Church guide

If you have the sinful habit of condemning your neighbor, then whenever you condemn someone make three prostrations that day with this prayer: “Save, O Lord, and have mercy on him (whom I have judged) and by his prayers, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Do this every time you condemn someone. If you do this, God will see your sincerity and will deliver you from this sinful habit forever. And if you never condemn anyone, then God will never condemn you. In this way you will even receive salvation. Priest-confessor Sergei Pravdolubov

...because our relationship with Christ defines with mathematical precision, all our other relationships, with everyone and with all... St. Nicholai (Velimirovic)

I beg and beseech you, Lord: grant to all who have gone astray a true knowledge of you, so that each and every one may come to know your glory. St. Isaac the Syrian

Suppose that tomorrow, or the day following, you knew your life would end. What would you do? The Passover dinner was completed in the upper room that night, that meal popularly known as the Last Supper, and they were alone. He was saying good-bye to those to whom He had been teacher and guide, those who had depended on Him for the past three years. Jesus knew what was about to happen. He would be arrested and executed. And they would grieve and be scared out of their wits, all at the same time. So again, I ask, what would you do? Christ paused that night to pray for His friends. How perfectly natural it seems when you think about it. He knew how devastating the coming tragedy would be for them, so He prayed for them. But Jesus was no ordinary man of prayer. He addressed God as “Father” and taught His followers to do the same. He told outrageous parables about prayer. “Keep on praying” He said. “It’s just like an old woman who bothered a judge until he was sick of hearing her complain. You just keep on asking God, and you know God will hear you.” Jesus was no ordinary man of prayer, and this after dinner dialogue between Him and the Father was no ordinary prayer. One of the excellent things about Scripture is that it allows us to peek behind the curtain at what God does. We are able to be a fly on the wall and see the aspects of things that none of us could otherwise. Specifically, in the Gospel lesson for today, we are privileged to see how Christ prays. We eavesdrop on the most intimate and most revealing of prayer lives. Jesus prayed on this last night of His earthly life. And there is much we learn as a result. Amidst all the swirling challenges, temptations and opposition, our Lord was not too busy nor too distracted to pray. He was about to face unrivaled (and undeserved) human suffering, and still He prayed. Perhaps we need to learn from our Lord's example: that when things are most busy and most challenging, those are the times to stop and pray. Let's see what we can learn from one of Jesus' last recorded encounters with God. Jesus begins His prayer, even in the time of extreme suffering and agony by addressing it to His "Father." We are reminded that whatever posture we are in, we address our prayers to our Father, our loving and patient Father. Jesus acknowledges that "the time had come" for the Son to be glorified. A "time" had been pre-arranged, and had come. Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of “the hour” or “the time”. This is a reference to the pre-appointed atonement. Jesus knew the timetable perfectly. He acknowledged, "…the time has come." It meant that all of the events leading up to His sacrificial death on the cross were nearly completed. "The time had come." What was this time? It was the pre-agreed upon moment in which the penalty for man’s sins and rebellion would be paid. Jesus the Son, before the world ever began, agreed to take on human nature, to feel all that we feel, to know our life, and to die in our place. The Father and the Son covenanted together, and they agreed that Jesus would have to do all that we failed to do. The time for carrying that out had now arrived. Jesus is fully conscious of what is about to happen. Jesus is to be glorified, and to glorify the Father. Specifically, the time has arrived in which both the Son and the Father should be glorified. The term, "Glorify," is another of those phrases which is rather unique to John’s Gospel. It means to bring ultimate glory to God. God was to be glorified by Jesus' death on the cross. But how? Wasn't crucifixion the ultimate defeat or humiliation? Yes. But it is that precise humiliation that was the plan all along. God would defeat the world by a method it never expected. He would conquer the world and its sin by surrendering Jesus to die on the cross. That death on the cross showed all the infinite perfection of Jesus, and glorified the Father like nothing else could. For Jesus, the cross was His glory because Jesus was never more majestic than in His death. The cross was His glory because the magnet of the cross drew men to Jesus in a way that even His life had never done - and it is so still. If Jesus had stopped short of the cross, it would have been the proof that there is some length to which the love of God for men is not prepared to go. It would have been to say that God's love said, “Thus far and no further.” But, by going to the cross, Jesus showed that there was nothing that the love of God was not prepared to do." It was a perfect plan, and perfectly accomplished. And by this plan, Jesus is shown to be fully divine. And mysteriously, in His shameful death on the cross, Jesus is glorified; so is God the Father. Jesus does exactly what He is supposed to do. Eternal life is also defined for us today. It is clear from this Gospel lesson that eternal life involves knowing Christ as the only true God. And this knowing is more than mere mental activity. To know means to be intimately familiar with. Were you aware that the original Latin motto on the seal of Harvard University was: "This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom You have sent." Indeed, no academic subjects are more lofty. It is a deep recognition of one's own sinfulness, and the embracing of Jesus Christ as Savior. And such knowledge has consequences and affect. Lives are changed when this happens. Eternal life is knowing Jesus, to be sure; but from this knowledge comes love for Him and the resolve to follow Him. The last work of Jesus was to die for His people. This had been agreed upon from eternity past. Now the time had come for Him to die on the cross. The work was for Him to be the sacrifice for our sins. He articulates this in His prayer. Jesus concludes the prayer for Himself and He then moves on to pray for His disciples, both contemporary to the time, and those who would come later: He prays for the saints, the Holy Fathers, the believers. He prays for you and me. That is what Jesus did on the last night of His earthly existence. It is vitally important to recognize that even our Lord needed prayer. All too often we tend to minimize prayer and its importance. If it was not absolutely crucial, can one even imagine that Jesus would be spending His time at this critical juncture doing this? Was it all necessary? Yes. It shows the utter humanity of Jesus our Lord. What He faced was not easy. It was not something that was a snap. His Passion of pain shows that His love for us is deeper than we can know. His resurrection from the tomb demonstrates for us His victory over man’s last enemy; that now even death is a conquered and defeated foe. May He Who for our salvation ascended in glory from earth to heaven, even Christ our true God, have mercy upon us and save us!

The serpent did not tempt Adam and Eve to steal, to kill, to commit adultery; he simply tempted them to question God’s Word.

Do not desire to hear about the misfortunes of those who oppose you. For those who listen to such speech later reap the fruits of their evil intention. St. Mark the Ascetic ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ The person who prays for those who wrong him overthrows demons. Mark the Monk ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Hate evil, not a man who does evil, because he is sick. If you can, heal this patient, but do not kill him with your contempt. St. Nicholai Velimirovic

Many think that love is a feeling, but this is not the case. It is a state of the will. If love were a feeling it would not be a commandment. Naturally, love is accompanied by certain feelings, but in essence it is a state of the will. Priest Martyr Daniel Sysoev

Leave all human injustices to the Lord, for God is the Judge, but as to yourself, be diligent in loving everybody with a pure heart. Saint John of Kronstadt

Let none of us lose our boldness, nor neglect our duties, nor be afraid of the difficulties of spiritual struggle. For we have God as a helper, who strengthens us in the difficult path of virtue. St. Nektarios of Aegina ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ "Those who believe they can do something - and those who believe they can't - are both right."

"But I say to you," the Lord says, "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you." Why did he command these things? So that he might free you from hatred, sadness, anger and grudges, and might grant you the greatest possession of all, perfect love, which is impossible to possess except by the one who loves all equally in imitation of God. St. Maximus the Confessor

I want to start this morning by looking at the healing of the blind man from the perspective of those who witnessed it. The disciples asked why the man was born blind. There existed in Jewish thought the idea of the “pre-existence of the soul” which is the belief that all souls already existed in the Garden of Eden in the creation of the world. This implied that somehow this man could have sinned in a former state before he came into this world and thus as punishment was born blind. The question of whether the sins of this man’s parents had caused his blindness is from Exodus which says that the sins of the father will be extended to the 3rd and 4th generations. That is, that depravity can be so severe that several generations of a family will be affected by serious sin. Now let’s shift gears and look at the healing from the Pharisee’s point of view. 200 years before this event, the army of Antiochus the Great prevented the Jews from offering sacrifices. The Jewish faithful of Jerusalem revolted and then fled to the desert. Their hiding place was soon discovered, and the pursuing soldiers demanded that they surrender. The Jews refused to give in, but they also refused to fight because it was the Sabbath. They therefore did not block the entrances to their caves or defend themselves in any way. One thousand men, women and children died without resistance, because they considered that the Sabbath was sacred and should not be dishonored. So, we get a feel for the intensity of devout Jews that the Sabbath could not be violated. The Pharisees especially set out to protect the Sabbath because of the many pagan forces at work to corrupt the purity of the Jewish faith. The Pharisees took upon themselves the task of keeping Judaism pure of foreign influence. Initially they were devout and well-intentioned. But because of the many rules they invented they became legalistic. The Pharisees succeeded in turning the Sabbath rest into a burden rather than a blessing. Worst of all, these traditions of the Pharisees were so intertwined with the Old Testament Law that to violate these traditions was viewed as breaking the Law of God. Just prior to this episode with the blind man, our Lord had a major confrontation with the Pharisees. He had openly claimed to be God and they had, in turn, sought to stone Him. This is the backdrop of our Gospel lesson for today. Jesus was exiting the temple, and He noticed this man who was blind. In asking “Whose sin resulted in the blindness, this man or his parents.” Sickness sometimes is the direct result of sin. The sins of the parents can also affect their children. But the disciples came to the hasty conclusion that this could be the only cause. To the Jewish mind, great suffering could not be thought of apart from great sin. Our Lord offered another alternative. He said, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was in order that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Just prior Jesus made this statement: “While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.” Jesus said this to establish a clear connection between the healing of the blind man and His claim to be the ‘Light of the world.’ What Jesus previously claimed He would now demonstrate by this miracle. Christ made clay from the dust and His spittle and anointed the eyes of the man and then sent him to wash in a pool. So, the actual miracle took place away from Jesus and away from the Pharisees who were looking for any cause to bring further accusations against Him. The confrontation is now between the man and the Pharisees, not Jesus and the Pharisees. The evidence led to two contradictory conclusions. Some recognized that such a great work could not be anything other than the hand of God. Others, pointing out that the Sabbath had been violated, concluded that Jesus could not have been from God. The choice confronting the man was to decide whose disciple he would be. They were disciples of Moses. Assuming their traditions to be a part of God’s Law, they thought that Moses was on their side. This also meant that Jesus was a Sabbath-breaker by their definition, and that as such, He could not be holy; He must be a sinner. The man would have to choose between Moses and Jesus. The point they failed to note was that Moses, like Jesus, was proven to be God’s messenger by the miracles he performed. When our Lord found the man, He asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The One Whom he had beheld with his restored eyes, the One to Whom he spoke; He was the Messiah. With this, the man fell at the feet of Jesus in adoration. And with this came the full sight of the blind man, both physical and now spiritual. Our Lord’s coming resulted not only in the restoration of sight to the blind, but also exposed the blindness of those who professed to see: “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see; and that those who see may become blind.” In the process of His coming as the ‘Light of the world,’ Jesus exposed the sinfulness of men. Those who reject the light and refuse to turn from their sins and receive His pardon, seal their own condemnation. This healing affirmed the claim of our Lord to be the ‘light of the world.’ This miracle authenticated the claims of Jesus to be the Christ, the Messiah, just as the miracles of Moses identified him to Israel as a prophet of God. As he reminded the Pharisees, there was no record of a man ever receiving his sight. More than this, the giving of sight to the blind was viewed by the Jews as a sign the Messiah had come. Jesus is recorded to have performed more miracles of restoring sight than of any other kind of healing. The miracles of Christ forced men to come to a decision about Him. In this lesson we can see that the healing of the blind man divided those who could not resist the compelling nature of the evidence from others who could not accept it. But in either case, it pushed people off ‘dead center.’ No one remained neutral about Jesus. Even the opposition of the Pharisees forced people to arrive at a strong conviction in the matter. This passage has a great deal to say to us. First of all, it addresses those who want to remain neutral on the issue of Christ. Those who witnessed the claims and actions of Jesus knew that they must either accept Him for Whom He claimed to be, or utterly reject Him. In this sense, the Pharisees were not too far from the truth. If Jesus was not the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world, then He should have been done away with. Such a man would have been a menace to society. But if He was right, then men must fall before Him as the Creator of the universe, and their Redeemer. As C.S. Lewis said, you must accept Him as your Savior or reject Him as a fraud. There is no middle ground. The reason they rejected Jesus was because He did not conform to their preferences as to what God should be like. And so it is today. People say, “I like to think of God as ….” And that is precisely their problem. It doesn’t really matter how you wish to think of God. The destiny-determining reality is that when God does not conform to our preferences, our preferences must give way. In the final analysis, our salvation must originate with God and not with us. Also, like the disciples, we are all too inclined to speculate about the sins of others, rather than to minister to the misery of the suffering. We would rather philosophize than help. Finally, let us not forget that it was the will of God that this man be born blind. God is not untouched by suffering, but rather was moved with compassion to heal this man. Our Lord came not only to deal with the symptom of suffering, but its root, which is sin. The Christian is no more exempt from suffering in this life than was our Lord. Suffering for the Christian is for the glory of God as well as for the good of the saint. Although this man spent years in darkness, he came in contact with the ‘Light of the world’ because of his blindness, and came to see not only physically, but spiritually. That man will never, in all of eternity, look back on those years of blindness with regret. Our downfall is not in the God we cannot explain. It's the people and events we think we can explain so easily. We believe we have it all figured out. We think we see how things work. But God ultimately sees more. He knows His Son will have to die if we are to be saved. May He Who rose from the dead for our salvation, even Christ our true God, have mercy upon us and save us!

Be a reflection of what you’d like to see in others. If you want love, give love. If you want honesty, give honesty. If you want respect, give respect. You get in return what you give. This is why Our Lord Said; “whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) St. Symeon the New Theologian

"The dead feel our presence in their graves, they feel our prayers and our sacrifices and love for them. And we will soon feel it, on that side of the grave, and will be grateful for those who remember us and pray for us to God." St. Nikolai Velimirovich

“When you are in church, and are going to partake of the divine mysteries of Christ, do not go out until you have attained complete peace. Stand in one place, and do not leave it until the dismissal. Think that you are standing in heaven, and that in the company of the holy angels you are meeting God and receiving Him in your heart. Prepare yourself with great awe and trembling, lest you mingle with the holy powers unworthily.” The Philokalia

You don’t excuse others but you excuse yourself? Then, tomorrow Christ will not excuse you. Your heart can become hard as a rock in an instant if you are not careful, and it can equally quickly become tender. You must acquire a maternal heart. You see, a mother will forgive all things, and sometimes will pretend not to see certain mischief. Be patient with others and excuse them; tolerate others so that Christ will tolerate you. Saint Paisios of Mount Athos

"If He does not support us, not one of us is safe from some gross sin. On the other hand, no possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond what He is determined to produce in every one of us in the end. The job will not be completed in this life: but He means to get us as far as possible before death." C. S. Lewis

When God erases sins, He does not even leave a scar, not even allowing a mark to remain, for together with the healing He grants also beauty. St. John Chrysostom

Scandals have become so commonplace that we have become cynical. We wonder if anyone really lives up to what they believe or believes what they say. The decay of the culture is having an impact on the Christian community. Two things are wrong: We have failed to teach Orthodoxy in our homes. And we have failed to model our faith to the world. Instead, we have opted for vague notions that to be Christian means to be harmless; niceness has somehow become our defining doctrine. How did we get to this place when Jesus Christ, the Founder of our faith, was ruthlessly clear and truthful? Whenever people confronted Him, they were stripped of their pretenses and were made vulnerable by the truth with which He confronted them. Some ran from that truth while others embraced it, difficult as it was. But the common thread here is that people were always confronted by reality. When we encounter Jesus, the first thing that happens is we are confronted with the truth about who we are. The truth this woman in today’s gospel lesson was forced to see was not very pleasant. Her ethical life was a joke; she lacked any moral sense. Jesus knew this and invited her to see the truth about herself. This is the way of things when we come in contact with God. When His light shines on us, the real us is exposed, and that kind of honesty can hurt. Our natural tendency is to conceal the truth. We hide it from ourselves and others. We put on our mask and go about our pretend world and play make-believe. And when the woman at the well grasped that Jesus saw the real her, she did not feel in any way condemned. Jesus saw through her façade. He knew all about her sin; and He loved her. And after her encounter with the Lord she went to the others in her town so that they could meet Him too and feel His love. Jesus revealed the complete truth about her and completely accepted her at the same time. The saving factor in this woman’s life was that she did not deny the truth. If that had happened, it would have been the end of her relationship with Christ. Jesus will forgive our sin, but only if we face it and admit it. He will not tolerate deceitfulness, or allow us to play the imposter. The truth must be understood and owned. And it is through this that we experience the love of God. We become whole by owning up to our brokenness. We are made complete by facing our sickness and finding healing in that act of honesty. It’s denial and dishonesty that give sin its power. It is in trying to hide our sin and pushing it down that it has the most influence in our lives. Admitting who we are and what we have done is frightening and hard, but there is no other way to find God. The second thing that happens when we encounter the Lord is, we are confronted with the truth about Who He is. They had only spoken a few words and He saw right through her. She assumed that He was a prophet or something, so she asked Him a religious question. This is always a good technique for getting the spotlight off of yourself and onto something more comfortable, even if it is controversial. She was trying to turn the focus off herself, but when she did, she encountered another truth that was just as difficult for her as the truth about herself; she came face to face with Who Jesus really was. She wanted to argue religion, but Jesus wanted her to face reality. Jesus’ method of confronting this woman would be scorned by us today when no one is really right and no one is really wrong. “Everyone has their own truth, and we should respect that by not trying to change the way they think or believe.” Truth is whatever you may want to believe in. But Jesus did not affirm the woman’s error, He pointed her to the truth. He bluntly told her that the Samaritans were worshiping what they did not know. He told her that everything she had believed all her life had been wrong. He said, “Salvation is from the Jews.” She was uncomfortable and thought she would change the subject again. She came over to His side a bit, being familiar with Jewish beliefs, and said, “I know that Messiah is coming. When He comes He will explain everything to us.” Again, Jesus confronted her with the truth. “I Who speak to you am He.” Jesus was concerned about the false way this woman was living and the false things she was believing. He lovingly confronted her with the truth, and then let her decide what to do with it. And herein lies the final point. When Jesus encounters us, we are responsible to act upon the truth. We are almost surprised by this woman’s reaction. In the beginning she gives the impression of being silly and shallow. But she responded to the truth that Jesus presented, while many of the Jewish religious leaders back in Jerusalem rejected it. This woman had no education or religious training, yet she opened her heart to Christ. She left Jesus unceremoniously and without explanation to go to find other people and to tell them about the truth she had discovered. She is honest now about all the things she has done, and tells the people in town about the great Truth she has discovered. And because of her actions, the community she lived in believed in the Lord. Like the woman herself, when these people were confronted with the truth, they responded with a pure intent. So, here’s why the Samaritan woman at the well matters for each of us, because in her story we learn that our past does not have the final word. Our Lord loves us for who we are. He values us even when the world might not. He wants to offer us “living water,” because if we will drink from the well of life, we can be made new. But it’s even more than that. This woman could be described as the accidental evangelist. Who would have thought that this outcast would be the one to bring others in her village to a belief in Christ? Yet that’s exactly what she did! Her life was changed, and so she told her story, but it did not end there. In the Orthodox Church, we know the Samaritan woman better as the Holy, Glorious, Great Martyr Photini. (The Enlightened One.) After her encounter with Christ, she labored in the spread of the Gospel. So great was her fervor that she went on to receive the crown of martyrdom in Rome along with her two sons and five sisters. Like her, we also are called to tell our story. Think of it, if that shamed Samaritan woman who was an outcast, even among her own people; a sinner with a messy life and virtually no morals, can dedicate herself to sharing the good news of Christ with others, then so can any of us! I say this because one of the saddest things about the Church today is its total ineffectiveness. By and large, we are a church whose members look so much like the rest of the world, act no different from the world, have its hobbies and habits and entertainment just like the world, that we are making no impact whatsoever. The world doesn’t even give us a second look. In Orthodoxy we are taught that there are two kinds of living water: the water of baptism and the tears of repentance. Christ offers you living water. The question is … are you thirsty? May He Who rose from the dead for our salvation, even Christ our true God, have mercy upon us and save us!

"Thou shalt not kill." A murderer cannot be with Christ. "Whosoever hates his brother is accounted a murderer." Or, "he that loves not his brother abides in death." How much more guilty is he that has stained his hands with blood of the sons of God whom He has of late purchased in the utmost part of the earth through the call of our littleness! St. Patrick of Ireland

Whoever will not love his enemies cannot know the Lord and the sweetness of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit teaches us to love our enemies in such way that we pity their souls as if they were our own children. St. Silouan the Athonite

A sacred Pascha is shown to us today, a new and holy Pascha.

Arise O God, and judge the earth; for You shall take all nations to Your inheritance.

We will sing Thy praises Word and God of all things, and we glorify Thy burial divine. Lamentations Service.

Lamentations.

If He who was crucified with us was not God incarnate the Sun would not have hidden its rays nor the earth have quake with trembling.

Today is hung upon the Cross, He Who suspended the Earth amid the waters.

The Hymn of Kassiani.