite Fr. Soterios, who was a missionary for many years in Korea, and who also served as a preacher of your Metropolis, along with Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Athens from 1968-1973. In his letter was a small booklet on the Taxiarch of Mantamados. Then I learned about Mantamados, and the bas-relief icon of the Archangel Michael. Fr. Soterios wrote: “I am sending you the information on the Taxiarch of Mantamados, that you might come to know his wondrous icon. Within this you will see one of his many miracles, which occur daily to the glory of God. I served there in the past, and I especially honor him...”
I began to read the booklet on the Taxiarch, including the miracle of the sword. As I continued reading, I reached the place regarding the passing of the sword from some unknown person to Mr. Diamante, when there was as if some marked commotion in the icon [that she had painted]. I turned around to see what was happening then and, O my God!!!! The Archangel of the icon began to come to life, to take on flesh and bones! I was astonished! I knelt before it and began to pray with tears and to ask for his help and his protection. After a short while, slowly the icon began to return to its natural state.
I was supposed to go for a trip to Kampala. I always thought that when I would go on some trip, that I should take with me the icon of some Saint from my icon corner. That time, I took with me the little icon of the Taxiarch of Mantamados.
We reached the border of Kampala and Kenya, and Kampala at that time (1988) had a military regime. When we speak about a military regime in the center of Africa, it means that human life is cheaper than the life of a blackbird!
As we were passing through, my driver (a Kenyan and my Koumbaro) did not notice that at one place there was a stop sign and he kept going. Five wild motorcyclists surrounded us. They got off their motorcycles, drew their weapons, and knelt, preparing to fire at us and to take our car and our possessions as spoil. That is what usually occurred there...
Then, I don't know what strength was within me, but I opened the door of the car..I exited with the icon of the Taxiarch in my hands, and approached them, crying out:
“For God's sake, stop! I have with me the Taxiarch of God, who is dark-colored like you, come see him!!!”
Automatically, it was as if someone grabbed them by the hands. They calmed down, left their weapons in the grass, and ran up to me, took the icon, like something holy and venerable, and began to examine it carefully and to shout. They bowed their faces to the ground and holding my hands, they asked for forgiveness. Then I saw that one of them was injured badly in the hand by a knife. I took my first aid kit from the car, nursed the wound and dressed it. We became friends! The most impressive thing is that, there was sown the word of God, and the five of them received Christ, and became Christians!
After all of this, I promised to the Archangel to come to Greece, to Mantamados, to thank him. And today, I feel very blessed that the Lord made me worthy to fulfill my promise. I thank Him from all my heart!
(Amateur translation of text, from Protopresbyter Eustratios Dessou, “The History and Miracles of the Taxiarch of Mantamados,” Volume II, pg. 158.)
Source:
https://full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com/2014/05/miracles-of-archangel-michael-taxiarch.html
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AN INTERVIEW WITH FR. JOHN MUSTHER OF CUMBRIA, ENGLAND
“Christ Won the Battle and Made my Heart Orthodox!”
Father John Musther, an Orthodox Englishman, serves in the Orthodox missionary parish of Sts. Bega, Mungo and Herbert in Keswick, Cumbria, North West England. His community, which is under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, is part of the ancient tradition of the Orthodox Church. The congregation is a living witness of the truth of Holy Orthodoxy to the people living nearby.
In the first millennium, before the Norman Conquest, Church in Britain and in Ireland was in full communion with the universal Orthodox Church, both East and West. Then the differences between Eastern and Western Church were relatively minor, most of them limited to local traditions. Yet striving for holiness was the same.
During that time the peoples of Britain and Ireland gave the world thousands of saints, men and women, kings and queens, martyrs, bishops and abbots, hermits and missionaries. The whole land of Britain retains the memory of the ancient saints of these islands. A great number of early shrines and holy sites are scattered all over Britain and Ireland.
Cumbria, where Fr. John lives, is one of the largest and least densely populated counties in England. The Lake District, part of Cumbria, is one of the most picturesque regions in England, with breath-taking views from the hills. The Lake District is justly famous for many beautiful lakes, hills and forests, and for centuries was inspiring poets and writers, musicians and painters.
In the first millennium Cumbria developed rather separately from the rest of England, and had more links with Wales than with the seven historic Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Christian life of its inhabitants had been influenced by many traditions - Roman, Celtic (Welsh, Irish and Scottish), Saxon and even Norse. Material traces of all of these can be found today.
The Church tradition holds that St. Patrick, Apostle of the Irish, was born here. This region draws people by its magic beauty and tranquillity—and by its very rich early Christian heritage. Thanks be to God, that the revival of Orthodox Faith and rediscovering of nearly forgotten local saints and shrines is becoming a reality because of people like Fr. John Musther.
* * *
—Fr. John, how did you become Orthodox?
—I met Fr. Sophrony (Sakharov). I was a student at University College London reading for a law degree. It was early 1961 if I remember correctly. At any rate Fr. Sophrony had only recently arrived at the Old Rectory at Tolleshunt Knights, Essex. I knew just a little about Christianity through the Church of England but nothing about Orthodoxy. On Sunday afternoon after the Ninth Hour he invited me into his study while the tea was being made and asked me: what was the purpose of the Christian life? He spoke so gently and when I said that I didn't know, he simply said, 'the purpose of the Christian life is to ask the Lord Jesus to send the Holy Spirit into our hearts that he may cleanse us and make us more like Christ'.
I sat there dumbfounded. My hair stood on end. I had never heard of such a thing. I had no questions. I knew that what he had told me was the truth of his own heart. The only response was to be still and receive the precious gift he was giving me.
His statement was a complete summary of the Scriptures. It was the Word of God to me. It changed the direction of my life. The power of that word still urges me on.
He told me to read, “The Undistorted Image.” Again I felt completely poleaxed. It was like death. How could a man live like this?
I struggled with the Greek culture of the churches at that time. It was also many years before I could overcome the Protestant spirit that I found in me. Then one day I woke up and felt all my objections had fallen away. Christ had won the battle and had made my heart Orthodox. I discovered I was living near the late Fr. Sergei Hackel's parish in Lewes in Sussex. He prepared myself and my wife Jenny for Chrismation in 2003.
—Please, tell us about your parish.
—The two of us moved to Cumbria in 2007 but not before I had been made a deacon with the mandate to see if there were any Orthodox in the area. We had bought a small cottage in Keswick which needed a lot of refurbishment. As the daily offices had already become part of our life we had the attic made into a chapel frescoed from top to bottom by (prominent English Orthodox icon painter) Aidan Hart. The painting was finished before we could move in: it was as though the Saints had moved in before us. (www.orthodoxcumbria.org/ the One Way of Holiness in Christ/ The Living Tradition in the British Isles)
We hadn't far to go before we met our first Orthodox, just 80 yards to the nearest chip shop. We discovered that Orthodox families ran fish and chip shops throughout the top of the county. We had an instant congregation. But the chapel was no longer big enough. Happily for us the local Methodist church had just closed their chapel in the village Braithwaite just two miles down the road. It was perfect for our needs. We were allowed to make it into an Orthodox church for Sunday liturgies while still using the first chapel for Vespers and Matins.
The Orthodox who first came to us were from Cyprus but soon we had English people also asking to be Chrismated. From the very beginning there was a demand to have a liturgy every Sunday celebrated in English. We have a good number of visitors from round the county but a good number more from those who come on holiday to this very popular location. The buildings include a social and kitchen area so after the liturgy we can all sit down and eat and talk. People are often reluctant to leave!
We are very fortunate in having people who are willing to do things. The ladies took in hand the refurbishing the bedrooms from what had been a youth center. So now we can have people to stay. We have been blessed by having a number of families and their children. It is so wonderful that they ask for baptism. Our numbers are 30-50 most of the year round.
The Chapel is on the village green and in summer people sit out in the open air; the children run around and enjoy the village swing. Just higher up is a splendid mountain pool. The water is cold and at Theophany there are only a few who jump in. But in summer it is a glorious spot for adult baptisms.
—You wrote a unique book: The Living Tradition of the Saints and Significance of their Teaching for Us. It contains over 350 pages that reflect the wisdom of saints who lived in the Orthodox East as well as in the Orthodox West in the first centuries of Christianity. This is a fruit of labours, prayers and research of some forty-five years. Could you please tell us how this book was created?
—Fr. Sophrony gave me a letter of Introduction to visit Mount Athos. I stayed eleven days, which was no mean feat when the monastic life was at such a low ebb in 1963. But I had a big gap in my knowledge of what I call the Living Tradition. I had grasped that the Desert Fathers were the bedrock of this tradition. I knew two people like them, St. Silouan and Father Sophrony. But what about the 1500 years in between? In those days (1962) there was virtually nothing in print in English about Orthodoxy. But I had regular access to the great library of Chevetogne and read everything I could, often in French. I started filling the gap. It took something like forty years to complete.
When people found out about what I was doing they were keen to hear, especially about what the Fathers taught about prayer. Then they asked me to write things down. This is how the book came about. It has proved very helpful for people to get an overview of the one way of holiness in Christ. It has to be read again and again. It has never been advertised. I prefer it that way. It is also the story of our conversion to Orthodoxy.
—You have also initiated two very important projects online. One is a British Saints Synaxarion, for which you selected various kinds of information on great many saints of Britain and Ireland: lives of saints, holy sites associated with them, iconography, hymnography, with many photographs and illustrations. One can search the Synaxarion website (www.synaxarion.org.uk) using different criteria: rank, feast-day, icons, troparia and kontakia, holy places, miracles, pilgrimage sites. It is an enormous piece of work. The second project is Early Christian Ireland: here you provide information and photographs of all early Christian sites in Ireland up to 1100, including holy wells, trees and mountains linked to the memory of a saint, Celtic high crosses, round towers, tombs etc. How have you been collecting information on the saints of the British Isles?
—One year we found ourselves in Ireland. We visited some of the holy sites there. I was astounded how many and how rich these places are. But it had been difficult to get information about many of them. So I started making a database so others could find their way also. (www.earlychristianireland.org). People have been very appreciative. Sometimes people ask me to plot for them a two week visitation of holy sites for their vacation!
We have been round Ireland ourselves twice—but there are still gaps in our knowledge. But by now we had became fervent hunters of remote islands, beehive huts and the tombs of the saints. I cannot tell you how excited we got. How close we seemed to these Desert Fathers.
People asked us to “do” Wales, Cornwall, Scotland and the rest of England. But I wouldn't have missed the experience for anything. We feel we have so many friends who surround us, pray for us and encourage us every day.
When we had our chapel frescoed we had our local Cumbrian saints in large size under the central deisis, namely St. Mungo, St. Cuthbert, St. Bega and St. Herbert. We dedicated our Community to Saints Bega, Mungo and Herbert. Around the other three sides of the walls we have St. Anthony, St. Poemen, St. Macarius, St. Barsanuphius, St. John Climacus, St. Isaac the Syrian; St. Maximus, St. Hesychius, St. Gregory of Sinai, St. Simeon the New Theologian, St. Gregory Palamas and St. Silouan.
These are our “clouds of witnesses.” We sing Vespers and Matins every day. We are so happy tacked on to the “end.” Knowing where we are, we know we are truly being saved every day.
—In the illustrated articles on these saints and shrines that you put on the parish website (http://www.orthodoxcumbria.org/) you mention that you and your matushka did visit most of these places yourselves. It must have brought great inspiration and comfort to your soul. Looking at these photographs alone, one can say these are truly “holy landscapes” which transform the soul of nearly each traveller… Who are your favourite saints? What are your favourite holy places?
—We have already mentioned the Saints. Choosing favourite places is hard but some things stand out: the cave of St. Colman Mac Duach (Colman of Kilmacduagh) on the Burren Co Clare, the cave of St. Ninian in Galloway, and the cave of St. Columba at Ellary in Argyll; the island of Illauntannig off the north side of the Dingle Peninsula (county Kerry), the monastic island of Illaunlochan in Portmagee (Co Kerry), Church Island off Waterville (Co Kerry), St. Macdara's Island off Galway; the seastacks of the Orkneys, the shrine of St. Issui in the Black mountains (near Abergavenny, Wales), St. Moluag's church in remote Eynort on the Isle of Skye, St. Triduana's chapel on Papa Westray, Orkneys. All these are an unsurpassable testimony to serious solitude and prayer. We have made 17 booklets of 40 or so pages covering the entire British Isles detailing holy sites wherever we went.
What was then needed was a Synaxarion of saints in the British Isles so that many of them could return to liturgical remembrance in our services. Of course there was already in existence the extremely important Calendar of Saints published by the Fellowship of St. John the Baptist. But the names need to be backed up by information about the saints in easy accessible form. What better to have it all together on a website devoted to this purpose. So we selected all the saints who played an important part in the history of the church in each area. The saints instead of just appearing on a list are placed in a proper historical and geographical context. Indeed by having a “next” button the whole Synaxarion can be read from beginning to end in this way. This makes not only for a beautiful read but supplies abundant information. The final coup has been to include on each entry of the saint not only an icon where available but photographs of all holy sites relevant to each saint. This in turn will stimulate more visits to more holy sites and more pilgrimages. People can download what they want or be sent a printable version of the Calendar. We realize this is not quite the same as the older Synaxarion but technology has made it possible to do something which fits the bill getting to know and appreciate saints in a way we could never do before.
—Could you please talk a little about Cumbria, and offer a brief outline of the history of Orthodoxy in the county? Would you suggest pilgrimage sites the Orthodox faithful would benefit from visiting?
—The church came to Cumbria early. At least two chapels have been found on Hadrian's Wall, Vindolanda and Birdoswald, and Vindolanda may date even back into the fourth century. Just round the corner is Ardwall Island in Galloway where early Irish monks settled in the fifth century. St. Ninian worked out of Carlisle and could have founded the hermit caves of Ninekirks. St. Kentigern (St. Mungo) is said to have preached at Crosthwaite in Keswick. St. Cuthbert was a regular visitor to these western parts. St. Herbert his friend lived on his island in Derwentwater (situated on the territory of Keswick). St. Bega made her cell on the shores of Lake Bassenthwaite very near to Keswick. This is rich stuff for such a small area as Cumbria; and Keswick shows itself to have four saints! What more could we want?
—Is there a growing awareness of the ancient saints and shrines of these isles among the native residents of Cumbria and all Britain? What is your heroic parish currently undertaking in order to contribute to the restoration of the rich Orthodox heritage of your country?
—In 2007 we did an eight-day pilgrimage to the holy sites of Cumbria using the accommodation at Braithwaite. We hunted down holy wells and to our astonishment found seventy—a figure far higher than previous estimates though some are now lost. Astonishingly such density of wells in the northern area of Cumbria is a new revelation and makes it not far off the density of Wales or Cornwall. In 2014, we began a work of restoration and blessing of the wells. We hope to continue this in 2015 and beyond. At the moment we are writing up what is turning out be a lovely book on all the wells.
In the background here is a deeper question: if Orthodoxy is recently returning to this ancient area of Britain and reclaiming its saints and holy places, how can it be meaningful to reclaim the wells also? People can connect with saints, with (British) monastic sites (of which there are several in Cumbria), and with the great crosses (such as Bewcastle and Gosforth) But with wells? Are they not a cultural embarrassment? We have to answer that. Otherwise we are just making a romantic selection of the past which has little to do with reality. Cultural heritage in Cumbria is the county’s only remaining economic asset and here the Orthodox Church is seen to be preserving a very overlooked part of that heritage. We believe that awareness of the spiritual landscape of Cumbria will dramatically increase through pilgrimages, annual blessings of the wells, and of course through what we publish.
—How do you see the future of Orthodoxy here? Do the various Orthodox jurisdictions (Greek, Russian, Romanian, Antiochian and others) work together in this country?
—Did you know Cumbria was not part of England to the tenth and eleventh centuries? It was then swallowed up by the Western church just like the rest of the country. The voice of Orthodoxy has been submerged that long. People are deeply ignorant of it because they have no experience of it. It comes as something of a real shock when we came here.
The first thing has been to establish the liturgy every Sunday; the second thing is to have it in English. We must speak about our Fathers: the Greek speakers that we have saints they know nothing about; the English that they have saints they have all but forgotten about. The kingdom “works” through the prayers of the saints, the Gospel is liveable, and sanctity is possible. This is the core of Orthodoxy and it cannot ever change.
But the religious culture of England (and elsewhere) was turned away from the Mother of God, and all the Saints and the Angels. The communion of earth with heaven was met with denial as was the liturgy as a transforming reality. It lost the one way of holiness at the heart of the Living Tradition. People do not know what they have lost.
Orthodoxy must not add to this tragedy. Generations of young Orthodox have already been lost by lack of vision. Multiple jurisdictions wreak havoc with our witness. Where will we be in fifteen or twenty years time? Perhaps even slimmer than we are now, but hopefully more wise and aware.
Pray for us.
—It was a real pleasure to talk to you, Fr. John! Thank you for the wonderful interview! We wish you abundant blessings from God in all your labors! May He grant you strength for many years!
Dmitry Lapa
3/12/2015
https://orthochristian.com/77852.html
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The Australian Themi Adams of The Flies Band became Orthodox Priest Missionary in Africa
Fr. Dr Themi Adams considers himself wilder and braver than his rock star contemporaries. Not because he bites off bat heads or taunts the media with a bad boy image—but because he delivers aid to some of Africa’s most dangerous communities.
Born to Egyptian and Greek parents, Fr. Dr Themi Adams was born as Themi Adamopulous and raised in Australia. Growing up as a staunch Marxist and atheist, Adams turned away from God and picked up a bass guitar in the 1960s. He soon started a band called The Flies.
The Flies went on to become one of the more memorable indie bands of the era. The group toured with The Beatles and gained a global following. Adams eventually found himself in the United States at Princeton and Harvard University.
“It was at this time that I suddenly became moved by the overwhelming needs of the oppressed and disadvantaged people in the Third World” says Adams, who is now a devout and radical Orthodox missionary. Adams has dedicated his life to helping the poor.
“I decided that something needed to be done—and that my current lifestyle was not the most productive in the eyes of God,” Adams continues. He spent the next decade living in the outer slum areas of Nairobi, fulfilling his calling as a devoted missionary.
After 10 years of missionary work, he felt called to address a greater need in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
“The entire world had turned its back on the country, and they were in great need of help,” Adams says. “So, I fought the impossible odds and went into the country, alone, to set up a mission and controversially deliver aid to all who needed it.”
Media around the world have been captivated by Adams’ ability to get things done in hard territories where others have failed. In fact, his authority-defying attitude has earned him many notable relationships with government officials in African countries.
Adams, for example, is a close advisor and personal friend of Ernest Bai Koroma, the fourth president of Sierra Leone. This close-knit relationship led to the formation of Paradise Kids for Africa (PK4A), an organization with a mandate to help some of the world’s poorest people.
“The secret of the mission is to respect the Africans and to understand them,” Adams says. “The war has left so many people disabled, and because of the war there was no vaccinations in the 80s, the polio cases had reached catastrophic proportions. That has contributed to the high number of disabled in the country.”
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Paris, France: The conversion of a Roman Catholic French man to Orthodoxy
A miracle of Saint Xenia of St. Petersburg, Russia
Saint Xenia of St. Petersburg, Russia, the Fool-for-Christ and Wonderworker…
We follow with an account by a resident of France, who was benefited by the Saint in our days.
A French dentist with a private clinic in Paris was injured in a car accident and had to stay in hospital for a few days.
Roman Catholic by creed, but indifferent to the faith, he watched as the patient next to him, a Russian émigré, would pray in the evenings in the ward, and would laugh behind his back.
Since the Russian’s lengthy prayers were repeated for as many days as he remained there, the dentist saw fit to make fun of the praying man, and he joked around with those from the other rooms.
After that first evening of making fun with the others, it was impossible for him to fall sleep.
Suddenly, the door to the ward opened and a woman appeared, wearing men’s clothing and holding a cane in her hand.
She was heading towards his bed. He was startled. Unknown facial features. A sweet, strange face.
“What do you want, lady? I don’t have any change. Who let you in here?”
“I came to tell you,” she said to him, as she lifted her cane, “to stop ridiculing Yuri, who is praying, because you will remain here a long time yet, and will seek his prayers….”
And indeed. Over the following days, he was diagnosed with serious cardiac insufficiency and remained three months in the hospital.
Yuri visited him at one point, and when the Frenchman revealed his vision to him, he began to tell him about St. Xenia and Orthodoxy.
Today, the Frenchman is an active member of the French Orthodox community and Baptized his newborn baby girl with the name Xenia last December, in honor of the Saint and in memory of his miraculous conversion.
http://www.holytrinityrandolph.com/saint-xenia.htm
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New Zealand’s Maori Convert To Orthodoxy
The indigenous Maori people in New Zealand are converting to Orthodoxy under the influence of Russian immigrants, the diocese in Russia’s Urals said on Monday, citing a Russian emigre.
According to a letter sent to relatives in the Urals by a Russian woman who married a student from New Zealand, Russian immigrants “maintain Russian traditions in every house.”
“Seeing the example of Russian immigrants, many indigenous New Zealanders convert to Orthodoxy,”
the woman wrote, as quoted by the diocese of Yekaterinburg.
“They baptize their children and give them Russian (Orthodox) names.”
The number of Russian immigrants to New Zealand increased after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. According to the most recent official nationwide census, carried out in 2006, a total of 4,581 residents said they were born in Russia. Unofficial figures estimate the Russian population in New Zealand has since grown to about 6,500, including first-generation children of Russian parents.
https://journeytoorthodoxy.com/2010/05/new-zealands-maori-convert-to-orthodoxy/
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Native American Orthodox Christian Fellowship (NAOCF)
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Native-American-Orthodox-Christian-Fellowship-NAOCF/160917590660985
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Fr. Athanasius Henein, Egypt: A Copt-Monophysite Priest’s Conversion to Orthodoxy in Athens, Greece on 2011
Below is a translation I have done introducing the works and person of Fr. Athanasios Henein, a convert from Monophysitism. Although he spent many years in “captivity”, as he himself says, he responded to Christ when He called to him to enter into Life, Orthodoxy; he diligently sought Christ and found Him. For my part I was so impressed by his words that I had to share such a wonderful, if small, taste of his conversion story. I would translate more if I could find the whole account. Enjoy!
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An Introduction to the Works and Person of Fr. Athanasios Henein:
Given such a miraculous event, instead of writing a preface ourselves, it is better for Fr. Athanasios to speak for himself, in his own words, about his blessed conversion into Life, the Truth – which exists only in the One Catholic and Apostolic Church, our Orthodox Church.
We praise God for his wonderful work and wish Fr Athanasios, through the intercessions of the Theotokos and of all the saints, the blessing and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ and His support for him and his family. We also thank him for his confidence and the texts he sends us. Eventually we will post both the Greek and Arabic versions to benefit souls and glorify the Lord.
Fr. Athanasios in his own words:
Many speak of heresy, many write about the condition, but few are those who have tasted the bitterness of heresy, and fewer still those who have lived and shed blood to free themselves from its captivity.
Heresy is a way of life, it is a great prison, it is a mental, as well as physical, illness. I, Athanasios Henein, lived these tragic events as the head of the Coptic community in Athens for fifteen years. Copts divide the person of Christ and abolish His inter-human reality and His realistic presence in the world and in the Church.
But the miracle of my healing and conversion to our Mother, the Orthodox Church, was by the grace of the Triune God and the practical love of His Eminence Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus, the Cretan Elder Methodius, and the fathers of the Holy Monastery of the Resurrection.
The words you will read, dear readers, are a confession of faith, and gratitude. But they are also an appeal for us to work together to help ordinary Copts (of which 15 thousand live in Athens) to experience the beauty of Orthodoxy.
(To read Fr. Athanasios’ articles in English, French, Arabic or Greek see HERE.)
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Converting to Orthodoxy in Norway
(It’s Been Done)
A Romanian writer, Tudor is a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Romania. He has published a number of articles related to philosophy and theology in different cultural and academic journals. His work focuses on the evolution of Orthodox spirituality in Western societies as well and he is going to publish a book of interviews with Westerners converted to Orthodoxy. In this article, he interviews Father Johannes Johansen, an Orthodox priest in Norway.
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TP: First of all, please do tell us how you discovered Orthodoxy and why have you chosen the conversion to the Orthodox Church.
Fr. Johannes Johansen: By studying the Holy Bible. The Orthodox Church is the direct contuation of the Church that Christ himself founded on his holy apostles – the only possible Christian Church.
TP: What should we know about the Orthodox heritage of Norway, about the origins of Orthodoxy in Norway? When did actually appear the first Orthodox church in Norway?
Fr. Johannes Johansen: Everybody thinks that Norway was Roman Catholic the first 500 years and then Lutheran/protestant. BUT this is a truth which has to be corrected. The Christianity started to influence “Norway” already in the 8th century, and in the 1000-c. We have the history with St. Sunniva of Selja (described in The Saga about King Olav Tryggvason) and then we have St. Olav Haraldson who eventually Christianized Norway (Stiklestad 1030), and a little later st. Hallvard in Oslo-aerea) – all of it BEFORE the schism between Rome and the other Orthodox Churches. That means the Church/Christianity in Norway in that first period was Orthodox Church/Christianity (not “roman-catholic”).
The second point is in the far north-east: In 16. century the holy missionary Trifon came from Novgorod and Christianized all the eastern “skolt” laps (saami) people. He built the chapel in Neiden in 1565 – still existing, and the tribe he Christianized are still Orthodox people and belonging to our parish.
The third point is 1920 – when a group of ablout 1000 Russian refugee came from Archangelsk/Murmansk to Norway and founded “The Orthodox Church (St. Nicholas Parish) in Norway”, still existing, my parish. The parish has after that expanded much.
TP: Can you please talk about the fullness of the Norwegian Orthodox tradition among the other orthodox traditions in Eastern and Central Europe? I don’t know if this is a right question, but I am thinking about the fact that there should be a some kind of fullness as I have mentioned above.
Fr. Johannes Johansen: In fact, we can not yet talk about a Norwegian Orthodox cultural tradition, but we can say that it is in the process of being formed. First of all the language: we are using more and more norwegian (in stead of church-slavonic) because of the international composition of members in the parishes. We are also combining Russian/slavonic music with the byzantine. We have published a great range of books, and translated most of the liturgical texts.
TP: Who are the most important saints celebrated in the Norwegian Orthodox Church?
Fr. Johannes Johansen: We do not say “The Norwegian Orthodox Church” but “The Orthodox Church in Norway” (an important difference). The most important saints for Orthodoxy in Norway are: St. Sunniva, St. Olav, St. Hallvard and St. Trifon, the apostles Peter and Paul. St. Seraphim of Sarov and St. Nicholas.
TP: What can you say about the dialogue between the Norwegian Orthodox Church and the other local and traditional orthodox churches such as the Russian, the Greek or the Serbian one?
Fr. Johannes Johansen: We try to have good and friendly relations to them. But a great difference between them and us, is that they are very nationalistic, while we welcome people of all nationalities, for us the Orthodox faith and Tradition is the only thing that matters.
TP: Which are the most important Orthodox churches and monasteries in Norway?
St Nicholas Church in Oslo. St. Georges chapel in Neiden. St. Trifon monastery in Hurdal.
TP: I also wish to find out more information about the written books concerning the Orthodoxy in Norway. So, what books should we read so that we can better discover the Orthodox Church in Norway?
Fr. Johannes Johansen: In 2003 we published a book of the history of the parish of St Nicholas (the first and oldest parish in Norway) in Oslo. Now we are ready to publish a book about the monastery of St. Trifon also.
TP: Which is the main role and importance of the Orthodox Church in the Norwegian society at this moment?
Fr. Johannes Johansen: We try to defend traditional Christian dogma and moral standards againt modernism and secularisation. We are active in oecumenical movement to witness about Orthodoxy.
This interview is one of many that will be published in the book “The rediscovery of Orthodox heritage of the West” by Tudor Petcu, containing interviews with different Westerners converted to Orthodoxy. It will be published in two volumes and the first one will appear by the end of this year.
https://journeytoorthodoxy.com/2016/07/converting-to-orthodoxy-in-norway-its-been-done/
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The Journey To Antioch: Part One
by Clifton D. Healy
My Discoveries in the Orthodox Church: Introduction
I grew up in and trained for ministry among the Restoration Movement churches. Toward the end of that training, while still at college, I began to investigate the Anglican tradition. And though for a time these two faith traditions overlapped, still the pathways are fairly clear.
The road markers for my journey to Antioch, my inquiry into the Orthodox Church, however, are much more muddled, scattered here and there along previous roadways, seen now as portents of things to come, but known then as only so much new experience, as simple signposts which I was then unable to read.
The relating of my investigations into Orthodoxy, then, runs scattershot at first through the stages of my experience in the Stone-Campbell/Restoration Movement churches just prior to becoming acquainted with Anglicanism, then through my initial searching in the Anglican tradition, and finally to the culmination of my experience in that tradition as I turned away from the Episcopal Church to finally look with focused attention at the Orthodox Church.
My experience of Orthodoxy can therefore be roughly charted along five time markers: the years prior to the summer of 2000, the months from June 2000 to January 2002, from June 2002 to September 2003 (the “gap” from January to June 2002 will be addressed in due course), from September 2003 to the Sunday of Orthodoxy and our entry into the Cathecumenate, the Catechumenate from the Sunday of Orthodoxy to Pentecost, and our entry into the Church on Pentecost.
1. Encounters with Orthodoxy prior to June 2000
As has been told elsewhere, by the summer of 2000 I had looked outside my own heritage churches to find that longed-for connection to the historic Church and had made my way to Anglicanism in the belief that I had found it there.
But the search had antecedents that predated my Anglican investigations. The first event in which I can recall this longing began to manifest itself with the purchase, in January 1987 between semesters of my freshman at Ozark Christian College, at the college bookstore of the Lightfoot and Harmer Greek and English single volume edition of The Apostolic Fathers. Here was my first attempt to find out what the early Church taught and believed.
A seed had been planted as I spent the next semester reading through the Apostolic Fathers. I had no real understanding of what I was reading, but it both satisfied and intensified my longing for a connection to the New Testament Church.
The next event occurred about four years later. In the spring of 1991, just prior to my graduation from college, I prepared for a conditional baptism. I was seeking some certainty and authenticity about my baptism at age seven, especially in light of the fact that my life as an adolescent was godless and immoral. The preparation brought to my attention, for the first time, the Jesus Prayer, and aside from the Lord’s Prayer, was my first experience with an ancient prayer of the Church. All my experience to this point had been oriented solely around extemporaneous praying.
In the summer of that year (1991) I read the first edition of Peter Gilquist’s Becoming Orthodox. This was my first real and formal introduction to the Orthodox Church. During this time I had been investigating Anglicanism (and later that autumn, I would seriously consider, if only briefly, the Roman Catholic Church), so I cannot say how or why I chose to buy the book.
Perhaps it was knowing that one of the persons noted in the book, now Fr. Gregory Rogers, was an alumnus of Lincoln Christian Seminary, where I later earned my M. A. in contemporary theology and philosophy. In any case, though it did allay my concerns related to Mary and the Tradition, it still seemed to me that Orthodoxy was too foreign, too ethnic for me. Which is ironic, considering that Gilquist’s book recounts the journey of a couple of thousand of evangelicals to Orthodoxy.
But there you have it. To me Orthodoxy was foreign.
A few months later, in the autumn, I read The Way of a Pilgrim and was reintroduced to the Jesus Prayer. But by this time I was more intent on assimilating ancient Christian spiritual disciplines in my life than in understanding Orthodoxy any further.
After that, my encounters with Orthodoxy were infrequent, though they continued to be bookish. I read Timothy Ware’s The Orthodoxy Church in the autumn of 1992 and his The Orthodoxy Way in the summer of 1996. Daniel Clendenin’s two books, from an evangelical Protestant perspective, helped to further clarify some points of concern in the spring of 1995.
But although in the spring of 1993 I did purchase a few Orthodox prayer books and a small laminated icon, I was still very much the intellectual tourist. And these items were being used to deepen my exploration and experience of, ironically enough, Anglicanism.
I made no real use of these things, at least not on their own terms. I merely knew about them.
2. Orthodox Encounters June 2000 through January 2002
From my last couple of years Ozark Christian College (1990-1991) till my decision to leave the priestly vocation discernment process in ECUSA in January 2002, I was moving into, then back out of, Anglicanism. Although in those years
I acquired icons and prayer ropes, there was no real assimilation of Orthodox worship and prayer, and only infrequent reading of Orthodox books. Indeed, my first visit to the Divine Liturgy took place in October 1998, at St. Mary’s in Omaha, Nebraska, during a three-week stay while I was training with a company for which I had just been hired. I had already been an Episcopalian for two years, and so I went mostly out of curiosity. It was a beautiful and moving experience, but it still felt too foreign to me, especially now with my developing Anglo-Catholic ethos. I would not visit another Divine Liturgy until July 2000.
In the spring of 2000, I had begun attending an Episcopal seminary as part of a discernment process for a priestly vocation in the Episcopal Church. After a scant three months, I was shocked and angered. I had seen the Gospel mocked, godly Christian men and women ridiculed, and the Scriptures dismissed with a wave of the hand–all because these things spoke against, or these persons by their lives revealed the futility of, the majority’s political agenda.
I very nearly decided not to go back once the term ended. And in time I would come to the conclusion that the forms and structures of the national Episcopal Church, as well as a plurality of dioceses, had been so corrupted by heresy and the grab for power, had been so wed to a singular political agenda, that no reform was forthcoming. I would risk the spiritual well-being of my family to have stayed. And in my mind I was called first to be a priest in my family, not to the institution that is the Episcopal Church.
But as it turned out, at the end of that first term, a serendipitous receipt of a postcard from Frank Schaeffer’s Regina Orthodox Press, advertising a videotape of an interview on the program “Calvin Forum” (hosted by Bob Meyering) with Frank Schaeffer, son of the famous Presbyterian theologian Francis Schaeffer, led to what became a six-year inquiry into Orthodoxy.
I purchased and watched the video. I recalled the Gilquist book I had read some nine years ago. And that old longing for the historic Church and its real presence was reawakened after the disillusionment I had recently experienced.
After watching the video, a chain of connections unrolled in the space of about a month which would put in place two very important factors: a disciplined study of Orthodoxy and a parish in which to experience the Orthodox faith and life. It was that latter reality that has made all the difference.
Having watched the Schaeffer video, I did some searching and found his book Dancing Alone at a local library, and checked it out and read it. More research led to two of Frederica Mathewes-Green’s books, Facing East and At the Corner of East and Now. A few weeks later, on a trip home to Wichita, Kansas, over the Fourth of July, I visited my favorite bookstore, Eighth Day Books, and purchased the revised edition of Peter Gilquist’s Becoming Orthodox as well as the book he edited, Coming Home of personal accounts of how men from various Protestant backgrounds had become Orthodox priests. There would be many more like this.
This initial interest and burst of reading generated many sessions of surfing the web, looking for information on the Orthodox Church. From the books that I’d read, as well as many web links, I found the website of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of America, and through it’s parish directory search got the information for All Saints Orthodox Church. I contacted the parish pastor, Archpriest Patrick Reardon, and was warmly invited to come worship at the Divine Liturgy.
At this point I had almost decided not to return to seminary, and, in fact, to leave the Episcopal Church altogether. I had discovered Orthodoxy, and in the space of about a month and a half had been so drawn to what I had learned of the Orthodox Church that I was now wondering if I shouldn’t continue my Christian pilgrimage, leave Canterbury, as it were, and continue on to Antioch. In fact, I made a list of resolutions in which I began to attempt to appropriate the life of the faith of the Ancient Church. As far as I could then tell, it wasn’t Anglicanism that had that life, but Orthodoxy. And so the last resolution was that if I ever left ECUSA, I would become Orthodox.
Of course, the question is properly raised: How could I so suddenly, having just started at seminary to discern a vocation to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church–and having uprooted my family and limited our employment and educational choices–even think of abandoning the Episcopal Church?
Hadn’t I spent about five years investigating Anglicanism before my confirmation? Hadn’t I spent four years trying to further assimilate Anglo-Catholic traditions into my faith practice? Hadn’t Anna and I worked hard to come to some compromise about the Episcopal Church, my confirmation being something she had been opposed to? Was I ready to throw all that away?
Not yet. My journal entries at the time were full of ambivalence. My initial picture of the Episcopal Church had been fueled and fed by Robert Webber’s, Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail. But the picture that book had presented was now a decade and more out of date. In fact, one may well question whether Webber’s optimism of the place of evangelicals in ECUSA was either unfounded or misplaced. I now had a more realistic understanding of where the national church was and where it was headed. My questions now had less to do with whether or not I was called to the priesthood, but whether, if so called, I could serve without compromising my faith or putting my family at spiritual risk. Still, my parish priest was a significant influence through his friendship and pastoral mentoring.
And my bishop was an example of godly leadership against the tide of rejection of biblical and traditional norms of faith and life.
And, given my experience of judging a church on the basis of reading alone, I was much less sanguine that reading a handful of books and surfing the internet was a solid basis for making a change that would involve scrapping the hard work and planning that had brought us to Chicago in the first place.
Still and all, Orthodoxy beckoned, so on 23 July 2000, I worshipped for the second time at an Orthodox Church. I went to the Divine Liturgy at All Saints.
I was absolutely blown away. Since Fr. Patrick was out of town that weekend, a deacon from another parish served the typika liturgy. The service was still foreign to me. And the differences in pious practices was evident. I genuflected whereas everyone else bowed. I crossed myself backwards (or was it the parishioners who were crossing themselves the “wrong” way?).
I bowed at the Gloria Patri, whereas everyone else crossed themselves (though many also bowed). The singing was a capella, which would have called to mind some worship experiences in some of my heritage churches, except that the hymns sung were all unfamiliar to me. I recognized, of course, the Pater Noster, the Sursum Corda, the Nicene Creed (sans filioque) and a few other pieces of the Liturgy, but the rest of it was a jumble, despite the copies of the Liturgy (with explanation) in the pew.
But what wasn’t foreign to me was the content of what I was hearing. At the seminary I had already been subjected to liturgies that eliminated the Fatherhood of God, that struck out the human maleness of Jesus, that replaced robust Trinitarianism with bland Sabellianist notions of a monochrome God, that nixed confession of my personal acts of sin, and that offered a running critique of the Tradition as patriarchal, oppressive, and, well, outdated.
Here, however, all of that which had been denied me at the seminary liturgies was present in all its fullness. Here the Trinity was confessed in full, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Here Jesus’ two natures, united in one Person, was confessed and expressly linked to the cause of our salvation. Here God was Father, fully and completely. Here our sins were confessed in a variety of ways. Here the Tradition was alive, fully vibrant, and salvific.
If I could have, I would have become Orthodox right then.
But, in God’s wisdom, he has blessed me with a wife that frequently intervenes to bring me to a more level-headed and realistic path of action. Some time after worshipping at All Saints, I was still enthusiastic about the Orthodox Church, and in a conversation my wife and I were having, that intensity shone through. But she bluntly and firmly drew the conversation to a close by saying,
“We’re not changing churches again.”
That accomplished God’s purpose, which was to give me pause and to deeply consider the claims of Orthodoxy. It is not a coincidence, then, that I did not return to worship at All Saints for some six months. Nor is it a coincidence that I decided to return, after all, to seminary. I determined that I should try to enter more deeply into the Anglo-Catholic traditions I had known as a way of surviving the seminary experience.
But I did not stop my pursuit of and inquiry into the Orthodox Church.
After a couple of months actively engaging with Orthodoxy, I returned to my Anglican ethos and tried to find within it resources to overcome what I took to be its weaknesses and failure. I sought this mainly in traditional liturgical forms and pieties. I tried to use the 1928 prayer book and the Anglican Service Book. I read some of the Carolinian divines. But I found that this retreat into the Anglican past, good and holy though it was, did little more than emphasize that the Episcopal Church was, in my view, going further and further down a road I not only did not want to go, but one I was certain would end in destruction.
In January 2001 I began more fully to realize these things, so I took a very conscious step back toward Orthodoxy by purchasing an Orthodox prayer book and a translation of the Septuagint psalter. These soon became my sole means of personal prayer. I gave up the Anglican prayer book for good. Also that month, I again visited All Saints Orthodox Church.
During the next few months, my life was incarnate ambivalence. I had one foot pointing to the world of Orthodoxy, and one toward the Episcopal Church. I had grown increasingly unclear as to my diocesan status as an aspirant, and was coming to the conclusion that my search for holy orders was effectively over. I talked with my parish priest and he contacted the bishop. The three of us arranged a lunch meeting in May. That meeting even more firmly solidified the backing of my bishop, especially given we were of like mind on many current matters in ECUSA.
Still, despite being in limbo for some months, yet now having a clear green light, I was disappointed. Had the bishop cut me loose, my decision would have been clear and relatively easy. Now I was forced to do ever more thinking. ECUSA or Orthodoxy?
For Mother’s Day, May 2001, and again in June, my wife graciously accompanied me to two Orthodox Liturgies. The first was at Sts Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Glenview, the second was her first visit to All Saints. She was curious and asked some questions, but ultimately unimpressed. Eventually, she would become deeply resistant to our being received into the Orthodox Church.
In the autumn of that year, I began my doctoral program in philosophy at Loyola University in Chicago. During that semester my own sense of vocation and the status of the Episcopal Church became clear to me. On Christmas Eve, I prayed and wrote a list of issues I had with the Episcopal Church. After two weeks of reflection and further prayer, I decided to stop the process of discernment to a vocation to the priesthood. On the Feast of Epiphany 2002, I emailed my priest, and later contacted the bishop and my parish discernment committee. When I told Anna, there was visible and verbal relief. She summed it up in her response to me:
“Good.”
A week later I returned again to All Saints. I had lunch with Fr. Patrick and Khouria Denise. He answered a lot of my questions and gave me a prayer rule. I continued to study further about Orthodoxy. But the toll of the previous year and a half worked itself out in me. I soon went into a state of numbness and apathy. I stopped attending worship altogether. I rarely prayed. I felt stuck between.
I had given up on the Episcopal Church and Anglicanism.
There was no evangelical church that appealed to me. And with Anna’s growing resistance to a new church journey, let alone the strange world of Orthodoxy. So for six months, from January to June 2002, I was nowhere in terms of a church home. Orthodoxy still beckoned, and I knew my heart lay there. But I was out in the wilderness. Something eventually would have to give way.
And as you may suppose, it started with repentance.
3. Orthodox Encounters June 2002 to September 2003
On 9 June 2002, I returned to All Saints Orthodox Church after a six-month absence.
The week before, through a serendipitous reference in my reading to the passage in Ephesians 5 on the relations of husbands and wives, I contemplated my responsibilities as a husband. According to the Scriptures, and my own conscience, I came up far short. Especially in the critical role of my obligations of leadership in my home in matters of faith.
As I’ve described, my first reactions to the new realities confronting me in the Episcopal Church and in seminary, as the 90s drew to a close and the new century and millennium began, were largely ones of anger and repulsion.
I was angry that the church I thought I had joined had, in effect, ceased to exist more than two and a half decades before. I was angry that I had not seen the truth when I was being confirmed, and angry at those changes which had manifested themselves after my confirmation. I was also repulsed by the approval of immoral behavior and the ever-growing influence of heresy in the communications of the church, heresy which was never seriously or prominently addressed, let alone disciplined. No bishops or priests were brought up on presentments for preaching that which contradicted the explicit Faith of the historic Church.
It seemed it was more important to uphold institutional unity, to hold on to property and endowments, to earn the esteem and approval of those outside the Church, than it was to stand firm in the Faith once for all delivered to the saints.
Clearly, then, my turn to Orthodoxy at first was more about greener pastures than about embracing Orthodoxy for what it was. But from the time I acquired an Orthodox prayerbook and the Septuagint psalter in January 2001, I began to relate to Orthodoxy on a deeper, more serious level. My exploration of the life and doctrine of the Church began to lay a solid foundation for change, so that by the time June 2002 came ‘round, I was in a state in which I no longer evaluated the Orthodox Church on my terms and preferences. I was now prepared to listen to the Orthodox Church and, importantly, to begin to allow Orthodoxy to evaluate me.
It was fitting, then, that the Sunday of my return, 9 June, was the Sunday of the Blind Man (the Gospel reading being John 9:1-38), and that Epistle reading was Acts 16:16-34, and the conversion of the Philippian jailer.
This was my first of a handful of “St. Anthony moments.” As you remember, St. Anthony had gone to worship, heard the Gospel text to sell all he had and give it to the poor, and soon went into the desert to pray and wage spiritual warfare. Though certainly with more humble implications, nonetheless, the significance of these passages were not lost on me. Clearly I was blind, and in need of the illumination of God’s Spirit. But I took the promise of St. Paul to the Philippian jailer as my own:
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”
As completely unrealizable as it seemed, I began to hope that one day I and my entire household would be Orthodox.
For I had come to believe, though I did not yet understand, that the Orthodox Church is the Church of the New Testament. If this were true, then not only by virtue of my growing up in the Stone-Campbell/Restoration Movement churches, but also on its own terms, I needed to lead my family into that Church, and to do so by way of example.
Immediately, that implication, and my new resolve to accomplish it, faced a strong and serious challenge: my wife was completely opposed to any such move. Although she refrained from any critical remarks about my worshipping at the Orthodox Church for nearly a month, by the first of July 2002 Anna vigorously voiced her frustration and opposition. My continuing to worship at a Church she could not see fit to worship at was just like if I were taking a knife right through the midst of our family and dividing it in half. I had two weeks to decide what I was to do: continue to go to the Orthodox Church and wreak havoc on our home; or find a parish where we both could worship together as a family.
Needless to say, I was sat back hard on my heels. Anna had clearly, honestly, and tearfully expressed her deep felt belief that my worshipping in an Orthodox Church was spiritually divisive, that it deeply wounded her that I would seem so callously to set aside her particular worship and church life needs, and that I should seriously consider what it was I was doing.
These deep feelings and hurt had been growing in Anna for some time. She could hardly be blamed. I had been adamant in my desire to be confirmed in the Episcopal Church some six years before. She had been against it, citing all the reasons of heresy and immorality for which I would eventually leave the Episcopal Church (though of course neither of us could have foreseen some of the particulars).
I at that time had defended my stance, saying that God would bless my decision to be confirmed, that I was doing it for our family, and so forth. Though we reconciled enough that she gave her blessing four years later for me to seek ordination, she had sacrificed potential career opportunities in the narrowing of her employment choices so that I could go to seminary. Now here I was, having left the church I was so certain was going to be good for our family, having left the ordination process I was so certain God had called me to explore, and now I wanted to jump the fence and explore yet another greener ecclesiastical pasture.
No, clearly Anna had strong and legitimate reasons to be upset and resistant to my journey into Orthodoxy.
At first, her reaction both scared and angered me. I was concerned that perhaps this issue would test our marriage beyond the breaking point, and that I would do some boneheaded thing to put the finishing touches on nearly a decade of matrimony. And I was angry that my intent to investigate Orthodoxy as a specific fulfillment of the Holy Spirit’s convicting me of my failure to be the husband I was called by God to be was being criticized in a way contrary to my intentions.
But I also had a sense that the either/or condition with which I had been presented was a false choice because it was no real choice. It pretty much came down to: choose Orthodoxy and my lifelong pursuit of the New Testament Church or choose my wife and our marriage. But after two weeks of prayerful reflection I finally decided to offer a different set of choices: we would together worship at a church with which she was comfortable, and I would from time to time (say once or twice a month) go to the Orthodox Church.
I knew that neither of us considered this compromise as ideal, still it served to reduce the tension and provide some breathing space. We ended up going to a Disciples of Christ congregation that had the sort of contemporary style of worship my wife enjoyed and felt best enabled her to worship in spirit and truth. Though I wanted her also to go to All Saints with me, she chose not to and so on those Sundays I went to Divine Liturgy, she stayed home.
Such a stopgap state of affairs could not go on indefinitely. I knew that if I were to have any hope of seeing the fulfillment of the promise I sensed I had been given, I would have to found my convictions about Orthodoxy on something other than my experience and purported preferences, on something other than reliance on “authorities” in books, and on something other than my reaction to the Episcopal Church.
It was my own heritage that pointed toward the beginning of a way forward. I would go back to the New Testament to find there the foundation of my transfigured belief and would support that biblical interpretation by the testimony of the early Christian witnesses, the Apostolic Fathers and their successors.
In July 2002, I began six months of reading and study, reflection and writing on the key questions to which I needed answers. Answers that would address not merely intellectual matters, but the issues of the life of faith. This project, though it did not begin quite so large as it ended, was much less about an academic study of, say, whether or not the Church had always believed that the elements of bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, but rather, if this is indeed the case, what am I then to do about it?
So, what began as an anticipated handful of questions I might answer in a paper grew to eight related essays (three on the nature of the Church alone), totaling some ninety-two typescript pages and more than thirty thousand nine hundred words. I started the first essay on 31 July, and began the last essay on Christmas Eve (finishing it the day after New Year’s Day).
The first two essays were intended to clear the ground and note the boundaries. In the first I noted that the competing and contradictory beliefs of the various Protestant bodies pointed out both the weaknesses of the Protestant paradigm and that the Truth had to be there amidst all the antagonistic notions. In the second essay I established the Protestant problem: that the New Testament clearly points to the visible unity of the Church, and that Protestantism has not only created more than twenty thousand schisms, but continues to add to them each week.
From there I could only resort to one sure thing: the Tradition of the Church, so the third essay highlighted how it is that the Tradition is essential to Christian belief. It is that Tradition which reveals both the antiquity of the office of the Bishop, but also underscores the New Testament teaching that the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Church’s Eucharist. The last three essays deal with the reality of the unity of the Church, that the Church is both the Body of Christ and by that, then, is the locus of our salvation, and finally that the criteria of the true Church would have to be both historical and doctrinal continuity with the Church of the New Testament.
But the months from July to the Christmas season were not merely about study, however, “real life” that study was. In mid-July, Anna and I worshipped for the first time at Northside Christian Church.
This was a Disciples of Christ congregation just about a mile from our home. The Disciples churches had the same historical pedigree of the churches of which Anna and I had been members (and had served as ministers early on in our marriage), so there was some familiar ground. Plus Northside had one of the most well-done contemporary praise-band worship services I’d ever seen done, which was a key factor for my wife.
Anna and I worshipped there a few times a month for a couple of months. Both of us met with the husband-wife ministry team, and I myself met with the pastor a couple of times. But though one would think we had found our “compromise parish,” early on even Anna had misgivings. In our first meeting with the pastors over lunch, we asked some direct questions about doctrine, morality and church discipline. We did not receive direct answers. And the answers that were finally forthcoming seemed to us to display a willingness to dilute the tougher teachings of the Church for the sake of something like “church growth.”
By the first of October, the congregation had relocated to a rented movie theater in Bucktown and changed its name. We went once after the move, but the atmosphere felt to us less like worship and more like the sort of spectating one does in a theater, complete with snacks, soda and cupholders in the arms of the theater seats. We did not return. I took the move as a sign from God that this was not what he wanted for us.
The first Sunday in October, as it would turn out, was my last visit to the Divine Liturgy at All Saints until December. The following weekend I went to the Benedictine monastery of St. Gregory’s Abbey, in Three Rivers, Michigan. It was to be, in a most significant way, an unlooked-for transformation.
I arrived a few minutes late for dinner at St. Gregory’s Abbey on that October Friday, the eleventh. Arriving late is not a good thing at a monastery, but being Benedictines they were unfailingly gracious and served me a heaping plate of food nonetheless. St. Gregory’s observes the canonical offices of Matins (4:00 am), Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. So after a brief opportunity to unload the car and unpack, it was time to head to the abbey church for Compline. I wandered around a bit in the monastery library, then headed back to the guest house, did some journaling and headed to bed.
The weekend was the wonderful Benedictine dance between work, study and prayer, though as a guest I was left to my own devices during the community work hours. I did some reading and journaling between offices. I ate with the brothers and other guests. I rested.
I came to the abbey with no real agenda, other than knowing I needed to go there. I’d been to the abbey on a couple of other occasions (though the last visit had been four years before), each visit of which was an intense time of prayerful consideration of a vocation and the seeking of some confirmation of its certainty. On the drive over to the abbey this time, however, I simply told God I had no agenda other than the one he had for me.
If “nothing happened” that would be fine. I would just trust in him.
But as it turned out, one of the books I’d checked out was a service of the Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos. I had not developed any sort of “devotion to the Virgin,” and, indeed, other than the prescribed instances in the Divine Liturgy and the service of Morning Prayers, I’d never really sought her intercessions. But I remembered that in the West, Saturdays were uniquely devoted to the Blessed Virgin, so, on Saturday afternoon, I developed the idea that in the meditation time after Compline, I would pray the Akathist hymn in one of the chapels running along the side of the monastery church.
It was an experience of prayer that was more about the distraction of standing and attending to only about ten percent of the words than about anything else. From the paradigm of spiritual experience I’d gained from my heritage churches, the prayer was a “non-experience.” No feelings of piety. No mystical flights of fancy. But, strangely enough, it was a prayer about which I suddenly wanted to develop a routine of praying.
The weekend ended Sunday after lunch. I headed back to the abbey church to spend a few moments in prayer in one of the side chapels. I prayed, as I’d done from several months, for the unity of our family and home in spiritual matters. I began to pray for Anna.
Then, quite unexpectedly, I was overcome with sobbing. I had a glimpse of my own unworthiness before God, of my sinfulness. In the prayers that came forth, I asked the intercessions of the Theotokos with regard to our family and the Orthodox Church.
As quickly as it came on me, the crying left. I prayed a bit longer and then left. Soon I headed home.
Through the next month at home life was just as it had always been. I was doing more serious reading in Orthodoxy, particularly Panayiotis Nellas’ Deification in Christ. In my daily prayers, however, I soon took on the practice of asking the intercessions of the Theotokos for me and my household. I began specifically to ask the prayers of our Lady for my wife.
On Monday, 2 December, my wife went to the doctor. She’d been feeling ill for a week and just wasn’t shaking it. I touched base briefly with Anna prior to my evening class. Then, class over, I headed home in a Chicago snowfall. But oddly enough, for me, my thoughts were not on class or some theological idea, which was usually the case. I often reflected on such things on the walk home. No, this night, my thoughts were daydreams about the future, and the children we hoped to have and raise.
Which was interesting, because I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, an “intuitive” person. But when I walked in the door, Anna had news for me.
Anna was pregnant. This was joyous news. Though at first, the transition in our lives from ten years of family as couple to family as mommy, daddy and child, was emotionally tough, especially for Anna. She was smack-dab in the midst of rapid career development, and looking forward to continuing her education either in writing or in studying children’s literature. Now she was a momma. For my part, all I could see at first was the economic need to suspend, if not cancel altogether, the doctoral program I was so close to finishing.
As it turned out, those first misgivings, natural as they were, soon gave way to undiluted joy, acceptance and anticipation. Sofie took us out of ourselves and gave us a greater love to share.
I got the news on Monday, 2 December. The next Sunday I was back at All Saints to offer my thanksgiving to God, and to seek his strength. It was clear to me, almost from the beginning, that Sofie’s advent was in part, an answer to the prayers of the Theotokos for us which I’d been praying now for a couple of months. At first I had to take this somewhat on faith, though the conviction was strong. But as the months have unfolded since then, events have seemed to bear this out.
By the end of the month, I was finalizing the several essays I’d been working on about Orthodoxy. I also read Metropolitan John Zizioulas’ Being as Communion. This, in conjunction with Nellas’ Deification in Christ, served to further fundamentally shape my understanding of the Church, the Trinity and salvation. These books drove me back to the New Testament to confirm and reason out what it was they were saying. I began to understand that the individualistic faith I’d been reared with and trained in as an adult was antithetical to the prima facie text of the New Testament. If I gained nothing else, I learned that almost always, when Paul uses “you” in his letters to the churches, it is collective. We are saved together. And that has far-reaching implications.
While all this was going on, about the middle of the month, I had my second “St. Anthony moment.” That is to say, while worshipping and hearing the lections for the day, the word of God hit me right between the eyes. In June I was the blind man whose sight had been restored and the jailer who had received the promise of the salvation of his entire household. This time, God was much more direct. The Gospel reading was from Luke 14:16-24, the parable of the wedding supper and those who refuse to come. One reason given by one of the invitees: I’ve just gotten married. I was hardly a newlywed, at (then) nine years of marriage. But I had to ask myself: was my marriage more important to me than the truth of God’s Church?
As I hope has been evident, I had, for some seven months by this time, done the best I could to balance both my pursuit of the truth about the Orthodox Church and the needs and demands of my marriage. In an ideal world, these would not have conflicted. But as has been told, I am not an ideal husband, even if this were an ideal world. By the same token, I had to legitimately ask myself, was I more concerned about avoiding Anna’s anger or more concerned about living the truth in love, even when this truth did not coincide with Anna’s beliefs?
One thing of which I was certain: if I were ever to become Orthodox, I wanted to do it as a family. And I was growing in my certainty that I was not alone in this desire. It seemed that God and the saints interceding for us wanted that as well.
Advent that year was extremely meaningful. I came to sense more deeply what it meant for the Lord to take on Mary’s humanity, to become a man and live as one of us. I was joyous at the thought of becoming a new father. Anna was much more ambivalent, and this, augmented by the newly surging hormones of pregnancy, made for an emotional time as she worked through her anxieties and embraced her joys.
In light of my own struggle to balance my Orthodox inquiries and Anna’s needs, I did not return to All Saints till the following February. I have, to this point, lingered quite a bit over the half-year period from June to December 2002.
This has mainly been because this was perhaps the most important several months yet in my inquiry about Orthodoxy. During this time I had settled important questions in my mind regarding the biblical nature of the place of Tradition, of bishops, of the transformation of the Eucharistic elements, and of the implications in terms of salvation and sanctification, of visible unity and historic continuity, resulting from the Church’s being the Body of Christ. I had “discovered” the reality and aid of the intercessions of the saints on our behalf, particularly of the Theotokos. And I had become a father. Mind, worship, heart and family had been radically re-formed in just over two hundred days.
The living into that reality, however, even now has only barely just begun.
© 2004, 2007 Clifton D. Healy
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The Fire Fails
Fr. Barnabas Powell, USA
In this, the fourth of a series of articles on Pentecostalism and his journey to the Orthodox faith, Fr. Barnabas sets the stage for his own spiritual odyssey.
THE FIRE FAILS
As I have said previously, I am convinced the modern Pentecostal movement offers the Christian Church a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with the timeless faith of the Apostles and the balance of mystery and rationalism that has all but been lost in the Christian West.
However, I also believe that Pentecostalism is a system of theology that cannot and will not bring anyone to the fullness of the faith
“once for all delivered to the saints.”
This is not because Pentecostal people are “bad.” It isn’t because Pentecostal or Charismatic theology is “wrong” or “evil.” It is because the underlying theological foundation for Pentecostal and Charismatic theology is poverty stricken. It is simply too weak to bear the weight of the fullness of the Apostolic faith.
Coming as I do from a Pentecostal background, that word “Apostolic” holds a particularly pregnant meaning. Unfortunately, my understanding of “apostolic” was quite deficient during my days as a Pentecostal.
In fact, the very tendency in the West to break off into “factions” and “denominations” is particularly strong among Pentecostals. This revealed itself early on in the movement over the issue of water baptism. Being cut off from the wisdom of the Church these sincere believers embodied all that was wrong about the Protestant innovation of “Sola Scriptura.” They did not have access to the wise understanding of the Trinity preserved in the Church so they mistook the trinitarian teaching for tri-theism and reacted against what they perceived as a heresy.
But this so-called “new issue” demonstrates the first theological poverty of Pentecostalism: A poverty of communion with the saints.
Since Protestantism tends to reduce the Christian faith to certain theological propositions, the Pentecostals allowed this reduction full flower in their attempts to “recapture” the power of the first century Church. Feeling no sense of connection with their fellow Christians throughout the ages, the Pentecostals only care for those first century believers that they see as their true heritage. They are also willing to adopt other heretical groups through the centuries that seemed to bolster their notions of ecstatic experiences as THE theological stamp of approval.
This lack of connection with the Church through the centuries meant that the Pentecostals were left to their own devices and fell into many, if not most, of the heresies of the past.
The second poverty of Pentecostalism is the rank individualism that permeates the entire movement. this again is a flowering in the Pentecostal movement of the general poverty of Western Christianity. Individualism reduces faith to “me and Jesus got our own thing going” and reduces Church to either a religious pep rally or, worse yet, a Christian self-help group. Worship is measured by how it made me “feel” rather than what it reveals about the Uncreated God. Hence Pentecostals and Charismatics tend to measure their spiritual growth by their experience of “victory” in their personal lives. But the narcissistic weakness of this religious poverty guarantees a perpetual spiritual “kindergarten” for these believers.
One of the unintended consequences” of this gross individualism is the “cult of personality” that naturally arises when a dependence on individual abilities is emphasized. Pentecostal groups are usually founded on some strong personality who has the gift of gab and a flare for the theatrical.
Unfortunately, “the arm of flesh will fail you” and the cultural landscape is littered with the sad lives of men (and some women) who simply could not maintain the fevered pitch expected of them from their loyal following. The stories of emotional, psychological, and event physical manipulation, all for “God’s glory,” are simply too numerous to mention.
Another poverty that I see in Pentecostalism is the weak theological dependence on ecstatic religious experiences. This true hunger in the soul of a person for an authentic and intimate experience of the presence of God cannot be truly satisfied with self-centered religious phenomena. In fact, much like sweets ruins your appetite, so the spiritual “cotton candy” of shallow ecstatic religious experiences, brought on as much by psychological peer pressure as by anything divine, deaden this good hunger and eventually creates an almost narcotic dependence on these less than satisfying religious events.
Interestingly enough this emphasis of emotional experiences not only leads to a kind of religious addiction, but also feeds other physical desires as well. Most Pentecostals do not like to talk about the strong minority of sexual weaknesses that tend to dominate many Pentecostal and Charismatic sub cultures. This emphasis on keeping the emotions heightened at all times, or reducing worship to experiencing a religious “high” tends to reinforce a lack of physical discipline. Recent events are the exceptions that many times prove the rule.
Finally, the greatest poverty I see in Pentecostalism is theological. While this is changing, Pentecostalism has traditionally been suspicious of theological training. Seminary instruction was considered suspect, and a reliance on the education of the “Spirit” was more valued. But beyond that there is a real and debilitating “historical amnesia” among Pentecostals that impoverishes their religious education.
There is so much wisdom preserved in the Church that is simply unknown to most Christians nowadays and that ignorance is dangerous. It means there are generations of believers who will have to learn all over again lessons already learned by their brothers and sisters of the past.
What you don’t know CAN hurt you.
There are hopeful signs. A recent Pew Poll found that speaking in tongues, a strong distinctive of Pentecostalism, is waning. Post-graduate work is becoming not only acceptable among Pentecostals but expected. And whole new denominations have formed by Pentecostals and Charismatics wanting to overcome the inherent weaknesses of their own shallow religious traditions by discovering the wisdom of ages past.
For me, however, the natural home for Pentecostals and Charismatic Christians is the Orthodox Christian Church. Here there is a trustworthy “fireplace” for the Pentecostal “fire.” Many are surprised to hear me say that it was my Pentecostalism that prepared me for my journey to Orthodoxy.
In Eastern Orthodoxy there is a comfort level theologically for paradox and mystery. As opposed to the West where rationalism has been allowed free reign, Orthodoxy’s emphasis on the present work of the Holy Spirit provides a theological balance for a sterile theological rationalism that may excite the mind but leaves the soul cold. Pentecostals and Charismatics will discover in Orthodoxy the wisdom necessary to avoid all the pitfalls so often present in the world of Pentecostalism.
There are theological remedies for and spiritual medicine that provide authentic healing and spiritual health for those weary of the eternal search for the everlasting “goose bump.”
Pentecostalism reveals the primary spiritual poverty of the West. This is its greatest gift to the Christian world. But we cannot remain ignorant of the fatal weaknesses of Pentecostalism without condemning generations of sincere believers to a life of a perpetual “spiritual kindergarten.”
So, to all my precious Pentecostal and Charismatic friends, I say to you what Philip said to Nathanael:
“Come and see!”
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From Baptist To Boznia To Byzantium
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