Monthly Archives: June 2018

These Eyes


+ Maria, Μαρία Χατζηθανάση- Σοφικίτη, mother of 10 children, aged between 22 years and 2 months old, a  midwife, ‘lost her life’, suddenly and unexpectedly, in a fatal car accident, on her way back home from her work. (What a beautiful face!!! Like the Ierosolymite Theotokos)
In a prophetic conversation with a priest, who prefers to stay anonymous, just 2 weeks ago, Maria had told him that she had asked her elder children what they would say to the younger ones if she got hit by a lorry and die: “Will you tell them that mom got killed or that mom went to Heaven?” . She also added that even if this happened, she would not worry about her 10 children, because our Heavenly Father would best protect and care for them.
Blessed Maria, when asked why they had 10 children, she said that initially they only had 5 in mind with her husband, but with every new child and all the blessings each child  brought to the family, they kept changing their mind and finally decided to have as many children as God would send them!
+Memory Eternal! +21 June. Our prayers to her husband Spyridon and her 10 little angels, all in white in the funeral. All my friends from Greece are telling me that this was the most resurrectional funeral they have ever attended in their lives! 10,00 faithful chanting “Christ is Risen!” The funeral took place at St. Porphyrios’ the Kapsokalyvite church  of Milesi, in Oropos. +Christ is Risen!
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The Precious and Life-Saving Cross (Sts Isidoros, Likavittos). One miracle of many happening every day, captured and sent from a friend in Greece, Lagadas, northern Greece, Church of St Paraskeva. A paralytic, wheelchair-bound woman is getting to her feet after a blessing from a local priest and is walking! During the Holy Liturgy which was held to commemorate the blessing of the Holy Cross. Photographs depict the woman receiving a blessing from Father Dimitrios before she stands on her two feet.

For more photographs and videos which capture more miracles, please go to the Facebook page of the Orthodox City Hermit as I cannot upload them here. Miles of queues of the faithful for the last 7 days. For more photos, go here

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Sent from friends in Greece.

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Busy, nearly exhausted, still in the process of moving, unpacking, deep cleaning of my new flat and making preparations for my new job post. Wishing you all a Blessed Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul!

 

Illnesses and Sin

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It is incorrect to say that depression is not an illness or that alcoholism is not an illness or that same-sex attraction is not an illness. The standard definition of an illness is any condition which upsets the homeostasis of a system. There are spiritual illnesses and physical illnesses. I suppose one could even say that there are mental illnesses, although their crossover into spiritual illnesses is profound.

Calling something a mental illness will not give one license to say that we are not spiritually responsible for it and for the things that we do because of it. This is the way of the world nowadays. A person says I have depression and therefore since it’s an illness I’m not responsible for it. A person might say I’m same-sex attracted and I was born this way, and since the world teaches me that I should act on my impulses I am not responsible for them and they must not be sins. This is wrongheaded thinking.

It is always good to think humbly about ourselves and blame ourselves. The world doesn’t understand this, but the Orthodox church, with our wonderful ascetic theology, does understand this. Our prayers make this very clear, and ignorance regarding them is a terrible spiritual problem for many Orthodox Christians.

Any Christian who has great problems, weaknesses or sins must improve his prayer and struggle, or else all other solutions will be ineffective or less effective, or even harmful. Look to yourself if you are depressed, or have SSA, or an addiction. Could you pray even a little bit more? Confess more? Fast at least a little bit more? Struggle to be on time to liturgy, come to the evening service at least sometimes? Read the prayers in the prayer book, and try to learn from them? Pray for a person who has harmed you? Quantity is not important, but EFFORT is. It is almost always true that we can make more effort. Something is always better than nothing.

Blaming ourselves does not mean that we have a terrible poor self-concept about ourselves. Blaming ourselves means taking responsibility for all of our actions and thoughts, and AT THE SAME TIME, with a warm hope in God, Whom we know will help us, because He loves us and is merciful.

Sin is anything that is not like God except for the blameless passions. The blameless passions are things like the need for sleep or food. We have those needs because we are in the flesh. In the next life, we will be in the flesh but not have those needs. All of those needs are signs that we are not yet perfected.

Depression is certainly an illness, and it certainly can be treated with medications in some cases. It is always an incomplete treatment and even a dangerous treatment to only use medications and not also to pray, and struggle to follow the commandments, and understand that our spiritual actions are part of our healing. Our healing for anything is through God because of His love for us.

It is a significant mistake to consider the depression is only a biological illness and not also a spiritual one. When one calls something a mental illness generally what they mean is that there is some biological reason for the illness and that morally the person is completely blameless. Sometimes they believe there is only a biological reason for the illness. The former is often true, but the latter is never true.

Nothing we do should be done without the spirit. That includes taking medicine or getting medical treatment. We are composite creatures with a body and a soul. When we are ill , the body and soul both need attention.

 

Priest Seraphim Holland

Seraphim@orthodox.net

 

Christ’s Naked Word

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St. Cuthbert, an early Celtic Saint, used to pray standing in the sea. When he stepped out, the sea otters would dry his feet with their fur.

 

* Sobering words upon moving to a new house, to a new job and to new ministries. 

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“The more I examine myself, the more I see that a life devoted to constructing and organizing, a life which produces positive results and which succeeds, is not my vocation, even though, out of obedience, I could work in this direction and even obtain certain results. What attracts me is a vocation of loss–a life which would give itself freely without any apparent positive result, for the result would be known to God alone; in brief, to lose oneself in order to find oneself.” (Father Lev Gillet, Letter of 9 March 1928, in Contacts, 49, no. 180, 1997, p. 309.)
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“The one thing that sets the Saints apart from the rest of us is their struggle to remain entirely obedient to Christ. There is no bargaining in their mind, no negotiating Christ’s teaching, no diluting His words to the point where they lose the strength to open for us the path of salvation.

Most of us receive the word of God with caution, and we immediately start turning it on all sides until we reach a compromise that works for us. Most of us fear the word of God. All we truly want is something that looks like His word enough to make us feel good about ourselves, enough to make us have the appearance of Christians, but not to the extent that we could lose control over our lives.

One can go through life either in obedience to Christ or in obedience to one’s own will. The challenges and choices of this world are simple and clear if we obey Christ’s word – we need to love, we need to forgive, we need to help. Ultimately, we need to allow the world to crucify us for His name and become true followers of the Crucified One. These are His words, and this is the way of the Saints.

Things only seem complicated when our brain gets in the way. Things only seen unclear when we begin negotiating Christ’s word, looking for a human version of it which does not lead to the Cross. Unfortunately, we always succeed. Unfortunately, we have the frightening ability to reduce Christ’s teaching to something that excludes the Cross. The danger, though, is that without the Cross there can be no Resurrection either.

The Saints are not like that. The Saints do not build an idol of their earthly lives. They have no vision of a perfect life here, no vision of a perfect self in this world. They remain faithful to Christ and His word, and allow nothing of this world to come between them and their God.

Look at St Cuthbert. Look at his faith, the faith of a young man who spent his nights into the cold waters of the North Sea, so he may control his mind and his body in prayer. Look at his obedience to his true calling – a hermit at heart, he left everything behind to be obedient to Christ. A man alone on his island, but carrying the world and its Creator in his heart.

Through his prayers, may we also be given the faith to obey Christ’s naked word, not our own tamed version of it.” (Fr. Seraphim Aldea, Mull Monastery Blog)