Tuesday, March 18, 2014

A Lenten Message from St. Isaac of Nineveh



If you do not have stillness in your heart, at least be still in your tongue.  And if you cannot keep your thoughts disciplined, then at least discipline your senses.  And if you are not alone in your mind, then at least be alone in your body.  And if you can do nothing with your body, at least be grieved in your mind.  And if you cannot fast for two days on end, at least fast till evening.  And if you cannot wait till evening, at least take care not to eat your fill. If you cannot show mercy, at least speak as a sinner.  Your are not a peacemaker; do not be a troublemaker.  You are not zealous; be at least resolute in your mind.

"Why should I go to Church?"


The following is written by one of the greatest and least known theologians of the 20th century, Panagiotis Nellas-

First is the Triune God. It is around His throne that the faithful assemble. The night, which through the darkness and the  silence  stills  the  senses  of  the  body,  the  Alleluia,  the hymns to the Holy Trinity, the iconography of the church, all help the human person to turn towards the Triune Deity, to place himself in His presence.

The aim is that the faithful gathered together in the church should find themselves again in their Father's House, that the world should change through repentance and prayer, and that the ancient Home should be reconstituted in the Church.

Above all, the second person of the Holy Trinity is actively present with an effectiveness which we should call natural, since the created portion of our world which He assumed and rendered infinite by making it His body is the Church, within which our space and time find their new dimensions, those dimensions which allow us to celebrate acts of worship. The assembly of the faithful takes place literally in the body of Christ, Christ being our House.

The incarnate Logos, the Lord Jesus, is present with an immediate, existential effectiveness. He is the loving Redeemer, the crucified Bridegroom, who wounds the hearts of the faithful with His love and calls them to a mystical erotic union.

Next it is the Mother of God who is present in a similarly effective way. Her own body is the body of the God-man, the body which is the Church. Mary is the Theogennitria, she who gave birth to God. Within her the great marvel was realized that one of the Trinity should become that which we are. She is the Gate and the Ladder which unites earth with heaven, which causes a saving breach to be made in the boundary enclosing our time and space, and even now already brings into the world things which transcend it.

The Mother of God is moreover the loving consoler of the faithful in the arid time of fasting, their champion in the night-long struggle of prayer, the guide leading to Christ, the intercessor for sins, the conductor of the bride in the mystic union. The faithful converse also with her as they do with Christ.

We find it difficult today to understand the deeply rational nature of ecclesiastical acts and practices-Mysteries, services, festal cycles, prayer, ascesis, and repentance-because we are hindered by a mono-dimensional, pedestrian concept of space and time. But within the Church another cosmology holds sway. This different conception of space-time is expressed by Byzantine architecture and iconography and is also presupposed by Byzantine hymnography.  The  architectural whole, the  icons,  the  hymns-"Today  He  hangs  upon  the  cross," "Come, let us be crucified with  Him"- are not parables  or verbal patterns, the creation of a well-endowed imagination, but express a reality in precisely the same way that the new birth which is granted by baptism, and the communion of the body and blood of Christ which takes place in the divine Eucharist, are not metaphors but realities. Unless we take seriously the different  cosmological and anthropological settings within which the Church lives and moves, it is impossible for us to understand  Byzantine art or biblical, patristic and liturgical texts, and it is equally impossible for us to understand  the rationality and reality underlying the specific manner in which the Church's life is constructed as an active, decisive, salvific reorganization and refashioning of the limited dimensions and functions of the created world and the created being of man.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Tradition According to Zissimos Lorenzatos



This is Tradition.  There are dead people who direct the course of our lives, today and in the case of every young generation, and there are living people who the louder they shout, the more clear it becomes that they are dead before their time.  This is Tradition: only those live who are living, no matter though some of these have died years ago.  Again, every young generation will direct the life of that tradition; this too is traditional, and from this point of view, what we call originality does not exist, except as an immature fantasy.  Tradition alone exists fully; for tradition is life- indeed, it is the higher stage of life which makes no distinction between living and dead.  Whenever we possess true life, we possess tradition; we possess a tradition which is added to, developed, enriched.  The last become first and the first last.  Of those who constitute tradition it could be said that they all belong to the present.  Tradition is neither the past nor the future- although it is more future than past, since it lives in the eternal present; and this is tradition, a power that goes hand in hand with life.  Life and tradition are one.  In tradition, this moment is not merely this moment, but all the past present within this moment, and perhaps part of the future as well. 

Η ΓΛΥΚΟΦΙΛΟΥΣΑ



Καὶ πάλι κίνησα νὰ ᾽ρθῶ, Χριστέ μου, στὴν αὐλή σου,
νὰ σκύψω στὰ κατώφλια σου τὰ τρισαγαπημένα,
ὁποὺ μὲ πόθο ἀχόρταγο τὰ λαχταρεῖ ἡ ψυχή μου.

Ἡ σάρκα μου ἀναγάλλιασε σιμά σου κ᾽ ἡ καρδιά μου.
Τὸ χελιδόνι ηὗρε φωλιὰ καὶ τὸ τρυγόνι σκέπη,
νὰ βάλουν τὰ πουλάκια τους, τὰ δόλια, νὰ πλαγιάσουν,
τὸν ἱερό σου τὸ βωμό, ἀθάνατε Χριστέ μου.

Κάλλιο μιὰ μέρα στὴ δική σ᾽ αὐλή, παρὰ χιλιάδες·
στὸν ἴσκιο ἂς εἶμαι τοῦ ναοῦ σὰν παραπεταμένος
καλύτερα, παρὰ νὰ ζῶ σ᾽ ἁμαρτωλῶν λημέρια
.


ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ ΠΑΠΑΔΙΑΜΑΝΤΗΣ
ΑΠΑΝΤΑ
ΤΟΜΟΣ ΤΡΙΤΟΣ
ΚΡΙΤΙΚΗ ΕΚΔΟΣΗ
Ν. Δ. ΤΡΙΑΝΤΑΦΥΛΛΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ
ΕΚΔΟΣΕΙΣ ΔΟΜΟΣ
ΑΘΗΝΑ 1984
Σελ. 71-88

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

He neither Exists nor doesn’t Exist. He is! | PEMPTOUSIA

He neither Exists nor doesn’t Exist. He is! | PEMPTOUSIA


In the end, it often seems that our search for God resembles a vain attempt to get through to Him via the wall rather than the door. And when we don’t make it, we deny Him. That’s what these young people have been trying to do...

Monday, March 3, 2014

Cover the Sinner




They said of Abba Macarius the Great  that he became, as it  is written, a god upon  earth, because, just as God  protects the world,  so Abba Macarius would cover the faults which he saw, as though he did  not see them; and those which he heard, as though he did not hear them.           
-Gerontikon


Cover the sinner even though you are not harmed by him. Indeed, encourage him for life and the mercy of the Lord will sustain you.  Do not reprove anyone for any transgression, but in all things consider yourself to be the cause of the sin. 
–St. Isaac the Syrian