SAINT OF THE MONTH
SAINT ALEXIS: May 7
Alexis Toth
was born on March 18, 1854, in Hungary. He studied in Roman and Byzantine
Catholic. Alexis was ordained a priest in the Uniate Greek Catholic Church in
1878 and assigned as a parish priest. His wife died soon afterwards, followed
by their only child. In 1889, he was appointed to pastor St. Mary’s Uniate
parish in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The local Roman Catholic bishop refused to accept him as a
legitimate priest. Other Uniate communities were being treated in the same
way by Roman Catholic bishops all over America. The situation with the Roman
bishops prompted him to think about taking action. On March 25, 1891, Orthodox
Bishop Vladimir went to Minneapolis and received Fr. Alexis and his community. The
other Uniate communities saw and took courage in following his example. In the
midst of great hardships, he issued a stream of Orthodox writings for new
converts and gave practical advice on how to live in an Orthodox manner.
Read more at http://www.antiochian.org/north-american-saints
ASCENSION
On the fortieth day
after his passover, Jesus ascended into heaven to be glorified on the right hand of
God (Acts 1:9-11; Mk 16:19; Lk 24:51).
The ascension of Christ is his final physical departure from this world after
the resurrection. It is the formal completion of his mission in this world as
the Messianic Saviour. It is his glorious return to the Father who had sent him
into the world to accomplish the work that he had given him to do.
The Church’s celebration
of the ascension, as all such festal celebrations, is not merely the remembrance
of an event in Christ’s life.
The Lord leaves in order
to be glorified with God the Father and to glorify us with himself. He goes in
order to “prepare a place” for and to take us also into the blessedness of God
s presence. He goes to open the way for all flesh into the “heavenly sanctuary
... the Holy Place not made by hands” (see
Hebrews 8-10). He goes in order send the Holy Spirit, who proceeds
from the Father to bear witness to him and his gospel in the world, making him
powerfully present in the lives of disciples.
Excerpts from http://oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-church-year/ascension1
Pentecost
The Holy Spirit that
Christ had promised to his disciples came on the day of Pentecost (Jn 14:26, 15:26; Lk 24:49; Acts 1:5).
The apostles received “the power from on high,” and they began to preach and
bear witness to Jesus as the risen Christ, the King and the Lord. This moment
has traditionally been called the birthday of the Church.
Thus, Pentecost is called
an apocalyptic day, which means the day of final revelation. It is also called an eschatological day, which means the day of the final
and perfect end (in
Greek eschaton> means the end). For when the Messiah
comes and the Lord’s Day is at hand, the “last days” are inaugurated in which
“God declares:... I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” This is the
ancient prophecy to which the Apostle Peter refers in the first sermon of the
Christian Church which was preached on the first Sunday of Pentecost (Acts 2: 1 7; Joel 2: 28-32). Excerpts from
http://oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-church-year/pentecost-the-descent-of-the-holy-spirit
The Wrathful God –
missing in action from the Orthodox Church Fr.
Andrew
When I first came into the Orthodox Church, back in the
early 1980’s, it was largely through the prayers and guidance of a very wise
and very Orthodox priestmonk Fr. Loren Kubin who became our dear spiritual
father in Christ. He simply asked me where I was getting my teaching and
suggested I read some of the early Church fathers so see how things squared
with what they had to say. I was quite unaware that there even was much to
consider before Martin Luther, so it was quite a shock when I started reading some
of books he gave me as the “Apostolic Fathers” were taught either directly from
the Apostles or within a generation or two; a good couple of centuries before
the canon of the new testament was finalized around the early fourth century.
They were surprisingly consistent on things that I had understood were not
really a healthy part of Christianity up until then. Little things like the
sacramental nature of the Church, the importance of communion and the body and
blood of Christ therein, the liturgical normalcy of the worship service, the
place and authority of Bishops, honour of the ever virgin Mary as the birth
giver of God… Needless to say my “theology” having been formed within the folds
of the Baptist, Evangelical, Nazarene, Pentecostal, Charismatic, Lutheran and
other “non-denominational” but very protestant evangelical circles, lay in a
smouldering heap at my feet burning my toes, and I felt like a ship without a
rudder for a time.
I think quite a number of us “Orthodox converts” can tell a
similar story with feelings of great awakening mixed with a bit of bewilderment
and even perhaps a little resentment – which hopefully quickly passed (the
resentment that is). The essential question of “Who do you trust and why” to
explain the precious things of the faith and how to interpret the scriptures is
of fundamental importance. The teachings of those early Christian Fathers who
were taught directly by Christ’s Apostles, and later Fathers who were led by
the Holy Spirit to give us the 27 books we now all hold in common as the
canonical books of the New Testament, are obviously the most trustworthy
source. Finding they were all Orthodox Christians, fiercely defending the
purity of the Orthodox faith and they had much to say regarding scriptural
interpretation and the faith brought me into the Church.
I entered into the Orthodox Church and began to encounter
the great treasure found in the heritage of the Church, all of which is given
to us to lead us to an ever deepening life in Christ. As I journeyed, I discovered
that I missed, in my early impressions of the main differences between the
Orthodox Church and the other two major streams of Christianity (Roman
Catholicism and Protestantism), what I now consider to be probably the most
important difference; the absence of the “wrathful God.” It is hard to
comprehend how much the spectre of this angry God, fiercely looking down upon
us pathetic sinners and pronouncing judgement and hellfire as the only just
consequence for our sinful ways had shaped my thinking and messed up my
motivation to serve God.
In my previous non-Orthodox teaching, God the Son came to
save me from the wrath of God the Father. His demand for divine judgement was
such that the only way to satisfy it was to send down His Son to be sacrificed
for our sakes, thus atoning for our sins and satisfying God’s need to be
appeased. Or perhaps somehow this was also to pay a ransom as such to the
rightful owner of the race of Adam – the devil. I never could quite grasp why
the devil should be given a ransom by the only all powerful God to begin with,
especially such a valuable one as God Himself incarnated as a true human being
as Jesus Christ. So either the devil required a cosmic ransom payment to free
us from his hold on us, or God required satisfaction for the debt we had
incurred but could never repay ourselves, being the sinful depraved creatures
we had become. How to reconcile this vision of the loving “Abba” father Christ
talks about in the gospels so tenderly, and this wrathful entity who has a need
for cosmic appeasement that is somehow demanded by His unbending sense of
justice. No wonder so many sensible humans run screaming from such a hideous
picture of our loving God and want nothing to do with the “church.” I suspect
that our dear Father God probably looks very kindly upon them for rejecting
this distorted view which purports to represent Him.
Thanks be to God, that the Orthodox Church has an entirely
different view of God and salvation and original sin than that of the “wrathful
God” which developed in the Roman Catholic Church, and was taken and even
further by most of the Protestants. The Protestant reformation threw out many
things well worth throwing out when they left Rome, things such as indulgences and complete
Papal authority (both of which are still very much alive and active in the RC
church). As the Protestant movement developed and further fractured however,
certain sects also threw out a number of precious and holy things that had
always been an essential and unquestioned part of the church from the time of
the Apostles – most essentially the precious and life giving sacrament of
communion, a healthy respect for the blessed Theotokos, and Church order with
proper ecclesiastical authority. A talented Romanian priest friend of mine Fr.
Dan Suciu has written an interesting little booklet called “Orthodoxy;
Catholicism without Additions; Protestantism without Subtractions” which is a
pretty good one sentence working description of The Orthodox Church.
Unfortunately when cleaning house, the Protestants kept this view of the
“wrathful God” who needed satisfaction, and in some cases presented an even
more distorted and insane caricature of our precious and all loving Father God.
Have a read of the greatly admired (in some circles) Calvinist reformer
Jonathan Edwards’ most famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” to
get a sense of this.
The Orthodox view of Christ’s sacrifice for us on the cross
comes from a completely different mindset. There is no “Angry God” to placate,
and indeed the very nature of Jewish sacrifices in the Old Testament, which
foreshadowed the redeeming work of Christ, was greatly at odds with the pagan
sacrifices in the nations around them. The Pagan sacrifices were to somehow
influence the very capricious and unpredictable “gods” in their favour. The
Jewish sacrificial system was not designed to appease an offended God, but to
change the heart of the sinner bringing the sacrifice. When they came in
repentance and confessed their sin and brought their sacrifice to the priest to
offer to God, it was not with the intention of somehow influencing God to look
more favourably upon them. Psalm 51 is the most commonly used Psalm in Orthodox
worship. “For You do not desire
sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and contrite heart – These O
Lord You will not despise.”
The Orthodox understanding of Christ dying for us was that
He came and sanctified all of life by becoming fully human, and entering into
death He went down to Hell/Hades itself and destroyed the hold that death and
the devil had on the race of Adam. He “trampled down death by death.” Then through His resurrection He paved a path
for us to join Him, to be transformed and to allow the image of God we already
had within us to come to life and grow.
He died to heal us, to save us by providing a way for us to come to Him
and enter into His kingdom NOT to appease His wrathful Father and somehow
substitute and die instead of us. He died to change us and provide a way for us
to find life in Him, not to appease an angry God and convince Him to keep us
from throwing us into the eternal flames of hell that would burn and torment us
throughout all eternity.
St. Anthony writing in the
fourth century says “It is not right to
imagine that God feels pleasure or displeasure in a human way. He is good, and
He only bestows blessings and never does harm, remaining always the same. We
men, on the other hand, if we remain good through resembling God, are united
with Him; but if we become evil through not resembling God, we are separated
from Him. By living in holiness we cleave to God; but by becoming wicked we
make Him our enemy. It is not that He grows angry with us in an arbitrary way,
but it is our own sins that prevent God from shining within us, and expose us
to demons who punish us. And if through prayer and acts of compassion we gain
release from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and made
Him change, but that through our actions and our turning to God, we have cured
our wickedness and so once more have enjoyment of God’s goodness. Thus to say
that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself
from the blind.”
The words from St. John Chrysostom in the fourth century are
repeated every year at the Paschal service and sum up the purpose of Christ’s
death and resurrection very well “Christ
is Risen – and hell is overthrown; Christ is Risen - and the demons are fallen;
Christ is Risen - and the angels rejoice; Christ is Risen - and life reigns;
Christ is Risen - and not one dead remains in the grave! Christ is Risen!!!
I would highly recommend the book by Fr. James Bernstein
“Surprised by Christ” and “Christ the Conqueror of Hell” by Archbishop Hilarion
Alfeyev for a more thorough understanding of this very important topic. Or as
always, give me a call, I’m always hoping for a coffee invitation :-).
Cinderella,
the Fool for Christ
Excerpts from
an article by Gabe Martini:
Kenneth Branagh’s new film has been critically acclaimed for
everything from its faithfulness to tradition (at least, to the
1950s Disney tradition of the tale) to its charming and eye-opening
presentation.
But for many critics, the film falls short. The character of
Cinderella is
berated as a terrible role model for little girls
everywhere, as she fails to be “feisty” and “strong” like other, recent Disney
princesses (with Frozen and Brave being the two, most
commonly cited examples).
But from my perspective, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen
a better role model for a little girl than the Cinderella depicted in
this latest adaptation. What Cinderella lacks in feistiness and sarcasm
she makes up in both kindness and courage—a courage that is audacious enough to
be merciful in a world that says be “strong,” and patient in a world that
says be “feisty.” Cinderella shows our little girls what it means to be a
true princess—based not on good looks, noble blood, or how much she acts like a
man (one of the strangest tenets of feminism, I must add). Instead, we learn
from this Cinderella that a true princess is one who—above all
things—gracefully strives to be both courageous and kind, no matter the
circumstances.
Read more at http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/onbehalfofall/cinderella-the-fool-for-christ/
“The Saviour and the Comforter, two Persons of the Godhead: the One ever
saves from sins, and the Other comforts him who is saved. Their very names are taken
from their deeds, and are always actually justified. He comforts! The Holy
Spirit comforts the believing soul, as a mother comforts her child.”
St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ
