The Nativity & The Hearafter

If you are New Calendar, tomorrow is the Nativity (Or most likely will start at 11pm tonight and conclude with a Midnight Liturgy). If you are Old Calendar, January 7th, 2008.

I suppose should explain Old & New Calendar.. but not sure I'm adequate to the task so I'll direct you here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Old_Calendarists for a place to get started.

Anyway, most Christians will somewhere somehow celebrate The Feast of the Nativity i.e. the Birth or Christ, "Christmas" in the next week or so.

It started me wondering. How do they celebrate the Feast in Heaven?

It's hard to believe that I lost Fr. George (Eternal Memory 11/21/2006) a little over a year ago last November.



I wonder, how will he be Celebrating the Feast? And I wonder, as we commemorate the birth of Our Saviour, how do we remember those who are now with Him? With Him due to His Glorious Incarnation.

Soon we will cry "Christ is Born! Glorify Him"

Merry Christmas where ever you are as you keep the Feast.

Seraphim

East vs. West

At first we were confused. The East thought that we were West, while the West
considered us to be East. Some of us misunderstood our place in the clash of
currents, so they cried that we belong to neither side, and others that we
belong exclusively to one side or the other. But I tell you, Ireneus, we are
doomed by fate to be the East in the West and the West in the East, to
acknowledge only heavenly Jerusalem beyond us, and here on earth–no one.

- St. Sava to Ireneus, 13th century

Tradition

In the com-boxes responding to a Rod Dreher blog (a question about books), "Sarah in Maryland" muses about the disadvantage we have in our very "anti-tradition" culture:

I agonize over what to have for dinner. If I were part of a traditional culture,
that would be figured out for me. I wouldn't waste my time reading diet book
after diet book, pouring over recipes. For my wedding, there were so many
choices that I wanted to explode! I wanted to have all those decisions made for
me. If we had more of a wedding tradition, I would have fewer decisions to make
and more time to enjoy the person I was going to marry. Tradition would have
picked out the type of flowers, the ceremony, the vows and the type of food we'd
have. Can you imagine how much mental energy this would save us?

This is a very good point. Even though we are anti-traditional in our culture, we still benefit from tradition even when we don't recognize it. Extended families usually don't quabble about the holidays once they have established a family tradition. Christmas Eve at Grandma's, Christmas Day at cousin Suzie's, the Sunday after Christmas at Aunt Margaret's, New years Day w/ Uncle Bud. We always have a roast. We always eat at 5.

Thats just a minor issue. We Modern Western Christians have thrown away the recieved Tradition, and wonder why we can't stop arguing.

How the Grinch stole BACK Christmas

How the Grinch Stole Back Christmas

‘Tis a tale often told, and every Who knows,
How the Grinch first descended from Mount Crumpet snows
And stole away Christmas (its trappings, at least)
Then had his heart changed, and came back for roast beast.
Not everyone knows what has happened since then;
How the Grinch came to think he must steal it again –

For Grinches are grinchy, and grinch-genes will tell
–And in some ways, he wasn’t adjusting too well.
Though his heart grew three sizes, his brain had not shrunk
And he tired of buying up masses of junk
And dealing with hassles and hustles barbaric
For “holidays” swiftly becoming generic.

The customs traditional, which the Grinch loved
Were watered-down, fluffed-up, or “new and improved”
.Why, at one Christmas feast, by one misguided Who,
The roast beast itself was a glob of tofu!
And the songs which reformed him with simple Who joys
Were increasingly drowned out by “noise, noise, noise, noise.”

And deep in his heart, underneath his green fur,
The Grinch knew that things weren’t right as they were.
His ponderer once more was sore as could be
In the checkout line near the HDTV’s,
When the half-hearted clerk with a faraway gaze
Blandly muttered to him, “Happy Holidays”.

Well, the Grinch’s lips curled in a most Grinchy smile
(More grinchy, perhaps, than he’d been in a while!)
He remembered his heritage, cunning and sly,
He thought, “I was made this way – p’raps this is why!”
Then he fixed his eyes on the unfortunate knave,
And regarded him mildly, and told him, “How brave!”

“Brave?”, asked the clerk, “Why, what did I say?”
“My good man, you have wished me a fine Holy Day!“
I thank, good sir, and return it sincerely;
“For you wished for me, sir, not a merry day merely,
“But a day blessed with favor from our Lord divine –
“I return it; may your Holy Day, too, be fine!”

“No! I just said ‘holiday’,” stammered the clerk,
“For that is the policy here where I work…”
“Delightful!,” the Grinch interjected with glee.
“Such corporate boldness – it overwhelms me!
“A spiritual awakening – that’s what it means!
“Now, sir, sell me some cards with nativity scenes.”

There were no such cards, for he’d sold his last few
But he did have a Santa. The Grinch said, “He’ll do,“
That old Bishop Nicholas, merry and stout.
“He once punched the heretic Arius out!”
And the clerk looked about – and no bosses he saw -
“Merry Christmas!,” he whispered, and shook a grinch paw.

The Grinch strode from the store and out into the street,
“Merry Christmas!”, he said to each Who whom he’d meet,
And he said to himself, “Why, this really is nice!
“A good deed which has gained all the thrill of a vice!
“This holiday season need not make me blue;
“For with each ‘Merry Christmas’, I break a taboo!”

Some heartily answer, returning his greeting;
And others more shyly, ere swiftly retreating –
Some say “Happy Hannukah” back with a grin,
Which the old Grinch returns, and calls that a win/win.
Some never quite notice; too stressed and engrossed.
But some look offended – and these he likes most.

“Now, don’t kid a kidder,” he tells such a one –
“I stole Christmas once, and I know how it’s done.
“But I stole it with style; I stole it with flare.
“You aren’t that clever, or else wouldn’t dare;
“To my exploits, your Christmas theft can’t hold a candle –
“You’re not even a thief – just a wannabe vandal.”

For a Grinch is a Grinch, at the end of the day
(And as he observed, Someone made him that way)
As wise as a serpent (and almost as green)
And not really worried if folks think he’s mean.
He stole Christmas once, but he made his amends –
Now he’ll steal Christmas back, for his more timid friends.

So when you’ve the chance (if, that is, you’ve the guts)
Please join me and the Grinch, driving PC-folks nuts.
Reclaiming the Holy Days, joyous and rightful,
From the purely commercial or pettily spiteful.
Co-conspire in this bold holiday counter-crime –
Committed one “Merry Christmas” at a time.

— Joe Long
(Posted at MereComments)

How to Avoid Cancer

THE TIMES
(London, England)
December 6, 2007

A foolproof anti-cancer diet... with just one or two drawbacks

If you want to avoid cancer, live like a monk. That is the inescapable conclusion from research into one of the world’s most renowned monastic communities. The austere regime of the 1,500 monks on Mount Athos, in northern Greece, begins with an hour’s pre-dawn prayers and is designed to protect their souls. Their low-stress existence and simple diet (no meat, occasional fish, home-grown vegetables and fruit) may, however, also protect them from more worldly troubles.

The monks, who inhabit a peninsula from which women are banned, enjoy astonishingly low rates of cancer. Since 1994, the monks have been regularly tested, and only 11 have developed prostate cancer, a rate less than one quarter of the international average. In one study, their rate of lung and bladder cancer was found to be zero. Haris Aidonopoulos, a urologist at the University of Thessaloniki, said that the monks’ diet, which calls on them to avoid olive oil, dairy products and wine on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, helped to explain the statistics. “What seems to be the key is a diet that alternates between olive oil and nonolive oil days, and plenty of plant proteins,” he said. “It’s not only what we call the Mediterranean diet, but also eating the old-fashioned way."

Small simple meals at regular intervals are very important. Meals on the peninsula, which the Prince of Wales has visited regularly and which can only be reached by boat, are ascetic and repetitive affairs that have changed little over the centuries, although there are variations between the 20 monasteries. The monks sit in silence while, from a pulpit, passages from the Bible are read in Greek. They eat at speed – as soon as the Bible passage is over, the meal is officially completed.

The staples are fruit and vegetables, pasta, rice and soya dishes, and bread and olives. They grow much of what they eat themselves. Agioritiko red wine is made locally from mountain grapes. Dairy products are rare – female animals are banned from the autonomous semi-state.

Life on Athos has changed little over the past 1,043 years. Breakfast is hard bread and tea. Much of the day is taken up with chores – cleaning, cooking, tending to crops – followed by a supper, typically of lentils, fruit and salad, and evening prayers. Some of the seaside monasteries specialise in catching octopus, a delicacy that is softened up by bashing on the rock. Fish also feeds the Athos cats, protected by the monks for their mouse-catching prowess. Of all domestic animals, only cats are exempt from the ban on females.

Some of the monks live in hillside huts or cliff-side caves perched above the sea as satellites of the main establishments, perhaps the closest that modern Christianity gets to medieval hermits. They depend for their sustenance on handouts of bread and olives.

On holidays and feast days such as Christmas and Easter, when other Greeks are feasting on roast meat, the monks prefer fish, their only culinary luxury. Father Moses of the Koutloumousi monastery, one of the 20 organised cloisters scattered over the Athos peninsula, said: “We never eat meat. We produce most of the vegetables and fruit we consume. And we never forget that all year round, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we don’t use olive oil on our food.”

The olive-oil routine, which also applies to wine and dairy products, appears to have no religious significance, but is a way of eking out their supplies. All the monks stick to the rigorous fasting periods of the Orthodox Church, in which a strict vegan diet is prescribed for weeks at a stretch. Michalis Hourdakis, a dietician associated with Athens University, said: "This limited consumption of calories has been found to lengthen life. Meat has been associated with intestinal cancer, while fruit and vegetables help ward off prostate cancer."

The lack of air pollution on Mount Athos as well as the monks's hard work in the fields also played their part, the researchers said. There was no mention, however, of whether the absence of women had any effect on the monk's renowned spiritual calm.

Salad days Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday
Breakfast Hard bread, tea
Lunch Pasta or rice,vegetables, olive oil
Dinner Lentils, fruit and salad, olive oil. Red wine

Monday, Wednesday and Friday no olive oil

Holidays and feast days Fish and seafood

Wonders of Athos — Most of the monasteries on Athos run on “Byzantine time”, with the clock resetting at sunset — Vatopedhiou, Prince Charles’ favoured retreat, claims to have saints’ bones, the whip used to scourge Christ, St Stephen’s ear, fragments of the True Cross, and the Virgin Mary’s girdle

Source: Friends of Mount Athos, Times research

Artificial Living

A cross post from bonovox.squarespace.com

It seems to me that I have bought into a life that is contrary to nature and reality:

• Instead of working at home in the proximity of, and with my family...........I "commute" to a remote location to work with strangers


• 
  Instead of eating healthy whole foods, grown myself our by a neighbor.......I eat "fast food." Even when I am home, I eat from a box.....ala "stouffers" and "TV dinners."


• 
  Instead of talking to the person next to me............................I talk to someone else, 1 mile or 100 or more miles away


• 
  Instead of raising my children.........................I give them to someone else to do it for me.


• 
  Instead of visiting family on vacation or discovering Europe with our kids...............we go to Disney World and pretend we are in France at Epcot Center.


• 
  Instead of working by the sweat of my brow (in raising my food)...........I pay to go sweat in a gym.


• 
  Instead of worshipping in unison with the natural cycles God has placed in the world and within myself............I worship according to whatever suits me at the moment.


• 
  Instead of the "way of the cross"......................I seek the way of the "Easy Chair."


• 
  Instead of feeling the wind in my face, and hearing the crunch of leaves under my feet.......I watch television.


• 
  Instead of trusting the wisdom of my family going back to Adam..........I really feel myself superior to them, and feel I can do a better job making it up as I go along.


• 
  Instead of living in community.......................I live in isolation


• 
  Instead of being helped by community, in return for my willingness also to help when I am able......I pay a stranger to help me.


• 
  Instead of trusting God.........I trust technology.


• 
  Instead of governing myself........I allow myself to be governed by the powerful.


• 
  Instead of living "holistically"............I live fragmented. (work, family, religion, sex, play....)


• 
  Instead of being thankful for, I have nothing that was not given to me..........I am a deluded proud "self made man."


• 
  Instead of caring for my children and their children, by caring for the world I will hand down to them......I care only for the benefit that this world can give me.


• 
  Instead of caring for my soul.............I care for my comfort and pleasure

I am sure there are more ways that I live "artificially."

It Was a Great Day

Today I went to liturgy. Weekday liturgies can be small. God has blessed our parish greatly with faithful people and usually we have a good crowd, but today it was sparse. There were 2 adults and one teen in the choir, Matushka and her 4 kids, one other mother and her 3 kids and Father serving the liturgy. There were no acolytes or alter servers. No reader really, it was managed by the choir. As sometimes happens a few children got bored and butt scooted around the floor, without pews can be hard to corral.

It was a great day.

As I helped serve the blessed bread to those who had just taken communion, I could see out of the corner of my eye the Icon on the stand that usually sits on a table in the corner of my den. It was in need for today’s service, our parish does not have one.

It was a great day.

There was no sermon, Father had to bring out the bread and wine for the service table himself without help. The reading and music didn’t flow as well as normal, although it was still beautiful. Those who were short handed in the choir were still talented.

It was a great day.

My wife and only child not in school today came close to the end, right before communion was served (no they are not Cradles).

It was a great day.

At the close of the service my all too gracious Spiritual Father chose to sing “Many Years” to someone in honor of it being the name day of their chosen saint, Saint Demetrius. See it was gracious because this person will not be even Christmated till Christmas Day. He is still a catechumen.

I was a great day…

…because I was that Catechumen. If you have a moment today, please ask Saint Demetrius to act as an intercessor for my family and I as many struggles lay ahead.

Whatever Happened to Going to Church?

On my favorite episode of my favorite animated series King of the Hill, Hank and the Family are discussing church when Lucky chimes in with this infamous quote “Me, I don't got to church - church goes with me. I'm worshippin' when I'm drinkin' a beer, diggin' a hole, or fishin' for trout”. I have heard this theology in slightly differing forms all my life.

As a son of a Baptist preacher, one who’s loving mother insisted he wear tight double-knit slacks and a clip-on tie every Sunday for the first 12 years of his life, this comment on modern ecclesiology started sounding right. I mean I could just see myself sitting on a stump, fishing pole in one hand, beer in the other, sitting next to Jesus as we laughed and talked about life. This sounded much better to me than any flannel graph production or doing “Farther Abraham” one more time.

Sadly, as I grew older, I began to study and the Bible and realize that skipping church to fish and drink beer was in fact, just that and nothing more. That sitting home and reading the bible on a Sunday morning was not a proper substitute, let alone a somehow more spiritual notion.

Although I had yet to fully understand what church was, I was certainly beginning to understand what it wasn’t.

If a simple laymen’s study of the bible would conclude that church is essential, if not the guiding force to our growth as a Christian, how did we get to where we are? Why do so many people believe church is unnecessary for Christian growth and development?

I’m not sure you can generalize but I have seen differing events or movements that seem to have attributed to this wholly unchristian phenomenon.

Bigger is Better

The first I think would be the 20^th century church in North America took on the personality of the “American Spirit” in that bigger was better. In the latter half of the 20^th century, the measure of any “good” church was attendance. We looked at anyone cleric who could grow a church into the thousands as almost achieving sainthood. As these men and their parishes were being celebrated, it became clear that something that large with such a head of steam left casualties. Casualties who needed smaller more personal care than the large churches could give. What were these people to do? Go to an “inferior” smaller church? These were the options. So they opted for a third. Simply not going felt better than going. Since it felt better, it must be from God ergo God does not want me in church.

Tradition is of Man, not of God

Our second notion began in the 70’s as a rouge, parachurch movement. The Jesus Freaks, Campus Crusade and many others decided to push the setting of tradition and namely the tradition of church itself into the background. Teaching that a personal relationship was primary, and everything else was peripheral. Of course the natural progression of this though is to exorcise anything that is not essential. Thus each person chose to focus on his or her own salvation. The church itself was seen as nonessential and passé.

The Seekers and Comfortable Christianity

In the 90’s and pushing into the 21^st Century we began to witness a new kind of Church. The Seeker Church. This church was focused on bringing back those who were familiar with church but had seen it as boring and uninteresting. Generally types of these churches focused on church wide curriculums, like Saddleback, that showed you how to target a particular demographic. It showed how to market your services and church structure make this particular “seeker” feel interested and comfortable in your church. It made going back to church easy. Sadly, and I’m trying not to generalize, although explosive growth was experienced inside of the movement, it seems that it lacked depth to see people grow past modern music, multimedia and being big into small groups. In essence people were not pushed towards growing in quiet prayer and study but towards the service of feeding the ever-growing machine that has evolved into the mega church. Eventually these souls get pushed towards Martha service instead of Mary worship and eventually, seeing the end as fruitless labor, burn out and try to find quiet solace.

What we have accomplished in the latter half of the last century and the beginning of the current is to marginalize the sacred practice of regularly attending church. All three movements consist of formulas that grant instant satisfaction but do not focus on proper nutrition. Like a quick hit energy drink, they give instant energy but leave you depleted in the long term.

The Church Fathers, all the way back to Paul, refer to Christians as athletes, and our daily life as training. To utilize this analogy, let’s focus on our “diet”. Early on, dating back to St. James, head of the first church in Jerusalem, Christians had a steady “liturgical diet” of prayer and worship prescribed by the Apostles and their successors. This “diet” was a health conscious diet built for the athlete. This diet not only provided short-term satisfaction, but also was made to sustain the athlete through training and propel him through competition.

But over time we began to break down the deliberate structure of the liturgical diet and have substituted healthier aspects with prepackaged junk food. Preparing the healthy foods and their organic nutrients has been replaced with a drive through, fast food mentality of get it and go. Sadly we have found that the diet of the modern evangelical church, although appetizing and delicious at times, leaves us lacking the proper nutrition sustain the athlete when under duress and needing it most. Of course the logical conclusion is former athletes who have fallen from competition, who claim that diet plays no role in training and competing.

It is in my Orthodox journey that I am rediscovering the proven liturgical recipes that provide the nutrition we need to “run the race” and “fight the good fight”.

What Orthodoxy has to offer Europe...

In the current expansion eastward, however, it is inevitable that the
values and mores of European institutions and alliances will be shaped more and
more by the traditionalist views of Orthodox Christian believers and less and
less by the modern, secularized Protestant assumptions of Western European
democracies. Orthodox believers already far outnumber Protestants across Europe,
and by some estimates they may eventually even surpass Roman Catholics. If
21st-century Europe ever develops a religious complexion, it will be
predominantly Eastern Orthodox.

In the long run, therefore, while the greatest challenge to Europe's
cultural and political identity may come from the growth of Islam, its more
immediate challenge is how to deal with some 40 million to 140 million Orthodox
Christians who, when given a voice in European policymaking, will argue that
churches should have a more prominent voice than heretofore in the shaping of
social policy.

There are two ways of dealing with this challenge. One way is to stick
to a narrow definition of "the West." Make modern-day secularism the gold
standard of democracy and decry all challenges to secularism as examples of a
"values gap" between East and West. This tried and true formula has the
advantage of already being familiar, thanks to the cold war. Unfortunately, it
is also a recipe for a conflict within European institutions. And, given the
rapidly growing numbers, influence, and wealth of the Orthodox Churches of
Eastern Europe, it is a conflict Western Europeans are likely to lose.

from http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1011/p09s01-coop.htm
h/t Rod Dreher

"And they say Creeds don't mean anything......"

I ran acrossed this last night while reading up on Gnosticism. It's a line upon line exposition of the significance of each line of the Apostles Creed in light of the Gnostic heresies that circulated during the time it was written.


"THE APOSTLES' CREED VERSUS GNOSTICISM

A creed generally emphasizes the beliefs opposing those errors that the compilers of the creed think most dangerous at the time.The Creed of the Council of Trent, which was drawn up by the RomanCatholics in the 1500's, emphasized those beliefs that RomanCatholics and Protestants were arguing about most furiously at thetime. The Nicene Creed, drawn up in the fourth century, is emphatic in affirming the Deity of Christ, since it is directed against the Arians, who denied that Christ was fully God. The Apostles' Creed,drawn up in the first or second century, emphasizes the true Humanity, including the material body, of Jesus, since that is thepoint that the heretics of the time (Gnostics, Marcionites, and later Manicheans) denied. (See 1 John 4:1-3)"


http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/history/creed.apostles.txt




And another article that is worthy of your consideration.......


The Jewishness of the Nicene Creed

"In working on the most recent issue of Christian History & Biography ("Debating Jesus' Divinity"), we once again ran into the old canard that the Nicene bishops relied more on Greek philosophical concepts than on the Bible. That is the conventional wisdom in some circles, but let's take a closer look at what those bishops did. "


http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/februaryweb-only/53.0c.html

Coptic Prayers: Prayer for the sick

Coptic icon of St. Mina the Wonderworker, gifted with healing (source)

Offered during matins, the morning prayers in preparation for the Divine Liturgy.

Priest: Again, let us ask God the Almighty, the Father of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. We ask and entreat your goodness, O Lover of Mankind: Remember, O Lord, the sick of your people.

Deacon: Pray for our fathers and brothers who are sick with any sickness, whether in this place or in any place, that Christ our God may grant us, with them, health and healing, and forgive us our sins.

All: Lord, have mercy.

Priest: Visit them with mercy and compassion and heal them. Take away from them, and from us, all sickness and all maladies; the spirit of sickness chase away. Those who have long lain in sickness, raise up and comfort. And those who are afflicted by unclean spirits, set them all free.

Those who are in prisons or dungeons, or those who are in exile or captivity, or those who are held in bitter bondage, O Lord, set them all free and have mercy on them. For You are He Who loosens the bound and uplifts the fallen, the hope of those who are hopeless, the help of those who have no helper, the comfort of the fainthearted, the harbor of those in the storm.

All souls that are distressed or bound, give them mercy, O Lord. Give them rest. Give them coolness. Give them grace. Give them help. Give them salvation. Give them forgiveness of their sins and iniquities.

As for us also, O Lord, the maladies of our souls heal, and those of our bodies, too, cure. O You, the true Physician of our souls and bodies, the Overseer of all flesh, visit us with Your salvation.

All: Lord, have mercy.

Faith of our Fathers: A Colloquium on Orthodoxy for Lutherans

This is some good stuff!!!

You can hear lectures online from some Orthodox academics and clergy, all of them converts from Lutheranism, on various subjects like Augustine and ecclesiology, justification, Scripture, and the Trinity.

B Movie Catechism

EC'ers looking for innovative ways to teach the faith through film might find some great ideas at The B Movie Catechism.





Or not. :)

Emergent Liturgy

The new "Liturgical Service," as they call it, has become the most popular service even among young people. After the "standard" evangelical service at 9:30 a.m., workers decorate the platform with candles, non-specific iconography and other religious-looking items. Fitzgerald wears generic vestments and adopts a more somber manner. He reads from a liturgical book and the congregation responds by reading words on the screens.

"I like the reverence and the mood," says one girl, 16. "It feels more spiritual."

"I like the candles," her friend chimes in.

The effort seems to be working to keep church members from straying elsewhere. In St. Paul, Minn., Family Life Center recently created a liturgical service and says some families have opted to stay rather than try out other churches. Jessica Onstead, 38, was dissatisfied enough last year with the "fluffiness" of evangelical church services that she visited an Orthodox service and liked parts of it. But she was uncomfortable with the "kissing of strangers, genuflecting and standing for an hour during the sermon."

She ended up back at her non-denominational church which had by then added an Orthodox-style service. She now attends ...

Read it ALL.

And a reaction.

Hat Tip to Orthodixie

Coptic prayers: The Morning Prayer

This is one snippet from Prime that I really like. Prime is prayed first thing in the morning.

O the true Light Who gives light to every man coming into the world, You came into the world through Your love for mankind, and all creation rejoiced in Your coming. You saved our father, Adam, from the seduction, and delivered our mother, Eve, from the pangs of death, and gave us the spirit of sonship. Let us, therefore, praise You and bless You saying :

Doxa Patri ke Eioa ke Agio Pnevmati (Glory to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit)

As the daylight shines upon us, O Christ Our God, the true Light, let the luminous senses and the bright thoughts shine within us, and do not let the darkness of passions hover over us, that mindfully we may praise You with David saying, “My eyes have awakened before the morning watch, that I might meditate on Your sayings." Hear our voices according to your great mercy, and deliver us, O Lord our God, through Your compassion.

sunrise on the Nile (source)

The Reformers and the Orthodox

I had been familiar with the correspondence between Patriarch Jeremias of Constantinople and the early Reformers of Tübingen, but still found this paper on the subject fascinating. Check it out. I hadn't known, for instance, that the Reformers actually sent a kind of "embassy" to Constantinople, or that they drew up a Greek version of the Augsburg Confession that was not just a translation, but an earnest attempt to communicate Reformation concepts to the Greek and Orthodox mind.

Coptic Prayers- The Prayer of Thanksgiving

I thought I would do a few posts on the prayers used in the Coptic daily office and other services. I'm going to be highly selective, but you can read all the prayers of the daily office online here and hear some of them being chanted (by readers from our parish!). Most other Coptic services can also be found online in English.

The following is the prayer of thanksgiving that begins every prayer of the hours and is also prayed at many services like the betrothal and wedding. In the hours it's preceded by the Lord's Prayer and you follow it with Psalm 50 LXX (Psalm 51 in Protestant Bibles), expressing penitence for sin.

Let us give thanks to the beneficent and merciful God, the Father of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, for He has covered us, helped us, guarded us, accepted us unto Him, spared us, supported us, and brought us to this hour. Let us also ask Him, the Lord our God, the Almighty, to guard us in all peace this holy day and all the days of our life.

O Master, Lord, God the Almighty, the Father of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, we thank You for every condition, concerning every condition, and in every condition, for You have covered us, helped us, guarded us, accepted us unto You, spared us, supported us, and brought us to this hour.

Therefore, we ask and entreat Your goodness, O Lover of mankind, to grant us to complete this holy day, and all the days of our life, in all peace with Your fear. All envy, all temptation, all the work of Satan, the counsel of wicked men, and the rising up of enemies, hidden and manifest, take them away from us, and from all Your people, and from this holy place that is Yours.

But those things which are good and profitable do provide for us; for it is You Who have given us the authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, by the grace, compassion and love of mankind, of Your Only-Begotten Son, our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, through Whom the glory, the honor, the dominion, and the adoration are due unto You, with Him, and the Holy Spirit, the Life-Giver, Who is of one essence with You, now and at all times, and unto the ages of all ages. Amen.

[Image from touregypt.net]

Not Being able to leave well enough alone.....

I made some of my own "What they said/what they meant" items:

What they say:
"We don't subscribe to tradition. We look to the Bible only."

What they mean:
"We subscribe to the tradition of Sola Scriptura, and many other unlabelled traditions, but we will avoid recognizing it at all costs." (And make sure you have a Ham on Easter!)


What they say:
"We beleive in the priesthood of ALL beleivers."

What they Mean:
"We don't believe in 'preisthood' at all."


What they Say:
"The celebration of fasts and feasts is of pagan origin, and violates a Pauline prohibition on observing days and months and seasons and years."

What they mean:
"Except of course for Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Mother's Day and the '4th of July'."


What they say:
"We understand the Bible literally."

What they mean:
"except that part of eating and drinking Jesus' body and blood....He meant that figuratively."


What they say:
"All you have to do is accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, and thats it."

What they mean:
"And don't drink, smoke, swear ("shit" is out, "Crap" is OK) go to R movies and get erections until your married." (Something else may have been implied to females....I wouldn;t know.....)


What they say:
"God loves you and only wants you to be succesful and prosper in all that you do."

What they mean:
"Except when you aren't succesful....next time you'll pray more and have more faith."

I better stop now......

Fr. John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: The life in the body and epilogue

This is part three and the conclusion of a review. See here for part one and here for part two.

In his final chapter, Fr. John Behr applies the method of seeing all things through the perspective (the hypothesis or starting point) of the Passion of Christ on to the life of the individual believer in the body. In the church's classic teaching, Christ recapitulated- assumed, took into Himself- all of humanity in His Incarnation and Passion, and we in turn are to recapitulate His life. Living the life of Christ in our body is to live the perfect human life. What does this look like?

Fr. John points to St. Athanasius' On The Incarnation as a key source for theoretical understanding on this, but then to St. Athanasius' Life of St. Antony as this theory shown in practice. St. Antony (icon above) is presented as an example of one who has so assumed Christ, that he can be seen to be the continuation of Christ's life in a "normal" human existence. The text emphasizes that Antony was not a superhuman, that the presence of Christ was not felt in him as something other than human, but as a human being as he ought to be. Particularly notable is that he was neither insensible to natural human emotions and bodily needs or motions, nor was he controlled by them- his was a life of perfect balance, the vision of God ruling the life on earth rather than vice versa: "He maintained utter equilibrium, like one guided by the logos and steadfast in that which accords with nature."

In discussing the way we capitulate the life of Christ in our bodies, Fr. Behr pays particular attention to the confusion over the Christian attitude towards the human body and the material world in general. In both the Scriptures and the writings of the fathers, the body or flesh is portrayed in seemingly contradictory terms: On the one hand as a glorious creation and helper in our salvation, on the other hand as unruly and an enemy to be subjugated. Fr. Behr explains that what is spoken of when the body is called an enemy is the body as regarded by a diseased mind, the body made an idol. The problem is not the body in itself, which was created by God and is good, but an "evil husbandry of the mind" over the body. He emphasizes, "If one does not recognize that the struggle is ultimately with one's own perceptions, then one is left waging war on one's own nature." That is in fact what some outside observers and even some Christians who haven't been rightly taught perceive in these Scriptures and early Christian teaching. Fr. Behr underlines that Christ came to fight in and on behalf of the human body, and it is in our body that we seek to put on Christ. The body participates in the soul's salvation and vice versa; it is not just coming along for the ride or awaiting destruction while we continue on as disembodied creatures.

Fr. Behr then provides brief examples of contrasts between "good husbandry" and "evil husbandry" of the mind over the body. While eating and enjoyment of it is natural, gluttony can pervert this: "Gluttony is a false opinion about the way things are: 'Gluttony is hypocrisy of the stomach. Filled, it moans about scarcity...' " (Here quoting St. John Climacus.) Sex is given to us primarily for procreation, but can also be a ground for sanctification. Again quoting St. John Climacus: "I have watched impure souls mad for physical love but turning what they know of such love into a reason for repentance and transferring that same capacity for love to the Lord..."

This ordering of the body's impulses has been described in Orthodox spirituality as apatheia or detachment. Fr. John explains that "it connotes not repression but reorientation, not inhibition but freedom; having overcome the passions, we are free to be our true selves, free to love others, free to love God." (+Kallistos Ware) Such ordering is not accomplished with severity or austerity, still less with judgmentalism, but by remaining "open and pliable" to the activity of God within oneself. It is ultimately not we who form Christ in ourselves but Christ who does so. Lest it be said that Orthodoxy does not preach grace!

Finally, Fr. Behr brings the book back around to its starting place, to his main goal, which was to strip back some of modernity's constraints around our understanding of the gospel and the Christian life. The picture he paints- in this epilogue literally offering diagrams which I found helpful even though as a former Campus Crusader they initially made me nervous!- is that the Cross is literally the starting point of the whole universe. It is in the Cross that we see the history of humanity not in parallel terms to God's part in "salvation history," with arrows going back and forth between parallel lines (reminiscent to me of both dispensationalism and Calvinism), but as a single trajectory beginning at the Cross. The Cross is not only the restoration of creation, it in fact can be seen as its starting point.

I am reminded of St. Ephrem the Syrian's poem The Pearl, where he warns against the soul's wish to plumb the depths of the Trinity, as it is more than enough to content oneself with contemplation of God the Son. This seems to me precisely what Fr. John is calling us to: To regain the perspective the early church had when they considered Christ's Passion in light of the Scriptures. We have been taught to preoccupy ourselves with historical-critical and rationalistic questions and approaches, and to "what if's." They were caught up in a vision of Christ that filled their whole consciousness. Christ the complete image of God, the Alpha and Omega, through Whom we know all that we can know of God and humanity, in Whose Life we become the full human we were created to be, in Whom we, as St. Athanasius taught, become gods.

Light from the Christian East

Frederica Matthewes-Green gives a hearty recommendation for this new book by a Reformed professor, James Payton. Here's Khouria Frederica's blurb about the book on its jacket:

"James Payton has combined his thorough familiarity with Eastern Orthodoxy with a gracious and respectful sensibility, and produced a book that is inviting, accessible, and more content-rich than an introductory work is expected to be. 'Light from the Christian East' is an excellent book."

You can also see her review of it on amazon.com.