Πεμπτουσία

12 August 1984 In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. So often we ask ourselves and one another a very tormenting question: How can I deal with my sinful condition? What can I do? I cannot avoid committing sins, Christ alone is sinless. I cannot, for lack of determination, or courage, or ability truly repent when I do commit a sin, or in general, of my sinful condition. What is left to me? I am tormented, I fight like one drowning, and I see no solution. And there is a word which was spoken once by a Russian staretz, one of the last elders of Optina. He said to a visitor of his: No one can ...

If we talk about it as being in stages, the divine will appears in four forms. The first is divine approval, that is what God wants most. The second is dispensation, where God withdraws paternally, because of our weakness. The third is divine sufferance, when God intervenes and chastises. The fourth and most lamentable is abandonment, which occurs when people live with such ingrained cruelty and callousness that their provoke God to abandon them.

Fasting is a prophetic command ‘Sound the trumpet on the day of the new moon, in the glorious day of your feast’. (Ps. 80, 3). This is a prophetic ordinance. For us, the readings (Is. 58, 4-6) resound louder than the trumpet and any other musical organ, announcing the awaited feast of feasts . We’ve learned the grace of the fast from Isaiah, who rejected the Jewish mode of fasting and showed us the true way. And the Lord says: ‘Do not look dismal, but put oil on your head and wash your face’ (Matth. 6, 16-17). Let us, then, behave as we’ve been taught, let’s not be seen frowning in the days to come, but let’s look at them with a ...

You might ask why it is that we today, who are less ascetic as Christians, are overcome with fear and trembling when we hear about asceticism. It makes us feel somewhat uncomfortable. This is because we’ve lost sight of a great truth of our faith. It’s summed up by Saint John of the Ladder: ‘love is conquered by love’*. What is it that binds us to our passions? We’ve fallen in love with them! In our fall, in our malice, we’ve fallen in love with them and embrace them tightly. We love our passions fervently: our gluttony, our debauchery, our pride, our egotism, our vanity and all the rest. How can we be cured of this? Only with commandments of a legal ...

We aren’t concerned with our own faults and sins, but we find plenty of transgressions in others. We fish them out and when we do so we make sure everyone hears about them. It’s become a bad habit now that, as soon as we hear something bad about somebody else, we go and spread it abroad. Our tongue burns and we hurry away to tell other people what we’ve heard and seen.

The issue of freedom is of great importance in the Orthodox view of humankind. According to this, people are made to be free. Freedom is the result of the fact that we’re made in the image of God and have the opportunity and potential to use our independent power to reach the state of being in the likeness of God. This isn’t an innate potential, but is effected through grace, through our encounter with God. Freedom in Orthodox theology isn’t a free decision made from among a variety of choices. Real freedom is the transcendence of choices, of necessity, of corruptibility and sin. We experience real freedom when we’re removed from the passions that bind and restrict us. Our ontological freedom ...

If your prayer isn’t fervent, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t pleasing to God. Sometimes such prayer may be thought of as sacrifice, if you humble and censure yourself before God.

Because of so much reading, people today have ended up as tape-recorders and their cassettes are full of superfluous things. But according to Abba Isaac, teaching without action is a ‘repository of shame’. You see, lots of people who are interested in sports read sports magazines or newspapers and just sit there like lemons, but they admire the athletes. ‘He’s amazing’, they say. ‘Well done’. But they don’t break a sweat themselves or shed a couple of pounds in weight. They read and read about sports and lie around. That’s not doing them any good. All they have is the pleasure of reading. Some secular-minded people read newspapers, others read a romance or an adventure, or go to the stadium to watch ...

Let’s take communion with humble thoughts. We should listen to and concentrate on the words of the Service of Holy Communion and we should say: ‘Christ, I’m such a sinner and no-one else is’.

The Apostle Paul, with this reading from his Epistle to the Galatians, seeks to educate those who still do not realize that the Mosaic Law has a temporary and not eternal value. To illustrate this, he uses the example of the two sons of Abraham. The first child born from Hagar the slave symbolizes the current city of Jerusalem, which is undermined by her and her children. The other child of Abraham, born from the free woman Sarah, according to the promise of God, symbolizes the heavenly Jerusalem. The heavenly Jerusalem is free, and is the mother of all of us Christians. Since she is free from the Mosaic Law, this means that her children also are free from the ...

Jesus taught in the synagogues on Saturdays. The reason behind His choice of day was that, for the Jews, Saturday was a day of rest and worship of God. Any work was completely forbidden. Even the distance one could walk was strictly defined. So on this day, everyone gathered in the synagogues to hear the word of God. One Saturday, in one of the synagogues, there was among the congregation a woman whose body was so bent that she couldn’t fully straighten herself up. Because of her infirmity, it had been eighteen years since she been able to look at other people from a natural position. A pitiable condition. Her life was one of continuous suffering. She had, however, hope ...

Through unflinching repentance, knowledge of the self leads to knowledge of God.

There’s no easy or definitive answer to this question, nor any anxiety over it if you trust in God’s plan. It is, however, a matter on which theologians have set out their opinions, though we’re not in a position to accept any particular one of these absolutely. However that may be, it’s certainly not necessary to approach the issue by involving nationalistic elements, anti-Semitic tendencies and the like. If we start at the beginning, as events are described in Genesis, God creates Adam, that is the human person. After the flood and other Biblical events, He chooses a people to whom He will give His Law and from whom will be born His Son. That this people is Israel is beyond ...