St. John the Beloved and Theologian

(Source) The Church commemorates St John on this day because of the annual pilgrimage to his grave.

When St John was more than one hundred years old, he took seven of his disciples and went to a spot outside the city of Ephesus. There he told them to dig a grave in the form of a cross. Then he climbed into the grave and told his disciples to cover him with earth. Later, the grave was opened and the saint’s body was not there.

Each year on May 8 a red dust would arise from the grave which the faithful collected in order to be healed of their illnesses.

St John’s main Feast is on September 26.

The Holy Monastery of St. Anthony the Great: A Spiritual Oasis

A small but wonderful Russian documentary on the Holy Monastery of St. Anthony the Great in Arizona and the spiritual father of the brotherhood, Archimandrite Ephraim of Philotheou. English subtitles accompany the video.

St. Argyri: She Regarded Her Hardships as Comforts

Tomorrow (April 30) is the feast of St. Agryri. Above you can see a beautiful icon of her at a monastery near Giannitsa in Greece.

(Source)The holy New Martyr Argyri (or Argyra) lived in Proussa, Bithynia, and came from a pious family. She was a beautiful and virtuous woman. When she was eighteen, she married a pious Christian, and they moved into a neighborhood inhabited by many Moslems.

After only a few days, she was approached by a Turkish neighbor, the son of the Cadi (magistrate). He boldly declared his love for her, and tried to convert her to his religion. She rejected his advances, saying that she would rather die than be married to a Moslem. She did not tell her husband, fearing that he would go after the Turk and then be punished for it.

The Moslem brought her to trial and testified that she had assented to his advances, but then had laughed and said she was only joking. His lies were corroborated by false witnesses, and Argyri was sent to prison.

The saint’s husband, hoping to get her a fair trial, appealed to Constantinople. There the accuser repeated his lies before the judge. St Argyri said that she was a Christian, and that she would never deny Christ. The judge ordered her to be flogged, then sentenced her to life in prison.

She was often taken from her cell, interrogated, beaten, then returned to prison. This continued for seventeen years. The saint was also insulted and tormented by the Moslem women who were incarcerated for their evil deeds. The Evil One incited them to annoy St Argyri with these torments and afflictions, but she endured all these things with great courage and patience.

According to the testimony of many Christian women who were in prison with her, she humbled her body through fasting. Her heart was filled with such love for Christ that she regarded her hardships as comforts.

A pious Christian named Manolis Kiourtzibasis sent her word that he would try to have her released, but St Argyri would not consent to this. She completed her earthly pilgrimage in the prison, receiving the crown of martyrdom on April 5, 1721.

After a few years her body was exhumed, and was found to be whole and incorrupt, emitting an ineffable fragrance. Pious priests and laymen took her body to the church of St Paraskeve on April 30, 1735 with the permission of Patriarch Paisius II.

Her relics remain there to this day, where they are venerated by Orthodox Christians from all walks of life, to the glory of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

*St Argyra’s name comes from the Greek word for silver (argyre). The New Martyr Argyra (1688-1721) by P. Philippidou (which also contains a Service to the saint) was published in Constantinople in 1912.

Contemplating Eternity

Below is a homily on the awesome theme of eternity by Metropolitan Augoustinos (Kantiotes) of Florina. I have added a photo of Fr. John reading the Gospel in our Mission during Agape’s Vespers on Pascha, a day in which we rejoice that a joyful eternity awaits us on account of Christ’s glorious resurrection! Christ is risen!

Eternity[1]

             “For here have we no enduring city, but we seek one to come.”[2] In other words, the here-and-now offers Christians no permanent residence, but rather we are left to long for the day when we will enter into our future abode. Commenting on this very passage, Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite says, we must leave behind this passing, vain world, together with its mindset and passions, and run towards our heavenly, eternal homeland. This is a most beautiful line; a shining star. Here I will attempt to draw out its practical implications for you.

Eternity! My brothers and sisters, the first thing one requires if he wants to take hold of eternity is faith. Do you know what today’s people are like? Until the year 1500 AD, everyone believed that the whole earth was the area in and around the Middle East; that Gibraltar was the world’s end. For thousands of years they were completely ignorant of the existence of America. Thus, when Christopher Columbus appeared on the scene and began talking about the existence of another, new world, they were convinced that he had lost his mind. It was therefore no easy task to persuade the king to give him a ship to make his journey. Imagine how long it took to traverse the Atlantic in a tall ship! Seeing nothing before them but endless sky and water, even own crew began to murmur and complain. Columbus heard them and began to pray, and finally they spotted the coast of the new world! We find something similar going on in our own day: they didn’t believe Columbus and we don’t believe Christ, who assures us that there indeed exists a world beyond our own. If we don’t believe Christ, if we don’t take him at his word, we will lose eternity – God have mercy!

The other thing we need is concern and cultivation: Christ tells us that we must turn ourselves toward eternity and make it our concern. And we must cultivate faith in eternal life, asking God to ever increase this faith in us. We must fix our gaze upwards, toward Heaven: “Let us lift up our hearts!” This is what the line, “For here have we no enduring city, but we seek one to come,” means practically. If each of us were to show just a fraction of the concern for eternal life that we show for material things, this world would look entirely different. Sadly, our only desires are material; we lack spiritual aspirations. Materialism and Epicureanism prevail: “…let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.”[3] Let us cultivate faith in eternity, then. Its beauty is indescribable; there are no words to convey it.

But faith and concern alone are not enough; sacrifices are also required if we are to acquire eternity. If we have to make sacrifices for the sake our earthly homeland, how much more ought we to make sacrifices for our heavenly homeland?   Our life will eventually set on this earth, but just like the sun, we rise elsewhere – in eternal life. Thus, eternity is worth every sacrifice.

If we cast the desire for eternity out of Christianity, what is left? A colourless, scentless flower; it will lack the beautiful fragrance of eternity. Thus we find this desire established amongst the twelve fundamental tenets of the faith: the Creed ends with the words, “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen,” does it not?

So as a German philosopher has said, man has many noteworthy characteristics, but chiefly he is a metaphysical being rooted in God, and as the ancient philosopher Plato has said, man is like a tree whose roots are not below him in the ground, but in the eternal realm, where he desires to be translated.

Also of great important is the hour of our departure for eternity, the hour of death. Then the devil fiercely wars against us, but God will send his grace to those faithful who are found worthy of it. Then brilliant, great things often happen. As the ever-memorable Androutsos has said,[4] “Do not lose faith concerning anyone. We do not know what occurs between the soul and God even in the last moment. This is known to God alone.”

In older times, when someone lay at home and the time for the departure of his soul drew nigh, everyone knelt down around him and prayed. We in our day have forgotten about this practice, even those of us who are in some sense ‘religious.’ We have erased the metaphysical world from our minds. “What agony has the soul when it is parted from the body!” sings the Church.[5] Moreover, Christ, when he came to the end of his earthly life, said, “Now is my soul troubled.”[6] The soul of every man is troubled. Saint Basil the Great, too, writing about all these things, says that some wrongly put off repentance until the final hours of their life. At that time, brothers and sisters, the soul will be troubled. Holy people, like the Blessed Augustine, often sent those who were close to them away as death approached for it was their desire to be alone with God: ‘Farewell world and those things associated with it! Farewell relatives and friends!’

Not one of us has experienced death. At that time the bodily senses give way and man sees and lives another reality. He passes through the toll-houses, he comes face-to-face with, “…dark visions of evil demons.”[7] While the minds of great thinkers, as well as the imagination of the laity, have given rise to works centered on the mystery of death and the next life, it must be remembered that whatever is useful for our salvation, God has shown us, God has revealed to us! These things we ought to hold on to, and not seek to penetrate the mysteries of God out of curiosity.

We should not be indifferent towards the world and its blessings, brothers and sisters; God created these things and they are indeed beautiful. However, it is wrong and un-Christian to think that the earth is our permanent residence and that here all the yearnings of the soul are fulfilled. “For here have we no enduring city, but we seek one to come.” This is the proper mindset!

This is why all of us – each one of us to ourselves, parents to their children, catechists to the catechetical schools, teachers to their students, spiritual fathers to their spiritual children – need to begin emphasizing the metaphysical world: remember the end times, remember the end of this life, prepare for the future life. Where were we a hundred years ago? In the mind of God. And where will we be in a hundred years? Close to God, in boundless eternity, “For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.”[8]

Thus we ought to live and chasten ourselves with the belief that, “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” Amen.

May we contemplate the great mystery of eternity during these holy days of festal celebration: Christ is risen and death is destroyed!

[1]               From the book Εμπνευσμένα Κηρύγματα Ορθοδόξου Ομολογίας και Αγιοπατερικής Πνοής (Orthodoxos Kypseli: Thessaloniki, 2011), 418-422. Translated by Fr John Palmer.

[2]               Hebrews 13:14.

[3]               Isaiah 22:13, 1 Corinthians 15:32.

[4]               Christos Androutsos (1869-1937) was a well-known Greek theologian who taught dogmatics and Christian ethics.

[5]               Idiomelon (tone 2) from the Funeral Service.

[6]               John 12:27.

[7]               Prayer to the Theotokos at Small Compline.

[8]               Luke 20:38.

Bright Friday: Commemorating the Life-giving Spring

Christ is Risen!

Today on Bright Friday we commemorate the Life-Giving Spring which is Panagia herself, but more specifically it is a spring in Constantinople. This spring was our first stop when a friend, Fr. John  and I went to Istanbul in the summer of 2008 with a tour group. The photos in this post are from that trip.

(From Wikipedia on The Life-giving Spring)

The tradition surrounding the feast concerns a soldier named Leo Marcellus, who would later become the Byzantine Emperor Leo I. On April 4, 480, as Leo was passing by the grove, he came across a blind man who had become lost. Leo took pity on him, led him to the pathway, seated him in the shade and began to search for water to give the thirsty man. Leo heard a voice say to him, “Do not trouble yourself, Leo, to look for water elsewhere, it is right here!” Looking about, he could see no one, and neither could he see any water. Then he heard the voice again, “Leo, Emperor, go into the grove, take the water which you will find and give it to the thirsty man. Then take the mud [from the stream] and put it on the blind man’s eyes…. And build a temple [church] here … that all who come here will find answers to their petitions.” Leo did as he was told, and when the blind man’s eyes were anointed he regained his sight.

After he became emperor, Leo built a church dedicated to the Theotokos of the Life-giving Spring over the site where the spring was located. After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the church was torn down by the Turks, and the stones used to build a mosque of Sultan Bayezid. Only a small chapel remained at the site of the church. Twenty-five steps led down to the site of the spring surrounded by railing. As a result of the Greek Revolution of 1821, even this little chapel was destroyed and the spring was left buried under the rubble.

In 1833 the reforming Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II gave permission for the Christians to rebuild the church. When the foundations of the original church were discovered during the course of construction, the Sultan issued a second firman permitting not only the reconstruction of the small chapel, but of a large church according to the original dimensions. Construction was completed on December 30, 1834, and the Ecumenical Patriarch, Constantius II consecrated the church on February 2, 1835.

Another small chapel has been rebuilt on the site, but the church has not yet been restored to its former size. The spring still flows to this day and is considered by the faithful to have wonderworking properties.

The feast day is observed on Bright Friday; i.e., the Friday following Pascha. The propers of the feast are combined with the Paschal hymns, and there is often a Lesser Blessing of Waters performed after the Divine Liturgy on Bright Friday. In old Russia, continuing Greek traditions, there was a custom to sanctify springs that were located near churches, dedicate them to the Holy Mother, and paint icons of her under the title The Life Giving Spring.

There is also a commemoration of the Icon of the Theotokos, the Life-giving Spring, observed on April 4.

While there at the spring our tour guide told us that some people were able to see multicoloured fish in the spring along with the regular goldfish, but that it was a miracle unnoticed by most. She said that of all the times she had visited the spring she never saw the “invisible fish” as they were known. One time though, a woman on one of her tours pointed the multicoloured fish out thinking everyone could see them, but she was the only one. I don’t know what the significance is of seeing the “invisible fish”, but it’s interesting nonetheless. 

Apolytikion for the Life-giving Spring:

As a life-giving fount, thou didst conceive the Dew that is transcendent in essence,O Virgin Maid, and thou hast welled forth for our sakes the nectar of joy eternal,which doth pour forth from thy fount with the water that springeth upunto everlasting life in unending and mighty streams;wherein, taking delight, we all cry out:Rejoice, O thou Spring of life for all men.

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

Come receive the light from the unwaning Light;

and glorify Christ Who is risen from the dead!

The video is of the Holy Fire at Christ’s tomb, April 11, 2015. Who is as great as our God?

(To learn more about the Holy Fire – the world’s best kept secret – see here.)

Holy Monday: “Come then and let us be crucified with Him and die for His sake”

As the Lord went to His voluntary Passion, He said to His apostles on the way:“Behold we are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of man shall give Himself up as it is written of Him.”Come then and let us journey with Him with pure minds, let us be crucified with Him and die for His sake to the pleasures of this life,that we may also live with Him and hear Him say, “No longer do I ascend to the earthly Jerusalem to suffer, but I ascend to My Father and your Father and to My God and your God and I shall raise you up to the Jerusalem on high in the Kingdom of heaven”.

I wish you all ‘Good Strength’ for Holy Week and a ‘Good Resurrection’! I hope and pray we all experience being risen to “the Jerusalem on high” through our efforts to “ponder in our hearts” (Lk. 2:19) the great mysteries of our God during these holy days.

From the Little Mountain: Hermitage of the Holy Cross

From the video description on Youtube:

Filmed and edited by the monks themselves, From the Little Mountain takes you through a year at the Hermitage of the Holy Cross in West Virginia. Herein is portrayed some of the beauty and struggle of monastic life using quotes from the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church. Insights about monastic life from one of the senior monks at the monastery are given as you are visually taken through the Church liturgical year and the changing seasons in the mountains. This is a unique documentary of an Orthodox monastery in the 21st century, but the imagery and principles set forth are as ancient (and relevant) as those written by the 6th century instructor of monks, Abba Dorotheos. For more info, please visit: http://www.holycross-hermitage.com

A Word from the Holy Fathers in an Image of Beauty

The Divine Incarnation: The Foundation of Holy Icons

Christ the High Priest, for our home chapel.

From my Master’s thesis:

The basis of iconography is the divine Incarnation of God the Word.  When God the Word became Man He gave a visible image to the invisible God and thus facilitated the existence of icons of the God-Man: “in the icon of Christ the person of Christ is made visible according to His human nature, just as He became visible and historical in His incarnation of the flesh.”[1]

God the Word became circumscribed in His historical incarnation and thus the iconographer can now circumscribe Him in icons: “But if He assumed humanity in truth, as we confess, then the hypostasis of Christ is circumscribable: not according to its divinity, which no one has ever beheld, but according to the humanity which is contemplated in an individual manner in it (10)”.[2]  However, this does not mean that the iconographer merely depicts the human nature of Christ, rather he depicts Christ’s person (hypostasis). That is, he depicts His full humanity and His full divinity as they are contained in His divine person: “neither the divine nor the human nature alone is depicted, but the hypostasis of Christ with the particular characteristics which define His human nature, that which the icons of Christ present is the person of the God-Man, the person of the whole God and of the whole man and it is understood and exists with His two natures.”[3] Wherefore, the iconographer ought to take care when painting icons, for he is clothing – in line and colour – the invisible God according to His visible image, the God-Man Jesus Christ.

Iconography Trivia: The first part of painting an icon is to place gold on the board or paint it ochra (yellow). However, here I’m setting a bad example. St. Nektarios doesn’t have gold yet because my teacher doesn’t let us apply the gold until the end. He thinks the gold will be ruined while we paint. Obedience before custom, I guess.

This is the foundation not only of icons of the God-Man, but of His saints as well: “The embodiment of God in Christ, the true humanity of Christ which can be seen and touched, is precisely the basis and fount of the icon. If there had been no Incarnation, no descent of God to earth, there could be no icons of God. Similarly, if there had been no Ascension of man into heaven in Christ, and if there had been no Pentecost, which is the descent of God into man, there could be no saints and therefore no icons of humans.”[4]

Since saints are dwelling places of the Holy Spirit, when they are painted in icons it is not merely their human nature that is depicted but their whole person which participates in the uncreated grace of God and thus once again, the iconographer puts into colour and line what is invisible, “I cherish… everything connected to God’s name, not on their own account but because they show forth the divine power…  I venerate and worship angels and men, and all matter participating in divine power and ministering to our salvation through it”.[5]

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[1] Tselengidis, Iconological Works, 124.

[2] St. Theodore Studite, On the Holy Icons, 87, 24, Refutation 3.

[3]Tselengidis, Iconological Works, 124.

[4] Hart, “Transfiguring Matter”, 5.

[5] St. John Damascus, Apologia to those who decry Images, [109].