Articles for tag: Blessed are those who have not seen…, faith, the Resurrection

GIVING WITNESS TO THE TRUE CHURCH

Orthodox Christians all over the world have received the unchanging Christian Faith, passed down from the Holy Apostles to their successors, and continue to practice it today in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church – The Orthodox Church.
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“Blessed are those who have not seen and believe”

On the first Sunday after Easter, the Church commemorates the disbelief of Thomas and his subsequent profession of Christ as Lord and God. We heard from the Lord the words addressed to His disciples, and especially to their followers, down to us, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20:29).

Think of it, my dear brothers and sisters: We can be among those the Lord beatifies, calls blessed, if only we believe in Him, that is if we place our trust and hope in Him and we live the kind of life He wants us to live. It’s that simple! So what do you think? Are we among those who believe? So the questions we’ll address are:

  1. Do we believe wholeheartedly in the risen Lord?
  2. Do we live His life?

We firmly believe in the resurrected Lord

Saint Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, states that belief in the Risen Lord is a condition for salvation:

“Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the Good News [τὸ εὐαγγέλιον] that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received1, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved,2 if you hold firmly [εἰ κατέχετε] to the message that I proclaimed to you3—unless you have come to believe in vain. For I handed on to you4 as of first importance what I in turn had received [this is tradition: something you receive, which then you pass on to others] that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:1-4).

Here we have a summary of the plan of dispensation. Belief in the εὐαγγέλιον of Jesus Christ and the divine plan of salvation constitute the beginning of our salvation. Elsewhere the Apostle restates the same message, in what came to be one of the most misinterpreted passages of the scripture: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (notice, σωθήσῃ, future tense—Rom. 10:9). Do you believe with an unshakable faith that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He truly rose from the dead? If you have come to believe in these truths, according to the Lord’s words you are blessed.

Do you believe with an unshakable faith that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He truly rose from the dead? If you have come to believe in these truths, according to the Lord’s words you are blessed.

Τhe Resurrection of Christ is a historic fact, well attested to by many reliable witnesses. The disciples did not merely see the Risen Lord. The risen Lord did not just appear to them, as in a vision, they did not have hallucinations, this was not a case of massive hysteria, it was not a figment of their imagination. No. We heard in today’s Gospel passage (which incidentally is the same passage read in different languages at the Agape service) written by an eye witness, St. John, the Beloved Disciple, the account of the double appearance of the Lord Jesus to His disciples, the first on the same day the Lord had risen from the dead without Thomas, the second eight days later with Thomas. They all saw His pierced hands and His side.

In another appearance, also attested to by the same disciple, the risen Lord sat down and had breakfast with them. St. John the Evangelist writes: “This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after He was raised from the dead” (John 21:14). And in closing the gospel narrative that carries his name, St John attests: “This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true” (John 21:24). Indeed we do. And to the godless deniers of Christ and of His Resurrection from the dead, we repeat the words of St. Augustine:

“Unbelievers, you are not disbelievers, you are the easiest believers. Because you accept the most unreasonable and nonsensical things, in order not to accept one, the miracle.”

This is especially true with the miracle of all miracles, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

We Orthodox Christians remain adamant in the faith that was passed down to us by the eye witnesses of the risen Lord, the holy Apostles. And we remain adamant to the admonition of St. Paul to his spiritual child, Timothy: “O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you” (1 Tim. 6:20). Our faith is being tested continuously, especially by the media. Two consecutive issues of the TV Guide (cannot help noticing them, by the cash registers of the supermarkets) have pictures of actors portraying Jesus Christ. Let me warn you: Do not watch the advertised new miniseries made-for-TV Jesus movie: if your faith is weak it will be shaken. It portrays a “very human Christ,” who is at odds with the biblical account, a controversial and iconoclast Jesus, irreverently called fit “for the new millennium.”

We don’t need such phony christs, the product of sick minds, with sick intentions. What we need is to strengthen our faith, not to weaken it, by casting doubts on the divine nature of the Lord and on His Resurrection from the dead. Let us take courage, my dear Christians, for Christ has indeed risen from the dead, and remains eternally risen. Let us give Him our faith, although we have not seen Him, but let us give Him a strong, living faith, not a feeble and anemic one.

We live His life

Thus we come to the second question, we were going to ask ourselves: Do we live Christ’s life? The end of our faith is not salvation, but the works of love, that is living a life of purity and holiness, given entirely to the Lord. Despite anything said to the contrary, saying that we believe in Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, does not save us! Is faith then inadequate? No! But it must be “πίστις δι᾽ ἀγάπης ἐνεργουμένη, faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6). We need an enacted faith, a working faith. Our faith must energize us! The life of the spirit begins with faith, but it is proven through the works of love. We must realize that we are supposed to live a new life, where sin has no place. “Come to a right mind, and sin no more” (1 Cor. 15:34), exclaims St. Paul.

If we say we believe in the Lord and in His resurrection from the dead, we must display that faith with our steadfastness and perseverance in the faith and with our holy life, which is the fruit of our faith. This is what St. Paul says, closing the chapter on the faith in the Resurrected Lord:

“Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58).

How many times do our actions fall short of the faith our lips pronounce?

  • If we believe that the Lord is risen why do we worry?
  • Why do we get upset?
  • Why do we hold grudges?
  • Why do we criticize others?
  • Why do we get discouraged?

You see, if we truly believed, then we should be living the resurrected life now. We should occupy our time praising and glorifying God, living already the eighth day granted to us. We should live the Resurrection every day, as Saint Herman of Alaska did, as Saint Seraphim of Sarov did, as Saint Iakovos of Evia did, as all the saints did.

We want to believe. We want to have life in His name. But we don’t know how to go about doing it. We have before us the path, the way to attain the life of the Resurrected Lord. It is shown to us with sign posts, given to us by our mother, the holy Church, directing us with certainty to our goal. What are they? The Cross and the Tomb. Look at the Cross with the garland of victory. Look at the empty Tomb. This is the path: death to sin, burial to the old sinful self, and resurrection to a new life in Jesus Christ. This is said quite eloquently by the Apostle Paul, in his lofty letter to the Romans:

How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we will certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. The death He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life (Rom. 6:2-13).

“The appearance of Christ to His disciples” from the iconostasis in the Church of Saint John Lambadistis in Cyprus.

May we all, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, make our own the words of the Apostle,

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:19-20).

Thus free from sin, and the corruption and death it brings, we may experience the power of the resurrection, and give glory to the One Crucified, out of love for us, and resurrected from the dead, Christ our God. And may each one of us be truly addressed by the Lord with the words, “Blessed are you who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Fr. E.H./2000/2018

  1. παρελάβετε, from which παράδοσις, tradition, comes
  2. notice, not “have been saved,” but “σώζεσθε,” being saved, present continuous. Why? Because there is a condition here.
  3. [you see, the condition of salvation?
  4. παρέδωκα from παραδίδωμι, hand over, pass on to another, hand down to one’s posterity
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    GIVING WITNESS TO THE TRUE CHURCH

    Orthodox Christians all over the world have received the unchanging Christian Faith, passed down from the Holy Apostles to their successors, and continue to practice it today in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church – The Orthodox Church.
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    The Eternal Beauty of the Church

    The following text is the Prologue of a book by the Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and St. Vlasios Ierotheos (Vlahos) (1990), written by the Roman Catholic theologian Antonio Ranzolin.1 Metropolitan Ierotheos praises this text, because in it, as he writes, “a Roman Catholic theologian pays tribute to the Orthodox Church, as she is expressed by the Fathers of the Church, and in a beautiful way praises the Christian tradition in which he grew up and lives.”2 Here is the Prologue that we translated into English from its Greek translation.3 We think the text will be reassuring to us Orthodox and will strengthen our faith in Christ and in His One Holy Church He founded.

    The Church as “the Eternal Beauty”

    Prologue to the Publication by Antonio Ranzolin

    What appeal to a Roman Catholic reader can have a book about the Church written by an Orthodox? I will try to express what this book meant to me, its translator. I will try to underscore a few points of this book, which helped me to “re-focus” – allow me the term – on my values in relation to certain inconsistencies from which, it seems to me, sometimes my Catholicism suffers…

    “The Church is always and only Christ-centered (not pope- centered, not patriarch- centered, not bishop- centered).”

    First re-confirmed value

    To talk and live the life of the Church having Christ as the starting point. We shouldn’t start from a pope, from a patriarch, from a bishop, no matter how significant he may be, no matter how evangelical he may be. Because the more a leader is followed, the more he becomes a moral authority. The Church is always and only Christ-centered (not pope- centered, not patriarch- centered, not bishop- centered). The Church is Christ- centered; that is why she is Spirit- centered. With the gifts and ministries of the Spirit assigned within her hierarchically appointed Ark, everyone is in the service of all, in an amazing universality and concord of the various expressions. With the gifts and ministries of the Spirit, which imprint on her Body the crucified and resurrectional love of Christ, a Body which thus becomes a Body of light, consolation and hope for the entire world, a holy Body, with Christ at the center, that is with the Spirit.

    “The church is for man, because Christ is for man… The Church wants to make you god (!) in order to extend your possibilities to the infinite, the divine possibilities of love.”

    Second re-confirmed value

    The church is for man, because Christ is for man. And man is essentially a patient: his illness is his passions. The church is therefore a clinic, a hospital, not a court. You get in and the Mother Church nurses you. By the Word of Whom she is the custodian. With the mysteries of the uncreated Grace. And, if you want and you are seeking it, supports you with a spiritual father, a physician, who stands by you in your struggles, who takes you by the hand and leads you through a healing process through stages: initially with a persistent and long purification of the heart, then with the illumination of the nous, and finally, if and when God wills, with the ecstatic rupture of theosis (divinization). The Church wants to make you god (!) in order to extend your possibilities to the infinite, the divine possibilities of love. The Church wants to deaden within you your unnatural passions, in order to live within you the unique, holy, divine and life-giving pathos: love. Because God is Love…

    Third re-confirmed value

    “Sin is not so much transgression of a law. It is not an offense against God Who demands punishments and restitutions…”

    Sin is not so much transgression of a law. It is not an offense against God Who demands punishments and restitutions… How many inaccuracies in this matter, if not true blasphemies, in so many prayers: “I have sinned and I deserve Your punishments and… I have offended You… I promise with Your help not to offend You any more.” Our sins do not offend God, Who is infinite love. They offend us: they distort our nature created according to His image… they make it sick, they do not let the original light of the Word, contained in it to shine. All the same, we consider the passions “natural,” while they are only pathological. The Church… always preaches, and always communicates to us physiology. She baptizes us in physiology, she nourishes us with physiology. That is, she baptizes us in Christ and nourishes us with Christ—always.

    “Truth is not indifferent… In a general climate that relativizes everything and downgrades everything, it becomes more than ever prudent and urgent to reflect on the dogma and its fundamental value.”

    Fourth re-confirmed value

    Truth is not indifferent. It is not the same thing to believe in a God in three-hypostases or in a God in one hypostasis; in a Son born or in a Son created; in the Word Who assumed true flesh, suffered, resurrected, and ascended to heaven, or simply to believe in what appeared to be flesh, in an illusion, which only had a semblance of flesh, and so on. All this because faith is life. From a different belief comes, in a natural way, a different life, with different expressions and applications, and with different points of reference. This book places the reader before an orthodoxy of faith in its unchangeable character, about which wrote the holy Fathers, for which they struggled, and many of them tasted the bitterness of torture, imprisonment, exile and death. In a general climate that relativizes everything and downgrades everything, it becomes more than ever prudent and urgent to reflect on the dogma and its fundamental value—and this can be done in the school of those who have experienced the dogma, that is, those who have reached theosis. These are the ones who “contemplated” (“viewed”) the dogma face to face: in the Light, that is the Spirit, they saw the Light who is the Son, and through the Son they saw the Light Who is the Father. The dogma leads us to the knowledge through the triune fire of the Beloved.

    “Theologians are not those who ‘know’ theology, but those who have met with the Risen Lord of theology, and who out of their experience can speak about God, or better to stammer something about the inexpressible Beloved.”

    Fifth re-confirmed value

    The theology of the Church is therefore an encounter. It is not a rational or “scientific” reflection upon the fact of revelation (where even an atheist—so it is said in certain circles—could do). Theologians are not those who “know” theology, but those who have met with the Risen Lord of theology, and who out of their experience can speak about God, or better to stammer something about the inexpressible Beloved. And once again here I will turn to a few distortions… When you meet God, you become a spring of theology, without having studied the famous Athenian wise men. The Church does nothing else than to prepare us for this encounter. She exists only for that. With grace and self-discipline, she guides you—if you follow her faithfully, if you will undertake the struggles she proposes to you—to the Pentecost. When you reach the Upper Room, the fire of the Spirit will descend upon you too, and this fire will guide you in the depths of the Mystery. You will be like Peter, John and Paul:4 “your” theology will coincide with theirs, because “your” own experience will resemble theirs. Nothing more, and nothing less.

    “When we say Church, we mean a relationship that is inseparable from the faith, the correct faith, and similarly a faith which is inseparable from the Eucharist, which is the par excellence ecclesiastical act.”

    Sixth re-confirmed value

    When we say Church, we mean a relationship that is inseparable from the faith, the correct faith, and similarly a faith which is inseparable from the Eucharist, which is the par excellence ecclesiastical act. Here everything is recapitulated: from the creation till the end of the world, from protology to eschatology: everything is contained in this Cup and Bread. Everything: all beings and their meaning, all history and its meaning. Because the Incarnate Word, Who was crucified and resurrected, is the heart and meaning of every being; the heart and the meaning of history. It’s all there, at the altar of the Church…

    Church, correct confession of the Faith, Eucharist: three elements in inter-penetration, embracing each other, coexisting and together giving a common testimony. Even the place where the Church celebrates the breaking of the bread of the Eucharist becomes a revelation: of God, of the world, of man. But also becomes a revelation of the Church herself, which is the unity between God, the world, and the human beings. Through her we enter the temple on the toes of our feet, we remove our shoes, to meet with the burning and unconsumed bush, the bush that sinks its roots into the sacred ground of the holy altar.

    These are just a few of the elements that the translated text deposited in the heart of the translator. Elements – I believe – that are decisive for us to live – in a manner more “targeted” – the mystery of the Church.

    I too became a student, as the catechists of Athens in the years 1989-90, who were listening to then Archimandrite and now Metropolitan Ierotheos. I too heard his speeches, and have brought them to you translated (seeking, among others, and finding, almost always, the exact patristic sources), and are now passed on to the reader: Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant…

    It is the hope that the reader will address these speeches, and thus he will start a dialogue with them, and examine his life. A new book always signals the beginning of one part of a common history between the writer and the reader.

    Antonio Ranzolin
    The Translator

    This text in Greek: Holy Metropolis of Nafpaktos and Saint Vlasios

    1. Ἐκκλησία καί ἐκκλησιαστικό φρόνημα. He translated it into Italian, with the title, L’ Eterna Bellezza, Il Mistero della Chiesa (2017?), The Eternal Beauty, The Mystery of the Church.
    2. www.parembasis.gr
    3. We could not find online the original text in Italian, probably because the book has not been published yet.
    4. Out of respect for the author I pass on what he writes.
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    GIVING WITNESS TO THE TRUE CHURCH

    Orthodox Christians all over the world have received the unchanging Christian Faith, passed down from the Holy Apostles to their successors, and continue to practice it today in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church – The Orthodox Church.
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    Move mountains with faith in Christ

    A sermon on the Gospel reading for the Tenth Sunday of Matthew (Matthew 17:14-23).

    Do we have faith? What is faith? What kind of faith do we have? Can we increase our faith? How? Let’s go over some of these questions.

    Do we have faith?

    First let’s examine ourselves briefly if we have faith. How? Very simple. Take the same test the Lord gave to His Disciples:

    “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there’, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you” (Mt. 17:20).

    Well then? Do we? Now you are going to say: Wait a minute. I know in my heart that I believe. I know that I have faith. And don’t tell me that the Lord was speaking literally here. So it’s got to be an exaggeration, a hyperbole. Right?

    I don’t think the Lord was prone to exaggeration, to imbalanced and distorted views of reality, although He spoke boldly, as when He said, “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Mt. 5:48). But if it wasn’t an exaggeration, if it wasn’t an unrealistic expectation, then how are we to interpret these words, which sound to be an examination of the Twelve and of all of us?

    The Lord was giving us a dynamic image,

    “a symbolic depiction of the dynamism contained in faith. It is a description of the indescribable vitality filling and watering our existence, when we give ourselves totally to the person of the God-man. A representation of the volcanic energy that rests within our innermost ‘being,’ when we go beyond our human doubts and cast anchor in the harbor of God’s love. If you have faith so small, yet so dynamic, as is the microscopic seed of mustard, says the Lord, you will move even the enormous masses of mountains”.1

    Atomic fission in our age gave us a dimension of the dynamism included within the smallest particle of matter.

    What is faith?

    But what is faith? What do we mean when we say “faith”? “Faith,” for us Christians,

    “means basically and primarily the free and wholehearted acceptance of the person of Jesus Christ and of His Message”,

    “in an honest and good heart” (Lk. 8:15).

    “Faith,” says St. Paul in his letter to the Hebrews, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1), or to say it more simply:

    “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (NIV).

    But we cannot have this assurance and certainty without the grace given to us “from above”; without first uniting ourselves with the Holy Spirit, abandoning ourselves to His guidance. “By the Holy Spirit every soul is quickened, and made shining through fire, it is purified, by the threefold oneness in a hidden manner,” we chant in the Gradual of the Fourth Tone of the Orthros Service. Thus the soul is offered to God purified, sanctified. It lives the divine presence.

    But faith is also the confidence in the Person of the Lord, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and gives us strength and performs mighty deeds. Says St. John Damascene,

    “Faith is the unhesitant and unshaken confidence that the promises of God will be fulfilled and our requests answered”.2

    And elsewhere he defines faith as ἀπολυπραγμόνητος συγκατάθεσις, an “ascent without much examination” (ibid. 11(84)). Such was the faith of the Saints.

    Our faith and the faith of the Saints

    What kind of faith do we have? Let’s compare it to the faith of the Saints. The Saints had so much faith in God they seemed to… order God. Abba Moses followed an inner voice, which told him to dwell in a cave by a cliff. When he ran out of water, he wondered where he would find some. He turned to God and said:

    “Now remember, Lord, You brought me here, so see to it that I get the water that I need for my brothers.”

    Suddenly a cloud was carried by the wind just outside his cave and poured down so much rain as to fill all his jars.

    “Why did you seem so concerned earlier?” two fellow monks asked the Elder.

    “I was in court with God,” said he with simplicity of heart. “I was reminding Him of the obligation He had assumed, that He needed to fulfill!”3

    In the first of many astounding stories narrated by Elder Paisios in his book Fathers of the Holy Mountain, he gives us the following example of “simplicity of heart” exhibited by one of the elders.

    “When I was a novice in the Monastery of Esfigmenou, the pious Elder Dorotheos told me that in their infirmary would come this elderly monk to help them out. His simplicity was such that he thought Ascension was the name of a saint, like Saint Barbara. One day, when a sick brother was admitted and there was no food around to strengthen him, this elderly monk run fast down the steps to the basement, opened a small window above the sea, stretched his arms and said: “My Saint Ascension, give me a small fish for the brother.” And, what a marvel, a big fish leaped into his opened hands! And he very naturally, as if nothing extraordinary had happened, ran joyfully and prepared the fish for his sick brother”.4

    One more episode from the same book.

    “In the Skete of Iveron, ol’ Nicholas narrated to me of a Father who also had great simplicity. One time their well had dried up. He lowered an icon of St. Nicholas with a rope and shouted: ‘St. Nicholas, come up with the water, if you want me to light your candle – since you can do it… You see how many people come here, and we have no cold water to offer them.” And what an amazing thing – the water level began to rise slowly, with the icon of St. Nicholas floating on top, until he took it with his hands, kissed it reverently and brought it to the church.”

    We encounter similar episodes in the life of Papa-Dimitri Gagastathis,5 and in the life of many other Saints.

    It sounds like extortion, but didn’t the Lord say “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force”? (Mt. 11:12). The holy Elder Paisios writes:

    “The Fathers of those days had great faith and simplicity, and although most of them were not educated, they had humility and a fighting spirit, that’s why they received divine illumination. Whereas in our times, when knowledge is increased, unfortunately logic has shaken the faith of the people from the foundation. So, it follows that we are deprived of miracles, because the miracle is lived, it is not explained with logic.”6

    And he speaks of the “aroma of [their] simplicity.”

    How should we increase our faith?

    What does faith do in us? As the seed of faith is planted by the Holy Spirit in our receptive heart, it begins the marvelous miracle of life. It begins to move, to break the soil and shoot into the air and the sun, it lifts its stem up high, to produce buds and bear fruit. All the vitality is enclosed within its dried skin. All the generative and growth power is contained within this tiny seed. The Lord compared the seed to the word of God, seeded in the hearts of men (cf. Luke 8:11). But what is the word of God? What else, or rather who else, but the living Word of God, Christ Himself, living in the heart and soul of the believer, through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

    Our faith is not just another religion, but life in Christ; Christ living mysteriously, but really, in the heart and soul of the believer. So faith is mainly the life of Christ in us.

    Our faith too, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, should be alive, palpitant, vibrant. St. Symeon the New Theologian somewhere says, “When you are in prayer imagine you are holding the Lord by the feet. Don’t let go until your request has been answered.” Similarly Elder Joachim advises “Hold fast throughout your life to the robe of the Mother of God, and she will lead you to her Son”.7

    Our faith is not just another religion, but life in Christ; Christ living mysteriously, but really, in the heart and soul of the believer. So faith is mainly the life of Christ in us. Therefore true faithful are those Christians who are in communion, that is, those who are united with Christ. That’s why as soon as we receive the mysteries of Christ (that is holy Communion) we shout triumphantly: “We have seen the true light… We have found the true faith…”

    My dear brothers and sisters in Christ: We call ourselves believers, men and women of faith. But are we? We often find our faith to be anemic, watered-down, shallow, sickly, sterile, tasteless, lukewarm, infertile. The seed of faith implanted in our baptism remains dormant. It doesn’t even germinate, let alone produce fruit! How can we increase our faith? How else, but by imitating Christ and His Saints. This is the very thing St. Paul exhorts us to do at the end of the Gospel passage we heard today. Let us be receptive, and as good soil let us receive God’s Word and allow it to grow and produce fruit—and fruit abundant. Let us prepare the soil of our soul with prayer and fasting, with askesis, with dynamic, living faith… Let us examine ourselves: are we truly faithful?

    Many of us, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, have almost complete ignorance of our faith, and continue to live in ignorance, without even realizing it! Let us make a concerted effort to increase our knowledge of Christ and His message through Catechism and Bible Study, offered again this fall.

    We’ll end by praying with a selection from Prophet David’s 27th psalm, a great prayer of confidence, faith and trust in God; a prayer of serenity, tranquility and peace:

    “The LORD is my light and my salvation: I will fear no one, The LORD protects me from all danger; I will never be afraid. I have asked the LORD for one thing; one thing only do I want: to live in the LORD’s house all my life, to marvel there at His goodness, and to ask for His guidance.My father and mother may abandon me, but the LORD will take care of me. I know that I will live to see the LORD’s goodness in this present life. Trust in the LORD. Have faith, do not despair. Trust in the LORD.”

    Fr. Emmanuel/95

    1. Metr. Nikodemos, p. 140.
    2. Exact Exp. 4 (77)
    3. Gerontikon
    4. p. 9
    5. pp. 39-40 and ff.
    6. Source unknown. Possibly Athonite Fathers and Athonite Matters.
    7. Cont. Ascetics of Mt. Athos, p. 77.
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    GIVING WITNESS TO THE TRUE CHURCH

    Orthodox Christians all over the world have received the unchanging Christian Faith, passed down from the Holy Apostles to their successors, and continue to practice it today in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church – The Orthodox Church.
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    Why I Believe in God — Part I

    why-I-believe-in-God-part-one

    I believe in God because

    • As I search for meaning to my existence, only an eternal Creator and an eternity of an existence with Him can give meaning to it.
    • As I search for a purpose of the world, only an intelligent Maker of the universe can give purpose to its continuous existence and finality.
    • As I have a strong desire to live, only an eternally living Being and the perspective of an eternal life with Him can fully satisfy my desire.
    • As I wish to love and to be loved, my love can find fulfillment only in relation with a Person who is infinitely Good, Beautiful and Loving in an absolute way.
    • As I search for a greater and more profound knowledge, I find that only an inexhaustible Source of Knowledge can satisfy it completely.
    • As I long for a firm and lasting reality in an ever-changing world, only rest in a lasting and unchangeable Reality can totally fulfill this desire.
    • As I search for perfection, I know that this perfection is not possible in this imperfect world and in this finite life, therefore there must be another world and another life to attain it.
    • As I aspire after order, I know that perfect order lies beyond this existence, therefore it must exist in a different, perfectly orderly realm.
    • As I long for freedom, I know that I will never achieve total freedom in this life, therefore I must find it in a different life.
    • As I am aware of my rationality and that of other human beings, I know that perfect rationality can be found and achieved only beyond this world.
    • As I feel empty, incomplete, uncertain, unfulfilled, unsatisfied, I find fulfillment, accomplishment, certainty, satisfaction in Him who alone is complete, who alone can satisfy my every desire, in Him who is the only certainty.
    • As I strive to discover and achieve an ever greater beauty, true justice, objective truth, a more lasting happiness, a continuous newness, only a Being who is the source of Beauty, Justice, Truth, Happiness and Newness can fulfill it.
    • As I long for something nobler and higher and better, I am led to God who is the fulfillment of all my aspirations, who alone satisfies my perennial longing.
    • As I strive to be in communion with other human beings, I realize that I cannot come to perfect communion with anyone else except a perfect personal Being.
    • As I feel weak, uncertain, confused, perplexed, inadequate, I place my hope and trust in God, and in Him I feel certain, calm, strong.

    I HAVE BEEN CREATED FOR ETERNITY: TO BE, TO LIVE, TO LOVE FOREVER IN HIM WHO EXISTS AND IS THE SOURCE OF EXISTENCE, WHO LIVES AND IS THE SOURCE OF LIFE, WHO IS LOVE AND IS THE SOURCE AND OBJECT OF LOVE.

    If man disputes the reality of a supreme Being who is the source of our existence and of the world, then our life and the existence of the world would have no purpose and no meaning. Then we would not differ from moles who grope in the dark, except they have no consciousness of themselves or of the world around them, whereas we do. The absence of meaning and purpose in life should cause us tremendous unhappiness and lead us to desperation.

    Do we believe in “a theatre of the absurd,” in which we lead an irrational, meaningless, unrealized, unfulfilling, unhappy, unsatisfying, tragic, doomed existence? Is our world a “closed” dark world, a dungeon without doors or windows? Or is it a room with a window, from which we can take a peek at the world “outside,” with rolling hills, brooks with crystal water, birds singing and people strolling happily, and a door which leads us to it?

    Faith in God and in an eternal life He grants us gives us hope, joy, drive, fulfillment, purpose. God instilled these aspirations in us to lead us to Him. We had our beginning in Him and we long to end our journey back to Him. This is the final goal of our existence, and we shall not rest until we rest in Him who created us. In the words of Blessed Augustine, “Inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te”: Our heart is restless until it rests in You.

    * Photo in post heading by Fr. Emmanuel Hatzidakis. Slightly edited by AH, 2024.

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    GIVING WITNESS TO THE TRUE CHURCH

    Orthodox Christians all over the world have received the unchanging Christian Faith, passed down from the Holy Apostles to their successors, and continue to practice it today in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church – The Orthodox Church.
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    Who is Jesus Christ?

    An excerpt from Jesus: Fallen? The Human Nature of Christ Examined from an Eastern Orthodox Perspective.

    “Who is Jesus Christ?” Is He a human being or a divine being? Does it matter what we believe about Him? Today books are written, movies are made, and discussions by “biblical scholars” are televised portraying Jesus Christ as plainly human. It seems that our rationalistic mind can no longer accept a human being who also happens to be a divine being. Union of human and divine is puzzling to our intelligence. Thus not only we don’t defend our faith, but we embrace any opinion about Him as a “personal matter” having no bearing upon one’s salvation.

    Yet true faith about Jesus Christ is crucial for our salvation. The Lord Himself had asked His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And again He had asked His disciples, this time directly, “But who do you say that I am?” (Mt. 16:13-19). The Apostle Peter answered on behalf of the Apostles, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The Lord built His Church upon the rock of the true confession of faith in Him. For this reason the Church has fought strenuously to safeguard the true faith, because our salvation depends on it.

    Our faith is that Christ is both divine and human. If Christ were a mere human being, then He could not save us, because He could not unite us with God the Father, since He Himself would not be united with Him. If on the other hand He would be purely divine, then again He could not unite us with Him, because the gap between us would remain infinite. Therefore Christ had to be both human and divine, bridging the uncreated divine Being and us humans, the created beings. What we believe about Jesus Christ is pertinent to our salvation.

    It is therefore incumbent upon us to learn our faith and defend it with our very life, as the Martyrs and Confessors of the faith did. Not to insist on the whole truth, on account of love and unity, even if, invariably, this would alienate us and cut us off from Christians of different beliefs, would be a betrayal of our faith. Real love is shown by wanting everyone to arrive at salvation. To compromise the truth on account of “love” is a modern, humanistic invention. The Church did not stop proclaiming the truth lest it offended others. True unity is in truth—or not at all.

    A myriad of opinions have been expressed about Christ. We cannot say, Who knows? or say, These are mysteries, or, It doesn’t matter. We have an obligation to defend the truths of our faith. We should therefore reflect hard on our permissiveness and tolerance of teachings clearly opposed to Orthodox doctrine. We should be consistent in our beliefs. When, for example, on one hand we readily confess Christ to be “true God of true God,” and on the other hand we say that all “monotheistic” religions worship the same God, aren’t we inconsistent?

    We should have a sufficient knowledge about Christ, and strengthen our faith that He is truly a divine being in a human form. If, as the Apostle states, we must stand up and give an account of our faith, we should be able to do it, even at the risk of offending others. Truth unfortunately divides—it does not unite. We should of course “speak the truth in love”– but speak it!

     

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