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By St. Leo the Great, Pope of Old Rome
delivered on Holy Saturday in the Paschal Vigil
I. We must all be partakers in Christ’s resurrection life.
In my last sermon, dearly-beloved, not inappropriately, as I think, we explained to you our participation in the cross of Christ, whereby the life of believers contains in itself the mystery of Easter, and thus what is honoured at the feast is celebrated by our practice. And how useful this is you yourselves have proved, and by your devotion have learnt, how greatly benefited souls and bodies are by longer fasts, more frequent prayers, and more liberal alms. For there can be hardly any one who has not profited by this exercise, and who has not stored up in the recesses of his conscience something over which he may rightly rejoice. But these advantages must be retained with persistent care, lest our efforts fall away into idleness, and the devil’s malice steal what God’s grace gave. Since, therefore, by our forty days’ observance we have wished to bring about this effect, that we should feel something of the Cross at the time of the Lord’s Passion, we must strive to be found partakers also of Christ’s Resurrection, and “pass from death unto life1095 Cf. 1 John iii. 14.,” while we are in this body. For when a man is changed by some process from one thing into another, not to be what he was is to him an ending, and to be what he was not is a beginning. But the question is, to what a man either dies or lives: because there is a death, which is the cause of living, and there is a life, which is the cause of dying. And nowhere else but in this transitory world are both sought after, so that upon the character of our temporal actions depend the differences of the eternal retributions. We must die, therefore, to the devil and live to God: we must perish to iniquity that we may rise to righteousness. Let the old sink, that the new may rise; and since, as says the Truth, “no one can serve two masters Matt. vi. 24.,” let not him be Lord who has caused the overthrow of those that stood, but Him Who has raised the fallen to victory.
II. God did not leave His soul in hell, nor suffer His flesh to see corruption.
Accordingly, since the Apostle says, “the first man is of the earth earthy, the second man is from heaven heavenly. As is the earthy, such also are they that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such also are they that are heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthy, so let us also bear the image of Him Who is from heaven 1 Cor. xv. 47-49 we must greatly rejoice over this change, whereby we are translated from earthly degradation to heavenly dignity through His unspeakable mercy, Who descended into our estate that He might promote us to His, by assuming not only the substance but also the conditions of sinful nature, and by allowing the impassibility of Godhead to be affected by all the miseries which are the lot of mortal manhood. And hence that the disturbed minds of the disciples might not be racked by prolonged grief, He with such wondrous speed shortened the three days’ delay which He had announced, that by joining the last part of the first and the first part of the third day to the whole of the second, He cut off a considerable portion of the period, and yet did not lessen the number of days. The Saviour’s Resurrection therefore did not long keep His soul in Hades, nor His flesh in the tomb; and so speedy was the quickening of His uncorrupted flesh that it bore a closer resemblance to slumber than to death, seeing that the Godhead, Which quitted not either part of the Human Nature which He had assumed, reunited by Its power that which Its power had separated
III. Christ’s manifestation after the Resurrection showed that His Person was essentially the same as before.
And then there followed many proofs, whereon the authority of the Faith to be preached through the whole world might be based. And although the rolling away of the stone, the empty tomb, the arrangement of the linen cloths, and the angels who narrated the whole deed by themselves fully built up the truth of the Lord’s Resurrection, yet did He often appear plainly to the eyes both of the women and of the Apostles not only talking with them, but also remaining and eating with them, and allowing Himself to be handled by the eager and curious hands of those whom doubt assailed. For to this end He entered when the doors were closed upon the disciples, and gave them the Holy Spirit by breathing on them, and after giving them the light of understanding opened the secrets of the Holy Scriptures, and again Himself showed them the wound in the side, the prints of the nails, and all the marks of His most recent Passion, whereby it might be acknowledged that in Him the properties of the Divine and Human Nature remained undivided, and we might in such sort know that the Word was not what the flesh is, as to confess God’s only Son to be both Word and Flesh.
IV. But though it is the same, it is also glorified.
The Apostle of the Gentiles, Paul, dearly-beloved, does not disagree with this belief, when he says, “even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more. For the Lord’s Resurrection was not the ending, but the changing of the flesh, and His substance was not destroyed by His increase of power. The quality altered, but the nature did not cease to exist: the body was made impassible, which it had been possible to crucify: it was made incorruptible, though it had been possible to wound it. And properly is Christ’s flesh said not to be known in that state in which it had been known, because nothing remained passible in it, nothing weak, so that it was both the same in essence and not the same in glory. But what wonder if S. Paul maintains this about Christ’s body, when he says of all spiritual Christians “wherefore henceforth we know no one after the flesh.” Henceforth, he says, we begin to experience the resurrection in Christ, since the time when in Him, Who died for all, all our hopes were guaranteed to us. We do not hesitate in diffidence, we are not under the suspense of uncertainty, but having received an earnest of the promise, we now with the eye of faith see the things which will be, and rejoicing in the uplifting of our nature, we already possess what we believe.
V. Being saved by hope, we must not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.
Let us not then be taken up with the appearances of temporal matters, neither let our contemplations be diverted from heavenly to earthly things. Things which as yet have for the most part not come to pass must be reckoned as accomplished: and the mind intent on what is permanent must fix its desires there, where what is offered is eternal. For although “by hope we were saved Rom. viii. 24.,” and still bear about with us a flesh that is corruptible and mortal, yet we are rightly said not to be in the flesh, if the fleshly affections do not dominate us, and are justified in ceasing to be named after that, the will of which we do not follow. And so, when the Apostle says, “make not provision for the flesh in the lusts thereof Rom. xiii. 14.,” we understand that those things are not forbidden us, which conduce to health and which human weakness demands, but because we may not satisfy all our desires nor indulge in all that the flesh lusts after, we recognize that we are warned to exercise such self-restraint as not to permit what is excessive nor refuse what is necessary to the flesh, which is placed under the mind’s control. And hence the same Apostle says in another place, “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it Eph. v. 29.;” in so far, of course, as it must be nourished and cherished not in vices and luxury, but with a view to its proper functions, so that nature may recover herself and maintain due order, the lower parts not prevailing wrongfully and debasingly over the higher, nor the higher yielding to the lower, lest if vices overpower the mind, slavery ensues where there should be supremacy.
VI. Our godly resolutions must continue all the year round, not be confined to Pascha only.
Let God’s people then recognize that they are a new creation in Christ, and with all vigilance understand by Whom they have been adopted and Whom they have adopted, i.e. Christ has taken on Him human nature, and we by virtue thereof are partakers of the Divine.. Let not the things, which have been made new, return to their ancient instability; and let not him who has “put his hand to the plough Luke ix. 62.” forsake his work, but rather attend to that which he sows than look back to that which he has left behind. Let no one fall back into that from which he has risen, but, even though from bodily weakness he still languishes under certain maladies, let him urgently desire to be healed and raised up. For this is the path of health through imitation of the Resurrection begun in Christ, whereby, notwithstanding the many accidents and falls to which in this slippery life the traveller is liable, his feet may be guided from the quagmire on to solid ground, for, as it is written, “the steps of a man are directed by the Lord, and He will delight in his way. When the just man falls he shall not be overthrown, because the Lord will stretch out His handPs. xxxvii. 23, 24..” These thoughts, dearly-beloved, must be kept in mind not only for the Easter festival, but also for the sanctification of the whole life, and to this our present exercise ought to be directed, that what has delighted the souls of the faithful by the experience of a short observance may pass into a habit and remain unalterably, and if any fault creep in, it may be destroyed by speedy repentance. And because the cure of old-standing diseases is slow and difficult, remedies should be applied early, when the wounds are fresh, so that rising ever anew from all downfalls, we may deserve to attain to the incorruptible Resurrection of our glorified flesh in Christ Jesus our Lord, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost for ever and ever. Amen.
On our Oblation Journal:
Witness of Christ’s Descent into Hades
This is the account of two brothers who were resurrected shortly after Christ’s burial. The two , sent by the Archangel Michael, gave witness before Caiaphas and Anaias and before Joseph of Arimathea, and Rabbis Nicodemus, and Gamaliel amongst others. This is how our Lord spent this Holy and Great Sabbath, not in the grave though, just prior to His Glorious Resurrection from the dead.
The Sarum Cathedral Graduale now assigns the following Hymn to be sung. While the Clergy and Monastics each come up individually, and kneel three times, each time drawing closer to the Cross until they kiss Its Feet.
Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.
Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.
Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle,
Sing the last, the dread affray;
O’er the Cross, the Victor’s Trophy,
Sound the high triumphal lay,
How the pains of death enduring,
Earth’s Redeemer won the day.
Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.
He, Our Maker, deeply Grieving
That the first-made Adam fell,
When he ate the fruit forbidden
Whose reward was death and hell,
Mark’d e’en then This Tree the ruin
Of the first tree to dispel.
Faithful Cross, above all other 
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.
Thus the work for our salvation
He ordained to be done;
To the traitor’s art opposing
Art yet deeper than his own;
Thence the remedy procuring
Whence the fatal wound begun.
Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.
Therefore, when at length the fulness
Of th’ appointed time was come,
He was Sent, the world’s Creator,
From the Father’s Heav’nly Home,
And was Found in human fashion,
Offspring of the Virgin’s womb.
Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.
Lo! He lies, an Infant Weeping,
Where the narrow manger stands,
While the Mother-Maid His Members
Wraps in mean and lowly bands,
And the swaddling clothes is winding
Round His Helpless Feet and Hands.
Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.
Thirty years among us Dwelling,
His appointed time fulfill’d,
Born for this He meets His Passion,
For that this He freely will’d;
On the Cross the Lamb is lifted,
Where His Life-Blood shall be Spill’d.
Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.
He endur’d the Nails, the spitting,
Vinegar, and Spear, and reed;
From That Holy Body Broken
Blood and Water forth proceed;
Earth, and stars, and sky, and ocean,
By That Flood from stain are freed.
Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.
Bend Thy Boughs, 0 Tree of Glory,
Thy relaxing sinews bend;
For awhile the ancient rigour
That Thy birth bestow’d suspend;
And the King of heav’nly beauty
On Thy Bosom gently tend.
Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.
Thou Alone wast counted worthy
This world’s Ransom to sustain;
That a ship-wreck’d race for ever
Might a port of refuge gain;
With the Sacred Blood Anointed
Of the Lamb for sinners Slain.
Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.
Praise and honour to the Father,
Praise and honour to the Son,
Praise and honour to the Spirit,
Ever Three and ever One,
One in might, and One in glory
While eternal ages run.
Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.
__________________________________________
The Good Friday Services
© St. Gregory Press, West Milford, NJ, USA
St. Gregory Press is the official publication arm of
the Archdiocese of New York & New Jersey
His Eminence Archbishop John (LoBue), diocesan prelate
Of the
Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe & the Americas
His Beatitude Metropolitan Evloghios of Milan (Italy), Chief Hierarch
http://milansynodusa.org/press.html
A pdf copy of the complete Good Friday Services according to the Sarum Cathedral Use is available in our Hermitage’s online Library here.
If the Holy Chrism is to be consecrated at this Mass by the Bishop, this Rite is begun during the end of the Canon, as given in the Sarum Pontifical. The following Hymn is to be sung during the Consecration of the Chrism as indicated therein; but if the Chrism be not consecrated at this Mass, this Hymn may be sung during the Canon:
Refrain:
Hear our Hymn, Redeemer, Lord; Thee we praise with one accord.
1. Hear us, Judge of dead and living, Hope of mortals, hear us singing.
Hear us emblematic tribute from the peaceful olive bringing.
[Refrain]
2. May the Sacred Flame draw near us, Which when through the flood Descending
To the Church’s Ark yet floating once did bear the tree-branch Saving.
[Refrain ]
3. Fruit of Light the tree did yield, that gave This Hallowed store;
Worshipping the world’s Redeemer, this we offer and adore.
[Refrain]
4. Consecrate Thou, Christ, Eternal King of Heaven, our home.
This our Chrism, a living seal against the powers of doom.
[Refrain]
5. That by this most sacred unction, either sex may be healed.
And our wounded glory rescued through the Spirit’s plentitude.
[Refrain]
6. There before the Altar standing, prays the Mitered Pontiff lowly,
Duly he performs the Rite, to consecrate the Chrism Holy.
[Refrain]
7. May This Day of festal gladness, keep Its holy joys in store,
Dignified with joyful praises, Blooming now and evermore.
[Refrain]
8. Lasting praise to God the Father, also to the Son be glory;
Honour, virtue, and the power be to Paraclete All-Holy.
Refrain:
Hear our Hymn, Redeemer, Lord; Thee we praise with one accord.
________________________________________________________________________
The Maundy Thursday Services
© St. Gregory Press, West Milford, NJ, USA
St. Gregory Press is the official publication arm of
the Archdiocese of New York & New Jersey
His Eminence Archbishop John (LoBue), diocesan prelate
Of the
Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe & the Americas
His Beatitude Metropolitan Evloghios of Milan (Italy), Chief Hierarch
http://milansynodusa.org/press.html
A pdf copy of the complete Maundy Thursday Services according to the Sarum Cathedral Use is available in our Hermitage’s online Library here.
- Sensing Thy divinity, O Lord, a woman of many sins
- takes it upon herself to become a myrrh-bearer,
- And in deep mourning brings before Thee fragrant oil
- in anticipation of Thy burial; crying:
- “Woe to me!” For night is to me, oestrus of lechery,
- a dark and moonless eros of sin.
- Receive the wellsprings of my tears,
- O Thou who gatherest the waters of the oceans into clouds.
- Bend to me, to the sorrows of my heart,
- O Thou who bendedst down the heavens in Thy ineffable self-emptying.
- I will kiss Thine immaculate feet
- and dry them with the locks of my hair;
- Those very feet whose sound Eve heard at dusk in Paradise
- and hid herself in fear.
- Who shall reckon the multitude of my sins,
- or the abysses of Thy judgment, O Saviour of my soul?
- Do not ignore Thy handmaiden,
- O Thou whose mercy is endless.
by Pope Leo the Great
GOD is He whose nature is goodness, whose will is power, and whose work is mercy.
Wherefore, at the very beginning of the world, as soon as the devil’s hatred had mortally 
poisoned mankind with the venom on his envy, this almighty and merciful God even then foretold those remedies which his mercy had foreordained for our healing.
At that time he bade the serpent know that there was to be a seed of the woman who yet should crush the prideful swelling of his pestilential head. This seed was none other than the Christ to come in the flesh, even God and Man in one Person, who should be born of the Virgin, and by his virgin-birth should condemn the seducer of man.
THE devil rejoiced that he had, by his artful cunning, so deceived man as to make him lose the gifts of God, and forfeit the privilege of eternal life. Yea, when the devil had thus brought man under the hard sentence of death, he found a certain solace for his own misery in the fact that he now had a comrade in his guilt. He thought also that God, in His just anger, would change His original design towards man, whom he had made in such honor.
But, dearly beloved, that unchangeable God, whose will cannot be balked of its loving-kindness, in the dispensation of his own secret counsel, had already provided a mysterious way for carrying out his original purpose of goodness. So it was that mankind, which had been led into sin by the wicked craft of the devil, was not suffered to perish, and frustrate that gracious purpose of God.
by Blessed Seraphim of Platina
Remember your instructors, who have spoken the word of God to you; whose faith follow, considering the end of their life. Be not led away with various and strange doctrines.
Hebrews 13:7, 9
NEVER HAS THERE BEEN such an age of false teachers as this pitiful 20th century, so rich in 
material gadgets and so poor in mind and soul. Every conceivable opinion, even the most absurd, even those hitherto rejected by the universal consent of all civilized peoples-now has its platform and its own “teacher.” A few of these teachers come with demonstration or promise of “spiritual power” and false miracles, as do some occultists and “charismatics;” but most of the contemporary teachers offer no more than a weak concoction of undigested ideas which they received “out of the air,” is it were, or from some modern self-appointed “wise man” (or woman) who knows more than all the ancients merely by living in our “enlightened” modern times. As a result, philosophy has a thousand schools, and “Christianity” a thousand sects. Where is the truth to be found in all this, if indeed it is to be found at all in our most misguided times?
In only one place is there to be found the fount of true teaching, coming from God Himself, not diminished over the centuries but ever fresh, being one and the same in all those who truly teach it, leading those who follow it to eternal salvation. This place is the Orthodox Church of Christ, the fount is the grace of the All-Holy Spirit, and the true teachers of the Divine doctrine that issues forth from this fount are the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church.
Alas! How few Orthodox Christians know this, and know enough to drink from this fount! How many contemporary hierarchs lead their flocks, not on the true pastures of the soul, the Holy Fathers, but along the ruinous paths of modern wise men who promise something “new” and strive only to make Christians forget the true teaching of the Holy Fathers, a teaching which-it is quite true-is entirely out of harmony with the false ideas which govern modern times.
The Orthodox teaching of the Holy Fathers is not something of one age, whether “ancient” or “modern.” It has been transmitted in unbroken succession from the time of Christ and His Apostles to the present day, and there has never been a time when it was necessary to discover a “lost” patristic teaching. Even when many Orthodox Christians have neglected this teaching (as is the case, for example, in our own day), its true representatives were still handing it down to those who hungered to receive it.. There have been great patristic ages, such as the dazzling epoch of the fourth century, and there have been periods of decline in patristic awareness among Orthodox Christians; but there has been no period since the very foundation of Christ’s Church on earth when the patristic tradition was not guiding the Church; there has been no century without Holy Fathers of its own. St. Nicetas Stethatos, disciple and biographer of St. Simeon the New Theologian, has written; “It has been granted by God that from generation to generation there should not cease the preparation by the Holy Spirit of His prophets and friends for the order of His Church.”
Most instructive it is for us, the last Christians, to take guidance and inspiration from the Holy Fathers of our own and recent times, those who lived in condition similar to our own and yet kept undamaged and unchanged the same ever-fresh teaching, which is not for one time or race, but for all times to the end of the world, and for the whole race of Orthodox Christians.
Before looking at two of the recent Holy Fathers, however, let us make clear that for us, Orthodox Christians, the study of the Holy Fathers is not an idle academic exercise. Much of what passes for a “patristic revival” in our times is scarcely more than a plaything of heterodox scholars and their “Orthodox” imitators, not one of whom has ever “discovered” a patristic truth for which he was ready to sacrifice his life. Such “patrology” is only rationalist scholarship which happens to take patristic teaching for its subject, without ever understanding that the genuine teaching of the Holy Fathers contains the truths which our spiritual life or death depends. Such pseudo-patristic scholars spend their time proving that “pseudo-Macarius” was a Messalian heretic, without understanding or practicing the pure Orthodox teaching of the true St. Macarius the Great; that “pseudo-Dionysius” was a calculated forger of books whose mystical and spiritual depths are totally beyond his accusers; that the thoroughly Christian and monastic life of Sts. Barlaam and Joasaph, handed down by St. John Damascene, is nothing but a “retelling of the Buddha story;” and a hundred similar fables manufactured by “experts” for a gullible public which has no idea of the agnostic atmosphere in which such “discoveries” are made. Where there are serious scholarly questions concerning some patristic texts (which, of course, there are), they will certainly not be resolved by referring them to such “experts, who are total strangers to the true patristic tradition, and only make their living at its expense.
When “Orthodox” scholars pick up the teaching of these pseudo-patristic scholars or make their own researches in the same rationalistic spirit, the outcome can be tragic; for such scholars are taken by many to be “spokesmen for Orthodoxy,” and their rationalistic pronouncements to be part of an “authentically patristic” outlook, thus deceiving many Orthodox Christians. Father Alexander Schmemann, for example, while pretending to set himself free from the “Western captivity” which, in his ignorance of the true patristic tradition of recent centuries (which is to be found more in the monasteries than in the academies), he fancies to have completely dominated Orthodox theology in modern times, has himself become the captive of Protestant rationalistic ideas concerning liturgical theology, as has been well pointed out by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, a genuine patristic theologian of today.1 Unfortunately, such a clear unmasking has yet to be made of the pseudo-scholar of Russian Saints and Holy Fathers, G. P. Fedotov, who imagines that St. Sergius “was the first Russian saint who can be termed a mystic” (thereby ignoring the four centuries of equally “mystical” Russian Fathers who preceded him), looks pointlessly for “originality” in the “literary work” of St. Nilus of Sora (thus showing that he does not even understand the meaning of tradition in Orthodoxy), slanders the great Orthodox Saint, Tikhon of Zadonsk, as “the son of the Western Baroque rather than the heir of Eastern spirituality,”2 and with great artificiality tries to make St. Seraphim (who is actually so stunningly in the patristic tradition that he is scarcely to be distinguished from the great Fathers of the Egyptian desert) into some “uniquely Russian” phenomenon who was “the first known representative of this class of spiritual elders (startsi) in Russia,” whose “approach to the world is unprecedented in the Eastern tradition,” and who was “the forerunner of the new form of spirituality which should succeed merely ascetical monasticism.”3
Lamentably, the consequences of such pseudo-scholarship often appear in real life; gullible souls who take these false conclusions for genuine begin to work for a “liturgical revival” on Protestant foundations, transform St. Seraphim (ignoring his “inconvenient” teachings regarding heretics, which he shares with the whole patristic tradition) into a Hindu yogin or a “charismatic,” and in general approach the Holy Fathers just as do most contemporary scholars-without reverence and awe, as though they were on the same level, as an exercise is esotericism or as some kind of intellectual game, instead of as a guide to true life and salvation.
NOT SO ARE TRUE Orthodox scholars; not so is the true Orthodox patristic tradition, where the genuine, unchanging teaching of true Christianity is handed down in unbroken succession both orally and by the written and printed word, from spiritual father to spiritual son, from teacher to disciple.
In the 20th century one Orthodox hierarch stands out especially for his patristic orientation-Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava (? 1943, February 19), one of the founders of the free Russian Church Outside of Russia, and perhaps the chief architect of her uncompromising and traditionalist ideology. In the years when he was vice-chairman of the Synod of Bishops of this Church (1920’s), he was widely acknowledged as the most patristically-minded of all the Russian theologians abroad. In the 1930’s he retired into total seclusion to become a second Theophanes the Recluse; and since then he has been, sadly, very largely forgotten. Fortunately, his memory has been sacredly kept by his disciples and followers, and in recent months one of his leading disciples, Archbishop Averky of Holy Trinity Monastery at Jordanville, New York, has published his biography together with a number of his sermons.4 In these sermons may be clearly seen the hierarch’s awe and reverence before the Holy Fathers, his discipleship toward them, and his surpassing humility which will be content only when he is transmitting nothing of his own but only the ideas and the very words of the Holy Fathers. Thus, in a sermon on Pentecost Sunday he says: “The teaching of the Holy Trinity is the pinnacle of Christian theology. Therefore I do not presume to set forth this teaching in my own words, but I set it forth in the words of the holy and God-bearing theologians and great Fathers of the Church: Athanasius the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and Basil the Great. Mine only are the lips, but theirs the words and thoughts. They present the Divine meal, and I am only the servant of their Divine banquet.”
In another sermon, Archbishop Theophanes gives the reasons for his self-effacement before the Holy Fathers-a characteristic so typical of the great transmitters of patristic teaching, even great theologians in their own right such as Archbishop Theophanes, but which is so glaringly misinterpreted by worldly scholars as a “lack of originality.” In his sermon on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, given in 1928 in Varna, Bulgaria, he offers to the faithful “a word on the significance of the Holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church for us Christians. In what does their greatness consist, and on what does their special significance for us depend? The Church, brethren, is the house of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth (I Timothy 3:15). Christian truth is preserved in the Church in Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition; but it requires a correct preservation and a correct interpretation. The significance of the Holy Fathers is to be found precisely in this: that they are the most capable preservers and interpreters of this truth by virtue of the sanctity of their lives, their profound knowledge of the word of God, and the abundance of the grace of the Holy Spirit which dwells in them.” The rest of this sermon is composed of nothing but quotes from the Holy Fathers themselves (Sts. Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great, Simeon the New Theologian, Nicetas Stethatos) to support this view.
The final Holy Father whom Archbishop Theophanes quotes, at great length, in his sermon, is one close to him in time, a predecessor of his in the transmission of the authentic patristic tradition in Russia-Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov. He has a double significance for us today: not only is he a Holy Father of almost our own times, but also his search for truth is very similar to that of sincere truth-seekers today, and he thus shows us how it is possible for the “enlightened modern man” to enter once again the pure atmosphere of patristic-that is, true Orthodox Christian-ideas and ways of thinking. It is extremely inspiring for us to read, in the words of Bishop Ignatius himself, how a military engineer burst the bonds of “modern knowledge” and entered the patristic tradition, which he received, in addition to books, directly from a disciple of St. Paisius Velichkovsky, and handed down to our own day.
“When I was still a student,” Archbishop Theophanes quotes Bishop Ignatius,5 “there were no enjoyments or distractions for me! The world presented nothing enticing for me. My mind was entirely immersed in the sciences, and at the same time I was burning with the desire to find out where was the true faith, where was the true teaching of it, foreign to errors both dogmatic and moral.
“At the same time there was already presented to my gaze the boundaries of human knowledge in the highest, fully developed sciences. Coming to these boundaries, I asked of the sciences: ‘What do you give that a man may call his own? Man is eternal, and what is his own should be eternal. Show me this eternal possession, this true wealth, which I might take with me beyond the grave! Up to now I see only knowledge which ends with the earth, which cannot exist after the separation of the soul from the body.’”
The searching youth inquired in turn of mathematics, physics, chemistry, philosophy, showing his profound knowledge of them; then of geography, geodesy, languages, literature; but he finds that they are all of the earth. In answer to all his agonized questioning he received the same reply similar searches receive in our even more “enlightened” 20th century: “The sciences were silent.”
Then, “for a satisfactory answer, a truly necessary and living answer, I turned to faith. But where are you hidden, O true and holy Faith? I could not recognize you in fanaticism {Papism}which was not sealed with the Gospel meekness; it breathed passion and high-mindedness! I could not recognize you in the arbitrary teaching {Protestantism} which separated from the Church, making up its own new system, vainly and pridefully proclaiming the discovery of a new, true Christian faith, after a lapse of eighteen centuries from the Incarnation of God the Word! Oh! In what a heavy perplexity my soul was! How frightfully it was weighed down! What waves of doubt rose up against it, arising from distrust of myself, from distrust of everything that was clamoring, crying out around me because of my lack of knowledge, my ignorance of the truth.
“And I began often, with tears, to implore God that He might not give me over as a sacrifice to error, but that He might show me the right path on which I should direct towards Him my invisible journey of mind and heart. And, O wonder! Suddenly a thought stood before me. My heart went out to it as to The embrace of a friend. This thought inspired me to study faith in the sources-in the writings of the Holy Fathers! ‘Their holiness,’ the thought said to me, ‘vouches for their trustworthiness: choose them for your guides.’ I obeyed. I found means of obtaining the works of the holy pleasers of God, and in eagerness I began to read them, investigate them deeply. Having read some, I would take up and read others, read them, re-read them, study them. What was it that above all else struck me in the works of the Fathers of the Orthodox Church? It was their harmony, their wondrous, magnificent harmony. Eighteen centuries, through their lips, testified to a single unanimous teaching, a Divine teaching!
“When on a clear autumn night I gaze at the clear sky, sown with numberless stars, so diverse in size yet shedding a single light, then I say to myself: such are the writings of the Fathers! When on a summer day I gaze at the vast sea, covered with a multitude of diverse vessels with their unfurled sails like white swans’ wings, vessels racing under a single wind to a single goal, to a single harbor, I say to myself: such are the writings of the Fathers! When I hear a harmonious, many-voiced choir, in which diverse voices in elegant harmony sing a single Divine song, then I say to myself: such are the writings of the Fathers!
“And what teaching do I find in them? I find a teaching repeated by all the Fathers, namely, that the only path to salvation is the unwavering following of the instructions of the Holy Fathers. ‘Have you seen,’ they say, ‘anyone deceived by false teaching, perishing from an incorrect choice of ascetic labors?-then know that he followed himself, his own understanding, his own opinions, and not the teaching of the Fathers’ (Abba Dorotheus, Fifth Instruction), out of which is composed the dogmatic and moral tradition of the Church. With this tradition as a priceless possession, the Church nourishes her children.
This thought was sent by God, from Whom is every good gift, from Whom a good through is the beginning of every good thing. This thought was for me the first harbor in the land of truth. Here my soul found rest from the waves and winds. This thought became the foundation stone for the spiritual building of my soul This thought became my guiding star. It began constantly to illumine for me the very difficult and much-suffering, narrow, invisible path of the mind and heart toward God. I looked at the religious world with this thought, and I saw: the cause of all errors consists in ignorance, in forgetfulness, in the absence of this thought.
“The reading of the Fathers clearly convinced me that salvation in the bosom of the Orthodox Russian Church was undoubted, something of which the religions of Western Europe are deprived, since they have not preserved whole either the dogmatic or the moral teaching of the Church of Christ from her beginning. It revealed to me what Christ has done for mankind, in what consists the fall of man, why a Redeemer was necessary, in what consists the salvation procured by the Redeemer. It inculcated in me that one must develop, sense, see salvation in oneself, without which faith in Christ is dead, and Christianity is a word and a name without being put into effect! It instructed me to look upon eternity as eternity, before which a thousand years of earthly life is nothing, let alone our life which is measured by some half a century. It instructed me that earthly life must lead to preparation for eternity. It showed me that all earthly occupations, enjoyments, honor, pre-eminence-are empty toys, with which grown-up children play and in which they lose the blessedness of eternity. All this the Holy Fathers set forth with complete celerity in their sacredly splendid writings.’
Archbishop Theophanes concludes his patristic exhortation with this appeal: “Brethren, let this good thought {the taking of the Holy Fathers as our guide} be your guiding star also in the days of your earthly pilgrimage on the waves of the sea of life!”
The truth of this appeal, as of the inspired words of Bishop Ignatius, has not dimmed in the decades since they were uttered. The world has gone for on the path of apostasy from Christian Truth, and it becomes ever more clear that there is no alternative to this path save that of following the uncompromising path of truth which the Holy Fathers have handed down to us.
Yet we must go to the Holy Fathers not merely to “learn about them;” if we do no more than this we are in no better state than the idle disputants of the dead academies of this perishing modern civilization, even when these academies are “Orthodox” and the learned theologians in them neatly define and explain all about “sanctity” and “spirituality” and “theosis,” but have not the experience needed to speak straight to the heart of thirsting souls and wound them into desiring the path of spiritual struggle, nor the knowledge to detect the fatal error of the academic “theologians” who speak of God with cigarette or wineglass in hand, nor the courage to accuse the apostate “canonical” hierarchs of their betrayal of Christ. We must go to the Holy Fathers, rather, in order to become their disciples, to receive the teaching of true life, the soul’s salvation, even while knowing that by doing this we shall lose the favor of this world and become outcasts from it. If we do this we shall find the way out of the confused swamp of modern thought, which is based precisely upon abandonment of the sacred teaching of the Fathers. We shall find that the Holy Fathers are most “contemporary” in that they speak directly to the struggle of the Orthodox Christian today, giving answers to the crucial questions of life and death which mere academic scholarship is usually afraid even to ask-and when it does ask them, gives a harmless answer which “explains” these questions to those who are merely curious about them, but are not thirsting for answers. We shall find true guidance from the Fathers, learning humility and distrust of our own vain worldly wisdom, which we have sucked in with the air of the pestilential times, by means of trusting those who have pleased God and not the world. We shall find in them true fathers, so lacking in our own day when the love of many has grown cold (Matthew 24:12)-fathers whose only aim is to lead us their children to God and His Heavenly Kingdom, where we shall walk and converse with these angelic men in unutterable joy forever.
There is no problem of our own confused times which cannot find its solution by a careful and reverent reading of the Holy Fathers: whether the problem of the sects and heresies that abound today, or the schisms and “jurisdictions;” whether the pretense of spiritual life put forth by the charismatic revival,” or the subtle temptations of modern comfort and conveniences; whether complex philosophical questions such as “evolution,” or the straightforward moral questions of abortion, euthanasia, and “birth control;” whether the refined apostasy of “Sergianism,” which offers a church organization in place of the Body of Christ, or the crudeness of the “renovationism,” which begins by “revising the calendar” and ends in “Eastern-rite Protestantism.” In all these questions the Holy Fathers, and our living Fathers who follow them, are our only sure guide.
Bishop Ignatius and other recent Fathers have indicated for us last Christians which Holy Fathers are the most important for us to read, and in what order. May this be an inspiration to us all to place the patristic teaching as the foundation stone of the building of our own souls, unto the inheritance of everlasting life! Amen.
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1. “The Liturgical Theology of Fr. A. Schmemann,” in The Orthodox Word, 1970, No. 6, Pp. 260-280.
2. A thesis thoroughly refuted by Nadejda Gorodetsky in Saint Tikhon Zadonsky, Inspirer of Dostoyevsky, SPCK, London, 1951.
3. See Fedotov’s introductions to the writings of these Saints in A Treasury of Russian Spirituality, Sheed & Ward, New York, 1948.
4. A brief life of him in English may be read in The Orthodox Word, 1969, No. 5.
5. From Volume I of Bishop Ignatius’ Collected Works in Russian, pp. 396-401.
on the Ecumenical Patriarch
April 24, 2009 in Church History, Church Politics, Commentary | Leave a comment
The so-called “Mainline” Orthodoxy is all a buzz of late regarding the positioning by the Patriarchate of Constantinople as the Ecumenical Patriarch assumes authority beyond honor over various local Orthodox Churches in the diaspora especially those in America. At the sametime, the Antiochian Church has experienced its own shake up as the Holy Synod in Damascus in effect recinded their American Church’s autocephalacy.
Amongst our various blogs we have previously offered statements against what is essentially the heresy of neo-Papism which is an outgrowth of the heresy of Ecumenism implanted in the Orthodox Church by the notorious heresarch Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis of Constan-tinople during the early 20th Century. Metaxakis, who was openly a Mason and manipulated his elections onto both the Thrones of Constantinople and Alexandria although he had previously been deposed. He introduced the Gregorian Calendar into the Orthodox Church, despite previous condemnations and anathemas by various Patriarchs. He not only encouraged joint prayer between Orthodox and Heterodox but assisted in founding the Ecumenical Movement. Successive Patriarchs from Constantinople have taken up Metaxakis’ Masonic Madness in watering down the prestine Faith of The Church that is rightly called Orthodox.
The Autonomous Orthodox Church of Western Europe and the Americas (an offspring of the True Orthodox Church of Greece) has often been criticized by individuals attached to ‘mainline’ Orthodox Churches that we surely could not be canonical because we are not in communion with nor recognized by Constantinople. Now that it is perhaps clearer that the EP intention is to control as many local Churches in the diaspora as possible that our detractor might begin to understand that a local Church’s canonical status does not depend upon the recognition of the EP or other Patriarchate. Such would be akin to Roman papism in the fallen Western Church.
From our moderate Traditional Orthodox perspective we are likewise concerned about the EP’s influence of theological syncreticism which makes Ecumenical relations with non-Orthodox and non-Christians possible. The EP’s efforts to enter into communion with Rome without Rome’s conversion, repentance or cleansing of its various heresies and irregularities is likewise an abandonment of True Orthodoxy. The adoption of the Gregorian or so-called “Revised Julian” Calendar is but a symptom of contemporary realitivism (among many other innovations) amongst mainline Orthodox while being a sign of the Masonic Madness that continues to fester in many jurisdictions.
The following are a variety of articles that address the status and problems with the modern Patriarchate of Constantinople:
The Canonical Status of the Patriarch of Constantinople in the Orthodox Church.
We recently posted this paper by the late Archbishop Gregory of Alaska (+April 14, 2008) on a Yahoo! Group amidst their conversation regarding the OCA Metropolitan Jonah’s various statements in response to a representative of the Phanar speking at Holy Cross Seminary. We were surprised that (to the best of our awareness) only Fr Gregory Jensen had taken notice of this article’s significance and reproduced it on his Paradosis blog. (hattip: Fr Gregory).
Patriarch Bartholomew can’t…
CANONICAL CHURCHES: What Does It Mean ?
Some thoughts on equating “Canonicity” with “Recognition” as a false guide of one’s Orthodoxy
Orthodox Ecclesiology in Outline
Constantinople’s unilateral encroachment (Again?)
The Decline of the Patriarchate of Constantinople
By ST. JOHN (MAXIMOVITCH) OF SAN FRANCISCO
Living Martyrdom of the Monks of ESPHIGMENOU MONASTERY – MOUNT ATHOS