May 24/June 6, 2004
Beloved Clergy and Parishioners in the Lord, Grace and Peace be with you.
THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST:
SUNDAY OF ALL SAINTS
The Reading is from the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Hebrews [§§ 330, 331]. Brethren:
11 33All the saints through faith struggled against kingdoms, wrought righteousness, attained to promises, stopped mouths of lions, 34quenched the power of fire, escaped the edges of the sword, were empowered out of weakness, became strong in battle, turned back encampments of aliens. 35Women received their dead by resurrection. And others were tortured, not accepting release, that they might attain a better resurrection. 36And others received trial of mockings and of scourgings, and, moreover, of bonds and of imprisonment. 37They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted; they died, murdered by the sword. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being in need, afflicted, ill-treated- 38of whom the world was not worthy. They were made to wander in deserts, and in mountains, and in caves, and in the holes of the earth. 39And these all, having been approved by testimony through faith, received not for themselves the promise, 40Go! d having foreseen some better thing concerning us, that they should not be made perfect without us.
12 1Therefore we also, having so great a cloud of witnesses which is set around us, and having laid aside every weight and sin that is easily circumvented, let us by means of patience be running the course which is set before us, 2looking to Jesus, the originator and accomplisher of our faith, Who, in exchange for the joy set before Him, endured a cross, having despised the shame, and hath sat down on the right of the throne of God.
The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew [§§ 38, mid 79]. The Lord said to his disciples:
10 32"Everyone who shall confess in Me before men, I also will confess in him before My Father Who is in the heavens. 33"But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father Who is in the heavens....37"The one who loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and the one who loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38"And whosoever taketh not his cross and followeth after Me is not worthy of Me."...
19 27Peter answered and said to Him, "Behold, we left all things and followed Thee; what then shall be for us?" 28And Jesus said to them, "Verily I say to you, that ye who followed Me, in the regeneration, whenever the Son of Man shall have taken His seat upon the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29"And everyone who leaveth houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, on account of My name, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit life everlasting. 30"But many who are first shall be last, and the last first."
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today we are offering you some excerpts from the Saints and Righteous about saints and sanctity. The object of our life here on earth, as we are taught by the Holy Church, is our moral perfection to attain the grace of God/union with Christ, i.e., divinization. Enjoy.
What is a saint? How are they recognized?
St. John Maximovitch ("The Glorification of God-pleasers", 1964):
Sanctity (sainthood) or holiness is not simply righteousness, for which the righteous are deemed worthy of the enjoyment of blessedness in the Kingdom of God; but rather, it is such a height of righteousness that men are so filled with the grace of God that it flows from them even onto those who associate with them. Great is their blessedness, which proceeds from their direct contemplation of the glory of God. Being filled also with love for men, which proceeds from love for God, they are responsive to men's needs and to their entreaties, and they are mediators and intercessors for them before God.
Such, first of all, were the righteous of the Old Testament, who were freed by Christ from Hades and led into paradise, and John the Baptist, "the greatest of those born of women". Then the Apostles and their immediate successors became such. None of the Christians doubted their sanctity, and after their decease - the greater part as martyrs - they immediately began to venerate them and to invoke them in prayer. During the time of lofty spiritual ardor in the first centuries of persecutions against Christians, such also were the martyrs. A martyr's death was itself a door to the Mansions on high, and Christians began immediately to invoke them as holy men pleasing to God. Miracles and signs confirmed this faith of the Christians and were a proof of their holiness. Likewise, later on, the great ascetics began to be venerated. No one decreed that Anthony the Great, Macarius the Great, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Nicholas the! Wonderworker and many others like them be venerated as saints, but East and West alike revere them, and only those who do not believe in sanctity [i.e., do not believe holiness is possible or necessary for man] can deny their sanctity. The assembly of God-pleasers grew without ceasing; in every place where there were Christians, its new ascetics appeared as well.
However, the general life of Christians began to decline; spiritual ardor began to lose its luster; no longer was there that clear sense of what Divine righteousness is. For this reason the general consciousness of the faithful could not always determine who was actually righteous and pleasing to God. In some places there appeared dubious persons, who, by means of supposed ascetic feats, allured part of the flock. For this reason the ecclesiastical authority began to watch over the veneration of saints, taking care to guard the flock from superstition. They began to investigate the life of ascetics venerated by the faithful, and to verify the accounts of their miracles. Towards the time of the Baptism of Rus' it had already been established that the recognition of a new saint was to be performed by the ecclesiastical authority. The decree of the ecclesiastical authority was, of course, disseminated throughout the region under its jurisdiction; h! owever, usually other places also recognized a glorification performed elsewhere, although they did not enter it into their own menology. After all, the ecclesiastical authority merely attested to sanctity. The righteous became saints not by the decree of the earthly ecclesiastical authority, but by the mercy and grace of God. The ecclesiastical authority merely approved the extolling of the new saint in church and his invocation in prayer.
Just what authority should and could do this was not precisely determined; it was, in any case, an episcopal authority. There were glorifications performed by the higher ecclesiastical authority of an entire local Church; the names of the newly glorified were then entered into the church menologies of that entire Church; others were glorified in one locality or another, and their veneration gradually spread to other places. Usually the glorification was performed in that locality where the saint lived or suffered. But it also happened otherwise. Thus, the youth George, from the town of Kratov (Serbia), who suffered in 1515 at the hands of the Turks in Sofia (Sredets, Bulgaria), was glorified already within fourteen years in Novgorod. In spite of the fact that his fellow-citizens also venerated him as a new-martyr and that a Church service to him had even been composed by his spiritual father, they did not dare to show this openly, fearing the Tu! rks…In the last two centuries, when Russia lived in glory and prosperity, the glorifications of new saints were usually performed very solemnly by decree of the Supreme Authority, sometimes (but not always) taking place throughout all Russia, but especially in the locality where the wonderworking relics were found.
How do the saints hear our prayers?
St. John of Kronstadt (My Life in Christ):
"They hear you in the Holy Spirit; only pray in the Holy Spirit, from your soul for when you thus sincerely pray, then the Holy Spirit breathes in you, Who is the Spirit of truth and sincerity, and is our truth and sincerity. The one same Holy Spirit is in us and in the saints. The saints are holy through the Holy Spirit, Who sanctifies them and eternally dwells in them."
"How is it that the saints see us and our needs and hear our prayers? Let us make the following comparison: Suppose that you were transplanted to the sun and were united with it. The sun lights the whole earth with its rays, it lights every particle of the earth. In these rays you also see the earth, but you are so small in proportion to the sun, that you would form so to say, but one ray, and there are an infinite number of such rays. By its identity with the sun this ray takes an intimate part in lighting the whole world through the sun. So also the saintly soul, having become united to God, as to its spiritual sun, sees, through the medium of its spiritual sun [i.e. by the aid of the Divine energies active in the saints], which lights the whole universe, all men and the needs of those that pray."
The Centrality of Saints and Sanctification - the mark of true Christianity, but absent from false Christianity:
Some people only draw the line between Orthodoxy and western heterodoxy at rituals or dogmatics - rejection of the Filioque, the Pope, etc. - or even understanding the Church as a union of souls in Divine love and truth, not simply an external authority structure, but, as Blessed Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky ("What is the Difference Between Orthodoxy and the Western Confessions?") says:
Actually, the difference between them is much deeper.…n the way one approaches God and one's own life, a great difference is felt between a non-Orthodox Westerner and an Orthodox… [T]he Western religions have altered the very notion of Christian life, of its aims and conditions.
Once, as the Rector of the Theological Academy, I gave an assignment to a gifted student: Compare and contrast the moral teachings of Bishop Theophan with those of Martensen. Martensen is a respected Protestant preacher, known as an outstanding moral theologian, influenced less than others by confessional errors [of Protestantism]. Bishop Theophan is an educated Russian theologian, former rector of St. Petersburg Theological Academy. And you know what? It turns out that the two authors present Christian morality in a totally different, often opposite way. Here is the summary of the results:
Bishop Theophan teaches how to make one's life meet the standards of Christian perfection, while the Western Bishop (pardon the _expression) takes from Christianity only as much as is consistent with the standards of modern secular life. That is, the former accepts Christianity as the eternal foundation of normal life, and demands that we forcibly change ourselves to bring our lives into compliance with that norm; the latter accepts the realities of modern secular life as unchangeable, and only where they allow some variations does he indicate which options are preferred from the Christian viewpoint. The former calls for moral heroism, for a life-long struggle; the latter selects whatever elements of Christianity are suited to us in our current way of life. For the former, the true life to which man is called is the life eternal, while our current life on earth with all its historically-shaped devices is all but an illusion; for the latter the no! tion of the future life is merely an uplifting, noble idea, an idea which contributes to continual improvement of our real life here on earth.
In the difference between these two teachers of morality is manifest the divergence between the Orthodox faith and Western religions. One is based upon the concept of Christian perfection, or sanctity, and from this standpoint evaluates the present reality; the other is firmly established on the status quo of the earthly life and strives to determine the minimum of religious practice which still allows for salvation -- if eternity truly exists.
…Christianity is a life-long pursuit of virtue. Christianity is a pearl for which the wise merchant of the Gospel parable has had to sell all his possessions. It would seem that in the course of history this self-denying step, this taking up of the cross, meant different things: at the time of the earthly life of the Savior it was joining His disciples and following Him; later it became confession of faith and martyrdom; then, from the fourth to the twentieth centuries, -- seclusion and monasticism. In fact, however, these various exploits were only the means towards one end, one goal -- gradual attainment of spiritual perfection on earth, of the freedom from passions, of all virtues, -- just as we ask in the prayer of St. Ephraim, repeating it over and over during Great Lent with many bows and prostrations:
O Lord and Master of my life, the spirit of idleness, despondency, ambition, and idle talk permit me not. Prostration. But rather a spirit of chastity, humble-mindedness, patience, and love bestow upon me Thy servant. Prostration. Yea, O Lord King, grant me to see my own failings and not to condemn my brother; for blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages. Amen. Prostration.
"This is the will of God, your sanctification," -- says the Apostle [1 Thess. 4:3]; we can attain to it only by setting this as the main and the only goal of our life, by living for the sake of holiness. This is what the true Christianity is all about; this is the essence of Orthodoxy vs. the heterodoxy of the West…
[Someone will ask:] Do the Western Christians really say that there is no need for moral perfection? Would they deny that Christianity commands us to be perfect?
-- They would not say that, but they don't see it as the essence of Christianity, either. Moreover, in their view of perfection and the means to attain it they would disagree with us on every word; they would not even understand, let alone agree, that it is precisely moral perfection that is the goal of a Christian life -- and not merely the knowledge of God (as Protestants would say) or service to the Church (Roman Catholics), for which virtues, in their opinion, God Himself gives us moral perfection as a reward.
Moral perfection is gained by intensive, strenuous effort, by inner struggle, by deprivations, and most of all -- by self-humiliation. An Orthodox Christian, by virtue of sincerely and diligently following the spiritual discipline, participates to a large extent in that struggle: the discipline itself is designed to facilitate our gradual mortification of passions and acquisition of blessed perfection. In this we are assisted by our divine services, by the efforts in preparation for the Holy Communion, by fasting, and by that almost monastic order of Orthodox life, codified in our Typicon and followed by our ancestors before Tsar Peter I [who implemented a program for limiting Church influence on society, and the westernization and secularization of Russia], and by all those who live by the tradition up until this very day.
In short, the Orthodox faith is an ascetic faith; Orthodox theological thought -- that which does not lie a dead scholastic baggage, but influences our life and spreads among the people -- is a study of the ways of spiritual perfection. As such it is manifest in our church services through theological statements, references to Biblical events, commandments and reminders of the Last Judgment.
This, of course, is not foreign to the Western denominations either; but they understand salvation as an external reward given either for a certain amount of good deeds (also external), or for an unflinching faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ. They have no knowledge, nor interest, in how a soul should gradually free itself from the bondage of passions, of how we should go from strength to strength on our way to freedom from sin and fullness of virtues. There are ascetics in the West, to be sure, but their life is dominated by dejected, senseless obedience to the age-old rules and requirements, for which they are promised forgiveness of sins and future eternal life. Eternal life has already appeared, as Apostle John says, and blessed communion with God is obtained by unflinching asceticism right now, in the words of St. Macarius the Great, -- all this is unknown to the West.
This ignorance is growing worse and cruder. Thus, contemporary Western theologians have lost understanding of the aim of Christianity, of the reason for Christ's incarnation being just that -- the moral perfection of man ("For this the Son of God was made manifest, that He might undo the works of the devil" [1 Jn. 3:8]). They have, as it were, lost their minds over the fable of Christ's coming to earth to give some sort of happiness to a mankind of some future ages [chiliasm]-- even though He said with all clarity that His followers must bear a cross of suffering, that they would be continually persecuted by the world, by their own brethren, children, and even parents, especially towards the end.
The good things, which the believers in the "superstition of Progress" …are looking forward to, are in fact promised by the Savior in the future life, but neither the Latins nor the Protestants are willing to accept this for the simple reason that, frankly speaking, they believe quite feebly in the Resurrection, and quite strongly -- in the happy life here and now, which the Apostles, on the contrary, call a vanishing vapor (James 4:14). That is why the pseudo-Christian West will not and cannot understand the renunciation of this life by Christianity, which commands us to struggle "having put off the old man with his deeds and having put on the new, which is renewed after the image of Him that created him" [Col. 3:9-10:1]
-- But Christianity is love of one's neighbor, and love is compassion in sorrows, -- modern men and especially women would say, -- and asceticism is a fabrication of monks.
I will not argue the first point as K. Leontiev [+1891, Russian author close to the Optina Elders] once did; moreover, I will admit that if love were at all possible without spiritual effort, without inner warfare, and without external labors, then neither of these would be necessary. But love dried up among men just when Luther began speaking on their behalf. The prediction came true that "for the multiplication of lawlessness the love of many will dry up" [Matt. 24:12]. In the absence of external labors and inner struggle, passions and lawlessness reign, and where sin is in control, love dries up and men begin to hate one another [Matt 24:10]
Now let us turn to the second point. It is quite true that love is expressed most of all in compassion, but not so much for the material troubles of our fellow men as for their sinfulness, and this compassion is possible only for someone who is weeping for his own sins, that is, for a struggler.
Asceticism is a fabrication of monks... A Muscovite lady once made this point even move vividly: "Your whole religion is a fabrication of churchmen. I recognize only the Iveron Mother of God and Martyr Triphon (l'Iverskaya et Triphon le martyr) [like most of the nineteenth-century Russian nobility the lady spoke French rather than Russian]; the rest is nonsense." This, of course, is a testimony to the ignorance of the meaning of asceticism among our educated class.
This concept does not in general predetermine the way of our life; it requires neither virginity, nor fasting, nor seclusion. Asceticism, or spiritual struggle, is a life filled with work on oneself, a life aimed at the destruction of one's own passions -- adultery, fornication, self-love, spite, envy, gluttony, laziness, etc., -- and filling the soul with the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love; love never survives as a stand-alone virtue, but always follows and helps accomplish other traits of a human soul mentioned above.
Certainly, a Christian willing to pursue his own way will discover that he has to withdraw from worldly distractions, to humble the flesh, and pray much more to God -- but these actions have no ultimate value in the eyes of God. They have value for us only as means to the acquisition of the gifts of the Spirit. Of much greater value is the spiritual struggle inside the human soul -- self-reproach, self-humiliation, self-resistance, self-constraint, introspection, vision of the Last Judgment and future life, control over feelings, struggle against evil thoughts, repentance and confession, wrath against sin and temptation, etc, -- things totally unfamiliar to our modern learned men, and so clear and well-known to any faithful villager, present or past. This is precisely the spiritual alphabet mentioned by Bishop Tikhon of Zadonsk [+1783, glorified as saint] -
"There are two kinds of learned and wise men: some study in schools from books, and a great many of them are less intelligent than the simple and unlettered, since they do not know the Christian alphabet; they sharpen the mind, they correct and adorn words, but they do not wish to reform their hearts. Others who study in prayer with humility and diligence and are enlightened by the Holy Spirit are wiser than the philosophers of this age; they are devout and holy and beloved of God; although these do not know the alphabet, they well comprehend everything; they speak simply, crudely, but they live beautifully and auspiciously. These, O Christian, emulate". (III, 193).
-- and this is the essence of true Christianity as a life-time effort. Disregarded by the Western denominations, it is still at the center of all Orthodox theology which interprets the entire Divine revelation, all events and proverbs of the Bible, in the context of these stages of spiritual perfection.
Having been incarnate, humiliated, and afflicted by our sins, the Savior has granted us, in His Person and in communion with Him, an opportunity for this spiritual effort, which is the way to our salvation. Some follow it [Phil 2:12] voluntarily and consciously, living a spiritual life; others pass through almost against their will, reformed by sufferings sent from God and by the Church discipline; still others only facing their death correct their straying by repentance and receive enlightenment in the future life, but the meaning of the Christian endeavour is always in asceticism, in the work on one's soul; such is also the essence of Christian theology.
If we trace all follies of the West, those developed in its religion as well as those rooted in its customs, which are transmitted to us through the "window of Europe," we will see them all stemming from ignorance of the nature of Christian faith as a personal struggle for gradual self-perfection. Such, for instance, is the Latino-Protestant concept of the Redemption as the revenge of the Divine Majesty, once offended by Adam, on Jesus Christ -- a concept which grew out of the feudal notion of knightly honor, restorable by shedding the blood of the offender; such is the material teaching about the Mysteries; such is also their teaching about the new instrument of Divine Revelation -- the Pope of Rome, whoever he might be in actual life; such, likewise, is the teaching of works of obligation and of supererogation. Such is, finally, the Protestant dogma of salvation through faith, which rejects the Church and her structure.
In all these fallacies Christianity is seen as something foreign to us, to our minds and hearts, some sort of negotiated agreement between us and the Godhead, stipulating, for reasons unknown, that we accept certain obscure statements and rules, and receive in return a reward of eternal salvation.
To defend themselves against obvious objections, Western theologians have reinforced their teachings on the alleged incomprehensibility not only of the nature of God, but also of the Divine Law, and sought -- like the scholastics, Luther, and even Ritschel in our times -- to condemn reason as the enemy of faith [Luther claimed that the great merit of his faith consisted in its utter nonsensicalness, its irrationality], while the Fathers of the Church, like St. Basil the Great and even St. Isaac the Syrian, see the enemy of faith not in reason, but rather in human stupidity, neglect, light-mindedness, and stubbornness.
Turning from religious errors to the moral values of the West, we see in some of them direct opposites of the Christian commandments, and these perversions are so firmly rooted in the foundation of Western social and personal life that even the greatest upheavals, which have toppled Christian altars and destroyed royal thrones, have not affected those savage and brutal prejudices. Thus, the Lord commands us to forgive -- but Western morality calls for revenge and bloodshed; the Lord demands that we humbly think of ourselves as great sinners -- but the West puts "self-esteem" above all; the Lord calls us to rejoice and be glad when we are persecuted and cast out -- but the West seeks the "restoration of honor"; for the Lord and His Apostles pride is a demonic sin but for the West it is nobility.
The lowest Russian beggar, or even a half-believing native, a recent convert who has not yet completely parted with his pagan practices, can tell good from evil better than the moral authorities of the thousand-year old Western culture, a dismal mess of the shreds of Christianity with the delusions of antiquity.
And the reason for these follies is the failure to grasp the simple truth that Christianity [i.e., Orthodoxy] is an ascetic religion, a teaching on gradual liberation from the passions, on the means and conditions of gradual acquisition of virtues, conditions both internal, that is, personal struggle, and external, that is, dogmatic tenets and grace-filled Mysteries, all having one purpose: to heal human sinfulness and lead us to perfection."
Question Box:
Q: Are we obligated to venerate or recognize "saints" glorified by the Moscow Patriarchate?
A: No. If we recognize the "saints" of the Moscow Patriarchate, which is a heretical organization and not a church, then by logic we are obligated to also recognize the "saints" glorified by other heretical bodies. Now the Moscow Patriarchate has proclaimed as saints some righteous people - of that there is no doubt. Their motives, however, are questionable. They did it probably not to glorify a saint, but to express their own authority, in other words, to glorify themselves. Are we now obligated to recognize the mason-"saints" that the sister-church of the Moscow Patriarchate, i.e. the Ecumenical Patriarchate, glorified? The answer is absolutely "no". When a church becomes heretical all their authority is gone.
So we see that the Ecumenical Patriarchate is glorifying people as "saints" who justified Ecumenism and Masonry. Why? Because that is what she is. Also, Patriarch Athenagoras "glorified" Nicodemos of Mount Athos, because he wrote an edition of the Rudder with commentary. The Patriarch did this quell criticism of his trampling down and showing no reverence for the holy Canons. The Moscow Patriarchate falls in the same category.
Modern-day Orthodox criteria for glorification are (1) a righteous life, (2) incorrupt relics, and (3) miracles by his/her intercession (that is, verifiable miracles).
Calendar of Events for Upcoming Week:
This week is the first week of the Fast of the Holy Apostles, which is five weeks long this year. Fish is permitted every day except for Wednesdays and Fridays. No dairy, eggs, or meat until the Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.
Through the prayers of our holy fathers, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
In Christ,
+Archbishop Gregory, and those with me.
