Showing posts with label Heresy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heresy. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

"Can a heretical bishop defile the Church?"

This is a good comment overall by Mr. Constantine Zalalas on a common question that is being discussed today: "Can a heretical bishop defile the Church?" Whether or not one agrees with every one of his arguments, his main focus is using Fr. Epiphanios Theodoropoulos' commentary (a leading spiritual father and expert in the Church canons in 20th-century Greece) to make the point that a member of the clergy receives grace from God that is not hindered by their possibly sinful lives or even heretical beliefs. As members of the laity, we should not to be swift to condemn, slander, ridicule, judge and malign canonical Orthodox hierarchs throughout the world. Our job is to focus first on our own many sins, repent and pray that our Lord might speedily grant deliverance from our many passions and to dissolve heresies and divisions throughout the world. The job of censuring and bringing anathemas against unrepentant leaders and those who persist in teaching heresies is the role of the Holy Church Councils, inspired by the Holy Spirit, not that of any person who happens to be on a message board or have a blog. May the Lord grant us all humility, repentance and love, and may He heal our many wounds and passions and grant peace to His Church (source)
  
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us! Amen!

St. Basil the Great: Account of the Present State of the Churches

Christ calming the storm (source)
  
Note: Metropolitan Ierothos (Vlahos) of Nafpaktos, a notable theologian and author of many books, recently wrote a post entitled: "Proposal for dealing with the Ukrainian issue". In this article, he summarizes his extensive previous writing on the issue of Ukraine and the many related issues that it highlights for the Church, and proceeds to give his suggestion for how this might be remedied going forward. One of the most striking parts of this article, however, is his lengthy quote of St. Basil the Great: "Account of the Present State of the Churches", in which the Saint highlights the great battle that was being waged in his time and afflicting the entire Church. I am not including this to endorse any opinion about the state of the Church and Ukraine (I do not have the wisdom or authority to do so). I do not want this post to be a place of argument on this issue, as there are too many places online already where this is occurring. I include this excerpt from a great Saint that we might fully perceive the great temptation that is facing the Church, that we might all endlessly repent of our sins, weaknesses and passions that are harming our brethren and breaking God-given peace, love and unity. May we pray for the Church and the people of Ukraine, entreating our Lord, His Mother, and all the Saints that they might enlighten and guide our Hierarchs, and that repentance, communion, peace, love, forgiveness, forbearance and true unity might speedily be granted to all who are suffering throughout the world.
  
St Basil the Great: Account of the Present State of the Churches
(St Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, ch. 30, para. 76-79 in Letters and Select Works, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, ed. Philip Schaff & Henry Wace, Vol. 8, T&T Clark, Edinburgh, reprinted Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan 1996, pp. 48-50)
  
“To what then shall I liken our present condition? It may be compared, I think, to some naval battle which has arisen out of time old quarrels, and is fought by men who cherish a deadly hate against one another, of long experience in naval warfare, and eager for the fight. Look, I beg you, at the picture thus raised before your eyes. See the rival fleets rushing in dread array to the attack. With a burst of uncontrollable fury they engage and fight it out. Fancy, if you like, the ships driven to and fro by a raging tempest, while thick darkness falls from the clouds and blackens all the scenes so that ensigns are indistinguishable in the confusion, and all distinction between friend and foe is lost.
  
To fill up the details of the imaginary picture, suppose the sea swollen with billows and whirled up from the deep, while a vehement torrent of rain pours down from the clouds and the terrible waves rise high.
  
[Suppose] from every quarter of heaven the winds beat upon one point, where both the fleets are dashed one against the other. Of the combatants some are turning traitors; some are deserting in the very thick of the fight; some have at one and the same moment to urge on their boats, all beaten by the gale, and to advance against their assailants. Jealousy of authority and the lust of individual mastery splits the sailors into parties which deal mutual death to one another.
  
Think, besides all this, of the confused and unmeaning roar sounding over all the sea, from howling winds, from crashing vessels, from boiling surf, from the yells of the combatants as they express their varying emotions in every kind of noise, so that not a word from admiral or pilot can be heard. The disorder and confusion are tremendous, for the extremity of misfortune, when life is despaired of, gives men license for every kind of wickedness.
  
Suppose, too, that the men are all smitten with the incurable plague of mad love of glory, so that they do not cease from their struggle each to get the better of the other, while their ship is actually sinking into the deep.

Turn now, I beg you, from this figurative description to the unhappy reality. Did it not at one time appear that the Arian schism, after its separation into a sect opposed to the Church of God, stood itself alone in hostile array? But when the attitude of our foes against us was changed from one of long-standing and bitter strife to one of open warfare, then, as is well known, the war was split up in more ways than I can tell into many subdivisions, so that all men were stirred to a state of inveterate hatred alike by common hostility and individual suspicion.
  
But what storm at sea was ever so fierce and wild as this tempest of the Churches? In it every landmark of the Fathers has been moved; every foundation, every bulwark of dogma has been shaken: everything resting on an unsound basis is dashed about and shaken down. We attack one another. We are overthrown by one another. If our enemy is not the first to strike us, we are wounded by the comrade at our side. If a foeman is stricken and falls, his fellow soldier tramples him down. There is at least this bond of union between us that we hate our common foes, but no sooner have the enemy gone by than we find enemies in one another.
  
And who could make a complete list of all the wrecks? Some have gone to the bottom on the attack of the enemy, some through the unsuspected treachery of their allies, some from the inexperience of their own officers. We see, as it were, whole churches, crews and all, dashed and shattered upon the sunken reefs of disingenuous heresy, while others of the enemies of the saving Passion have seized the helm and made shipwreck of the faith. And then the disturbances wrought by the princes of this world have caused the downfall of the people with a violence unmatched by that of hurricane or whirlwind.
  
The luminaries of the world, which God set to give light to the souls of the people, have been driven from their homes, and a darkness verily gloomy and disheartening has settled on the Churches. The terror of universal ruin is already imminent, and yet their mutual rivalry is so unbounded as to blunt all sense of danger. Individual hatred is of more importance than the general and common warfare, for men by whom the immediate gratification of ambition is esteemed more highly than the rewards that await us in a time to come, prefer the glory of getting the better of their opponents to securing the common welfare of mankind. So all men alike, each as best he can, lift the hand of murder against one another. Harsh rises the cry of the combatants encountering one another in dispute; already all the Church is almost full of the inarticulate screams, the unintelligible noises, rising from the ceaseless agitations that divert the right rule of the doctrine of true religion, now in the direction of excess, now in that of defect.
  
On the one hand, are they who confound the Persons and are carried away into Judaism; on the other hand, are they that, through the opposition of the natures, pass into heathenism. Between these opposite parties inspired Scripture is powerless to mediate; the traditions of the apostles cannot suggest terms of arbitration.
  
Plain speaking is fatal to friendship, and disagreement in opinion is all the ground that is wanted for a quarrel. No oaths of confederacy are so efficacious in keeping men true to sedition as their likeness in error.
  
Every one is a theologian though he has his soul branded with more spots than can be counted. The result is that innovators find a plentiful supply of men ripe for faction, while the self-ordained and place-hunters reject the government of the Holy Spirit and divide the chief dignities of the Churches. The institutions of the Gospel have now everywhere been thrown into confusion by want of discipline; there is an indescribable pushing for the chief places while every self-advertiser tries to force himself into high office. The result of this lust for power is that our people are in a state of anarchy; the exhortations of those in authority are rendered wholly purposeless and void, because there is not a man but, out of his ignorant impudence, thinks that it is just as much his duty to give orders to other people, as it is to obey any one else.
  
So, since no human voice is strong enough to be heard in such a disturbance, I reckon silence more profitable than speech, for if there is any truth in the words of the Preacher, ‘The words of wise men are heard in quiet,’ in the present condition of things any discussion of them must be anything but becoming.
  
I am moreover restrained by the Prophet’s saying, ‘Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time, for it is an evil time,’ a time when some trip up their neighbours’ heels, some stamp on a man when he is down, and others clap their hands with joy, but there is no one to feel for the fallen and hold out a helping hand, although according to the ancient law he is not uncondemned, who passes by even his enemy’s beast of burden fallen under his load. This is not the state of things now. Why not? The love of many has waxed cold; brotherly concord is destroyed, the very name of unity is ignored, brotherly admonitions are heard no more, nowhere is their Christian pity, nowhere falls the tear of sympathy. Now there is no one to receive ‘the weak in faith,’ but mutual hatred has blazed so high among fellow citizens that they are more delighted at a neighbour’s fall than at their own success. Just as in a plague, men of the most regular lives suffer from the same sickness as the rest, because they catch the disease by communication with the infected, so nowadays by the evil rivalry which possesses our souls we are carried away to an emulation in wickedness, and are all of us each as bad as the others.
  
Hence merciless and sour sit the judges of the erring; unfeeling and hostile are the critics of the well disposed. And to such a depth is this evil rooted among us that we have become more brutish than the brutes; they do at least herd with their fellows, but our most savage warfare is with our own people.
For all these reasons I ought to have kept silence, but I was drawn in the other direction by love, which ‘seeketh not her own’, and desires to overcome every difficulty put in her way by time and circumstance. I was taught too by the children at Babylon, that, when there is no one to support the cause of true religion, we ought alone and all unaided to do our duty. They from out of the midst of the flame lifted up their voices in hymns and praise to God, regardless of the host that set the truth at naught, but sufficient, three only that they were, with one another.
  
Wherefore we too are undismayed at the cloud of our enemies, and, resting our hope on the aid of the Spirit, have, with all boldness, proclaimed the truth. Had I not so done, it would truly have been terrible that the blasphemers of the Spirit should so easily be emboldened in their attack upon true religion, and that we, with so mighty an ally and supporter at our side, should shrink from the service of that doctrine, which by the tradition of the Fathers has been preserved by an unbroken sequence of memory to our own day. A further powerful incentive to my undertaking was the warm fervour of your ‘love unfeigned’, and the seriousness and taciturnity of your disposition; a guarantee that you would not publish what I was about to say to all the world, not because it would not be worth making known, but to avoid casting pearls before swine.
  
My task is now done. If you find what I have said satisfactory, let this make an end to our discussion of these matters. If you think any point requires further elucidation, pray do not hesitate to pursue the investigation with all diligence, and to add to your information by putting any uncontroversial question. Either through me or others the Lord will grant full explanation on matters which have yet to be made clear, according to the knowledge supplied to the worthy by the Holy Spirit.”
(source)
  
Christ walking on the water (source)
  
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us! Amen!

Thursday, July 11, 2019

Metropolitan Avgoustinos Kantiotes on the Miracle of St. Euphemia

St. Euphemia the Great Martyr and All-praised (source)
  
Metropolitan Avgoustinos Kantiotes on the Miracle of St. Euphemia
Today, my brethren, the Church honors the holy Great Martyr Euphemia. Her memory of course is honored in September. One is astonished at how she struggled against Diocletian, against the idolaters. One is astonished at how she was martyred. Her struggles do not end there, however. Years later, she made another struggle and again was victorious. She worked a great wonder, and that is what we honor today.

My beloved, 170 years passed from the martyrdom of St. Euphemia. The persecutions had largely ceased. The Church however was then found in a dogmatic struggle, which led to the recording of her teaching. The great issue which the faithful were facing during that period was the teaching on the God-man person of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Church preached that Christ is God and man. But many, and even today, do not want to understand this. They receive Christ like a poet, like a philosopher, like a community-organizer, like a rebel. They lift Him up very high, but they do not want to confess that Christ is God. This therefore exactly is the dogma of the Godhead of Christ which the Church preaches, and is the rock of scandal around which our Holy Fathers fought great battles.

Against this dogma appeared three great beasts, three great heretics, who wanted to shake this truth. The first was Arias, who did not accept the Godhead of Christ and said, that there was a time when Christ did not exist, and that Christ was not God. Afterwards appeared another heretic, Nestorius, did not accept the union of the Godhead and humanity, and sharply divided the humanity and the Godhead. And later appeared Eutyches, who was an archimandrite and an abbot of a monastery. He preached that the divine nature of Christ swallowed up the human, that within Christ there was only the Godhead, and that the Body of Christ was different from our own. This was a blasphemy, which diminished the God-man person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
  
St. Euphemia the Great Martyr and All-praised (source)
  
I am tiring you a bit, but you will see that the new heresies as well which are appearing now with great conquests in the world, if we analyze them, we will see that within them is Arias, Nestorius and Eutyches, and every ancient heretic.

Against the heresy of Eutyches the Fathers struggled. In Chalcedon, where there was the magnificent Church of St. Euphemia, during the reign of Pulcheria the Empress, the Fourth Ecumenical Council gathered. There gathered 630 Holy Fathers, whose memory we honor every year during the month of July on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers. There was recorded the dogma of the two natures of Jesus Christ. There, the Fathers put forward the healthy teaching and condemned the phronema of delusion. What did they say? I will give you an example, which St. Cyril of Alexandra offered, who was one of the defenders of Orthodox dogma.

If one takes a piece of iron and places it in the furnace, you will see that it becomes totally red. But even though the iron is united with the flames, it does not cease to be iron. The black has simply become red. And the fire, however, even though it is united with the iron, and cannot be separated from it, despite this, it does not cease to be fire. In this way somewhat, my beloved, is the person of Christ. The iron is the human nature, the fire is the Godhead. The two are united, and thus Christ appeared as the God-man. The natural is united with the spirit, the man is mystically united with God.

My brethren, I do not wish to tire you with dogmatic homilies. It would be good for the preacher to speak about dogmas, in order to analyze the Symbol of our Father. But unfortunately, our Christians desire easy foods, and they have need of the alphabet of our faith.

I will return to our topic therefore and say: In Chalcedon there were two groups. The one was of St. Cyril the Patriarch of Alexandria together with the Orthodox, and the other with the heretic Eutyches. The very faithful and simple people could not understand these meanings. They were confused and their faith was endangered. Then, the difference of this faith was solved by St. Euphemia. How?

In that place was preserved the Holy Relic of St. Euphemia. 170 years it rested in her Church in Chalcedon. The two groups, therefore, agreed to write their teachings into two books, one with the ideas of the Orthodox and the other of the heretics. The two books were placed within the reliquary which held her Holy Relic, upon her holy chest. Then, they proceeded to prayer and vigil for three days and nights together with all of the people of Chalcedon with fasting. They entreated St. Euphemia to respond. Clerics of the two groups guarded the Holy Relic as well. And when the third day came, they opened the reliquary, and then they saw the wonder. The book of the heretics was below the Saint's feet, and the book of the Orthodox was in her hands upon her chest, above the Saint's heart! Thus, wondrously, she showed that the faith of the Orthodox is true.

But what thing is this? What are you saying now? Those things are only from books...

St. Euphemia the Great Martyr and All-praised (source)
  
Books? Here it is written. The apolytikion of the Saint says: "You greatly gladdened the Orthodox, and deposed those of evil faith, and with this wonder you confirmed what the Fathers of the Fourth Synod dogmatized well", you sealed what the Holy Fathers said with wisdom.

Thus this miracle confirms our Holy Church and this is described in the Saint's apolytikion. I do not know what will occur. At least I will never become a modern preacher and theologian. I will continue to believe and I will not teach anything other than that which our Holy Church teaches. If you do not believe and do not receive the teaching of the Church, I will keep the things of our homeland together with all of the faithful and we will believe the lives of the Saints, their miracles, their Holy Relics, and [take refuge] in the shadows of the Saints and in their memories.

I will say two more words and close. Unfortunately, this heresy of monophysitism (thus it is named the heresy of Eutyches which the Church condemns to this day), has not been abandoned totally. A relic of this great heresy which shook the ship of the Church exists to this day. And there are around 15 million Armenians, Abyssinians, and Copts of Egypt [i.e. the Oriental orthodox]. They have even their own patriarchates. They not receive the decisions of the Fourth Ecumenical Synod and why were they cut off from the Church. All of the rest until the Fourth Ecumenical Council...they accept, and they also are a martyred nation. Among these there is one difference only. They agree with everything until then, but from then on they cease. And to this day, they do not wish to accept the Fourth and the other Ecumenical Synods. Behold our disagreement.

Therefore, this day brings to our mind the Copts of Egypt, the Armenians and the Abyssinians. And I will greatly entreat today, that it is the memory of St. Euphemia, who wondrously confirmed the Fourth Ecumenical Synod, that we all might pray that the Saint might work another great wonder, that they all might return to Orthodoxy and agree on the tome of the Orthodox dogma, that they might come to agree with our Holy Church, in a manner that they might not be separated from their noble nations--for they are truly noble nations--and that we might pray to God "on behalf of the union of all". It is our holy duty, to try to bring these nations, who fled due to the heresy of Eutyches, to return to the bosom of our Holy and Great Mother Church.
  
(+) Bishop Avgoustinos.
Recorded from a homily that occurred in the Holy Church of St. Euphemia, New Chalcedon, Athens, on 7/10/1960 during the festal Great Vespers of the Saint.
  
St. Euphemia the Great Martyr and All-praised (source)
  
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us! Amen!

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Excerpt from St. John Chrysostom's Homily on St. Thomas the Apostle

St. Thomas the Apostle - Commemorated on October 6th, and the Sunday after Pascha (http://pravicon.com/images/sv/s2173/s2173009.jpg)

Excerpt from St. John Chrysostom's Homily on St. Thomas the Apostle (amateur translation)
  
Note: In this beautiful encomium, the Blessed Chrysostom both praises the Holy Apostle Thomas, and uses his proclamation of Christ as God to refute the great heresy of the Arians. St. John later goes on to say that, though he may have doubted at first, having seen and partaken of Christ's Resurrection, St. Thomas became a most ardent preacher of Jesus Christ as God and Man, truly crucified and resurrected for our salvation. What a moving proposition! The Saints who work such great wonders through the Holy Spirit, and which are honored so greatly throughout the world, also greatly desire our love, humility, virtues, and just as importantly, our adherence to the true and unadulterated dogmas of the Orthodox Church of Christ. May we all hold fast to the Faith of Christ without wavering, through the intercessions of the Holy Apostle Thomas. May we be made worthy to cry out with him to Christ: "My Lord and my God!"
  
"How do I respond in reality, where will I find the word of passage? Shall I preach Thomas as being alive? But the tomb proclaims his death. Shall I relate that he is dead? I am by circumstances compelled. He is dead, and immortal, and died as a man, and hastens about the world as an angel, and accepted his passion, and cuts apart the passions, and is buried below, and above rejoices. Therefore it was not possible for him to be hidden, neither for him to disappear somewhere, for he enlightened the whole world. The grave received him, but everywhere he shines like the sun, the earth conquered the relics of the righteous one, and revealed them as wider than all creation, for his grace is sowed throughout the whole world. Every corner place has Thomas, he has filled the whole world, and remains whole in his place. His glory has gone out into all the earth, and to the ends of the earth his trophies.
  
How should I name him? Sun? For he is not held by darkness. Star? For this new day he does not hide. At all times he shines upon creation, dissolving all darkness of the world. There is no more darkness after him, darkness does not dull him, the river does not hold him back, the sea is not able to hold him, the ocean makes the man known, barbarians honor Thomas. All the nations today feast, and this cry, as a gift, they offer to the Master:
“My Lord and my God, my relative and my creator, my redeemer and my king.”
  
In this way Thomas taught us as children, granted an inheritance, as a treasure, for nature accepts the word, the whole generation is fortified by this cry, the word has reached the angels, and angels hold this confession as a shield, and all creation brandishes it as a diadem.
  
Only Arius does not accept the word, only he denies the inheritance, only he does not confess Christ the Lord as Thomas. He does not know Him as God like Thomas. He calls the Master a servant, the creator of all a creation, the beloved a bastard, the fashioner something fashioned. And yet they honor the day and celebrate with the whole world, and number themselves with the friends of Thomas. But evil does not steal virtue, neither does the deluded one share the way of truth. The flock has seen the beast, the slinger has seen the wolf, the pilot has seen the wave, the bay has seen the winter, the soldier has seen the war, Thomas has seen Arius, he sees him and drives him out. He does not accept the honor of blashphemy, he does not enter through the cave of murders, he does not graze with them. He distances himself from the way of the lawless, and abhors this warring word, and hates the mouth that speaks lies against God, and turns aside the tongue that does not call Christ Lord and God.
  
And he cries to him from the whole world: “Arius, why do you fight me? Why do you sorrow me, O oil of my head? Why do you celebrate my day, O lawless one? I don’t accept your hymn of blasphemy, I don’t agree with your false faith, I do not know your lawless dogma. Therefore, don’t honor me, you who dishonor the Fashioner. I do not accept you honor, O dishonor of your mother. You who insult the Master, how can I, the servant, heal? You who do not keep my faith, how do you celebrate my memory? You who do not agree with me, how do you embrace my tomb?
  
I taught Christ as Lord and God..."
(Note: hosted by a non-Orthodox site: http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/04z/z_0345-0407__Iohannes_Chrysostomus__In_sanctum_Thomam_apostolum__MGR.pdf.html)
  
  
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us! Amen!