(Orthodoxy Today) — Human exceptionalism advocate and author Wesley J. Smith speaks with host Kevin Allen of the Illumined Heart radio program on Ancient Faith Radio about the animal rights-animal liberation movement and its insistence on the “moral equivalence” between animals and humans! How does this compare with Orthodox teachings about the “brotherhood” of humans, animals and inanimate nature (St Gregory Palamas)?

Orthodox Today highlights an Ancient Faith Radio broadcast on this here:

www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/the-animal-rights-movement-from-an-orthodox-perspective

On a wall behind the altar of an Orthodox camp chapel near Ligonier is a larger-than-life icon of Jesus freeing souls from Hades.

The 8-foot Jesus, robed in white, stands on his broken cross. Its shards also represent the shattered gates of Hades, which in Orthodox theology is where the righteous and unrighteous await judgment. Grasping the hands of Adam and Eve, he raises them from a dark pit.

The icon illustrates an ancient understanding of Jesus’ resurrection as the gift he offers to all humanity on a renewed Earth. While all Orthodox churches are filled with icons, the Resurrection icon in the camp chapel at Antiochian Village retreat and conference center is one of the largest in Pennsylvania and possibly the United States.

Read more: goo.gl/zznd

By Lee Strobel

I saw plenty of dead bodies as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, but I’ve never seen anyone come back to life. That was the stuff of mythology and legend. After all, we live in a scientific age. Belief in a resurrection was simply untenable.

At least, that’s what I thought until I checked the facts for myself. Using my legal training, I investigated the most audacious claim of history: that Jesus of Nazareth returned from the dead and thus authenticated his claim to being the Son of God.

After nearly two years of research, I found my atheism cracking. Here’s some of what I discovered:

First, there’s overwhelming evidence Jesus was executed. In addition to multiple, early, independent confirmation in the New Testament documents (which, incidentally, I gave no special treatment), there are also five sources outside the Bible. Even atheist historian Gerd Lüdemann called Jesus’ death by crucifixion “indisputable.”

Second, we have resurrection accounts that date back so early they can’t be legendary — because legends take time to develop. A.N. Sherwin-White, the great classical historian from Oxford, said the passage of two generations was not even enough time for legend to grow up in the ancient world and wipe out a solid core of historical truth.

Read more at: goo.gl/707n

SOUTH CANAAN, PA [OCA] — Videos of four lenten talks given by His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah during a retreat for students of Saint Tikhon’s Seminary here on the first three days of Great Lent are now available on-line at www.stots.edu/news_100223_2.html.

In addition to touching on a variety of lenten and pastoral themes, Metropolitan Jonah challenged the seminarians to avoid meeting spiritual difficulties with resentment or reaction, but to seek inner stillness during the lenten season and beyond.

February 15, 2010
Great and Holy Lent

To the Most Reverend Hierarchs, the Reverend Priests and Deacons, the Monks and Nuns, the Presidents and Members of the Parish Councils of the Greek Orthodox Communities, the Distinguished Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Day, Afternoon, and Church Schools, the Philoptochos Sisterhoods, the Youth, the Hellenic Organizations, and the entire Greek Orthodox Family in America

Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

We begin this holy season of the year in anticipation of the great spiritual blessings that we will receive through a deeper commitment to God and through our repentance and humility as we live each day in His divine presence.  Great and Holy Lent is a very treasured period, filled with moments in which we can focus our hearts and minds on the grace of God.  Through daily prayer, fasting, worship, and offering for the needs of others, and by the grace of God our lives will continue to be transformed by Him and our souls will be drawn closer to our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the primary goal of the Lenten season and of all the disciplines of our Orthodox faith – to lead us to Christ.  In Holy Scripture we read that prayer, fasting, and service to people were a part of our Lord’s sacred ministry.  Through His example we are presented with a manner of living that focuses on communion with God and on the Gospel message of truth and life. This is also the focus of Great Lent.

First, Great and Holy Lent leads us to Christ through prayer.  This season is an excellent opportunity for prayer.  It is a period when we are called to renew our commitment to daily prayer and to devote more time to it. We make more time each day for personal and family prayer.  All of this directs our hearts and minds to the presence and power of Christ.  Our Lord is in our midst, ready to guide those who seek Him, assure those who are struggling, and lead us all through the power of God’s grace to real life.

Second, the Lenten season leads us to Christ through worship.  Over the coming weeks the parishes of our Holy Archdiocese will have frequent services, opportunities to gather together in praise of God and to renew our strength through prayer and participation in the Holy Eucharist.  The services of Lent are beautiful and solemn, leading us to examine our hearts within the sacred space of our sanctuaries and in communion with God and our brothers and sisters in the faith.  In the holy atmosphere of worship, through the hymns, petitions, readings, and Holy Sacraments, especially the Sacrament of Repentance and Confession of sins, we are presented above all with the One who offers liberation from sin and guilt and brings salvation.  Through worship we affirm the truth of what Christ has accomplished, we acknowledge His presence, and we respond in repentance and faith to His call to come and see all the blessings that God has for us.

Third, Great Lent leads us to Christ through fasting.  This is a very special discipline of our faith that helps diminish our attachment to the material things of this world and deepens our dependence on God.  It directs our hearts and minds toward the spiritual needs of our lives through a reorientation of our will.  Through abstinence from various types of foods and limitations on the time we spend procuring and preparing food, we can devote more time to prayer, and we can discipline our entire being to be more attentive to the presence and will of God. As children of a heavenly kingdom, the purpose and goal of our lives is not tied to the treasures of this earth, but to the condition of our souls and to our faith in God.  Fasting contributes to an awareness of this.

Finally, Lent leads us to Christ through offering for the needs of others. Our Lord is our example of offering, even through sacrifice.  Through giving of our time and resources to others, we imitate Christ, or rather we offer Christ.  We experience the joys and blessings of securing the well-being of others, and we also realize that the true meaning of life is found and fulfilled not only in what we receive from God, but in what we can give back to Him by giving to others.

At the beginning of this blessed time, may we have hearts and minds that are seeking Christ.  The way to Him through Great Lent is the true way of life; it is the journey of this season toward Holy Week and the celebration of the Feast of Feasts, Holy Pascha.  May we, by the grace of Christ, and through genuine repentance make this Lent a time of transformation of our existence and a renewal of our souls and minds.

With paternal love in Christ,

†DEMETRIOS
Archbishop of America

Feb 12, 2010

ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

†  B A R T H O L O M E W
By God’s Mercy
Archbishop of Constantinople the New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch
To the Plenitude of the Church
Grace and Peace be to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
Together with our Prayer, Blessing, and Forgiveness

Beloved brothers and sisters, children in the Lord,

Tomorrow, we enter the period of Holy and Great Lent. In the Lenten vespers of Forgiveness chanted this evening, we shall hear the sacred hymnographer urging us to “begin the time of fasting with joy, submitting ourselves to spiritual struggle” in preparing to welcome the great Passion and joyful Resurrection of our divine-human Lord.

Therefore, what is demanded is a joyful disposition in order to embrace fervently the spiritual struggle of this period of contrition in purification and prayerfulness. Fasting, abstinence, frugality, restriction of personal desires, intense prayer, confession, and similar ascetic elements are essential to the period of Great Lent and should not be considered burdensome obligations or unbearable duties that result in despondency or dejection. When doctors recommend diet or exercise as necessary prerequisites for psychosomatic health and vigor, the first advice they offer by way of a mandatory condition of success is a pleasant mental disposition, which includes smiling and positive thinking. The same also applies to the spiritual period of fasting that opens before us. Great Lent should be regarded as an invaluable divine gift. It is a sacred time of divine grace, which seeks to detach us from things material, lowly and corrupt in order to attract us toward things superior, wholesome and spiritual. It is a unique opportunity to remove from the soul every passion, to rid the body of everything superfluous, harmful and mortal. Accordingly, then, it is a time of immense rejoicing and gladness. A genuine feast and exhilaration!

Nevertheless, my beloved children, the fasting expected of us by the Church, as well as the abstinence, frugality, restriction of personal desires and unnecessary pleasures or expenses, literally constitute a prescription for salvation. This is especially true this year, when our world has experienced a global economic crisis, filled with imminent danger of bankruptcy not only for individuals and companies, but also for entire nations throughout the planet, with destructive consequences in skyrocketing unemployment, the creation of entire hosts of people plagued by poverty, depression, social turmoil, increase in crime, and other such tragedies. Great Lent instructs us to journey daily with a little less, without the arrogance of extravagance, waste and display. It encourages us to surrender all forms of greed and ignore the challenges of commercial advertising, which constantly promotes new and false necessities. It incites us to limit ourselves to what is absolutely essential and necessary in an attitude of dignified, deliberate simplicity. We are not to be a consuming or compulsive herd of thoughtless and heartless individuals, but a society of sensitive and caring persons, sharing with and supporting our “neighbor” that is in poverty or recession. Finally, Great Lent informs us about patience and tolerance in moments of smaller or larger deprivation, while simultaneously emphasizing the need to seek God’s assistance and mercy, placing our complete trust in His affectionate providence. That is how Christ envisions Great Lent. That is how the Saints lived Great Lent. That is how the Church Fathers undertook the struggle of Great Lent. That is how our faith has traditionally understood Great Lent. That is how the Church of Constantinople, in its wide experience and unceasing vigilance, has always projected and proclaimed Great Lent, and particularly in the current global circumstances.

In sharing these pastoral thoughts and words from the historical and holy Phanar, we extend to all of you our paternal prayer and spiritual blessing for a fruitful journey through the period of Great Lent.

Holy and Great Lent 2010
† BARTHOLOMEW
Fervent supplicant before God

goarch.org/news/lentpatriarchhomily-02-12-2010

To the Very Reverend and Reverend Clergy,
Monastics, and Faithful of
The Orthodox Church in America

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

The gateway to divine repentance has been opened: let us enter eagerly, purified in our bodies and observing abstinence from food and passions, as obedient servants of Christ who has called the world into the heavenly Kingdom. Let us offer to the King of all a tenth part of the whole year, that we may look with love upon His Resurrection. [Cheesefare Monday, Matins sessional hymn]

We approach the Great Fast as our preparation to celebrate the life-giving Passion and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Great Lent is a time of great beauty and profundity, a time which the Church calls the “tithe of the year” which we give to Christ in a spirit of fasting and self-denial. We fast, we pray, we go to services, and we give alms. But what is different in us the very day after Pascha? Have we attained inner peace? Have we come to self-control over our passions? Has my soul been healed, even a little?

Lent is the time for repentance. But that repentance does not simply mean feeling sorry for our sins, much less trying to do some kind of penitential acts to atone for them. Rather, the goal of repentance is the transformation of our minds and hearts, our very consciousness. It means a transformation of our whole life. To engage it means that we have to embrace change. This change not only affects our diet for a few weeks, or abstaining from some bad habits. It means a different way of behaving, of perceiving God, ourselves, our neighbors. It means a rejection and renunciation of the ways we have been living and treating others, and the adoption of a new way of life. We have to come to the recognition that how we have been living and behaving does not lead us deeper into communion with God and our neighbors, but rather alienates us from both, and from our very self.

So often we become trapped by our own self-righteousness and pride, thinking that we do not have to change. This is delusion. If we are so sure of ourselves, how have we left room for God to even show us our shortcomings? We fall into the trap of the Pharisee. This is especially the case when we let ourselves criticize and judge our neighbors. If we allow ourselves to judge and criticize, then we can be sure that we have cast God out of our lives. Who needs Him, if I can judge everyone and everything? We pick and pick at our neighbors, from external appearances to deep judgments about their integrity. And in so doing, we destroy our own souls. We project all our own insecurities on those around us, not caring whose feelings we hurt or whose lives we destroy. And in reality, it has nothing to do with that other person; our judgment is only an image of myself and my insecurities, and the sins we don’t want to admit to ourselves.

If we judge and criticize our neighbor, our fasting is in vain. Our repentance is hypocrisy. And we make a mockery of Jesus Christ. We receive the Eucharist unto damnation. And we are oblivious to it, in our own self-righteousness.

Repentance, being “transformed in the renewal of our minds,” means that, like the Prodigal, we have “come to ourselves,” and recognized that our minds and hearts have taken the wrong road. We can perhaps see some of the damage we are causing to ourselves and others. We recognize that our minds are filled with angry, suspicious, judgmental, and self-righteous thoughts, and that we have no inner peace.

How do we repent? The first thing we must do is withdraw from the stimulus: to stop exposing ourselves — temporarily — to the issues and people that bring up these angry thoughts and judgments. We have to stop ourselves from rehearsing the wrongs done to us (and hence our judgment and condemnation of the person who wronged us), and realize this is just our own self-justification rooted in pride and vainglory. Then we need to pray that God will forgive us for our anger and pride, and forgive the other for what he or she has done. Then we can let it go. So long as we are provoked by thoughts of the remembrance of wrongs (resentments), and react with anger, we have not worked it through. But when the remembrance of something no longer disturbs our peace, we know that God has worked in our hearts.

Great Lent can be a clinic, a hospital, for our souls that are sick with the passions. Have we been healed? We can have our minds and hearts lifted up to heaven itself, if we want. We can use Great Lent to lay the foundational stones of discipline, and build habits that will stay with us the rest of the year. We can emerge from Lent with our hearts illumined and our minds cleansed, with a new way of being. Will we allow ourselves to change and be transformed in repentance?

It is only this transformation that will open our spiritual eyes, that in our hearts and with all our being we will be able to shout with joy, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!”

With love in our Merciful Savior,

+JONAH
Archbishop of Washington
Metropolitan of All America and Canada
Source: www.oca.org/news/2080

For I am not ashamed of the Gospel;
it is the power of God for salvation
to every one who has faith…. (Romans 1:16)

To the Most Reverend Hierarchs, the Reverend Priests and Deacons, the Monks and Nuns, the Presidents and Members of the Parish Councils of the Greek Orthodox Communities, the Distinguished Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Day, Afternoon, and Church Schools, the Philoptochos Sisterhoods, the Youth, the Hellenic Organizations, and the entire Greek Orthodox Family in America

Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

In this first month of the new year we are blessed to have in the calendar of our Holy Orthodox Church the commemoration of the Three Great Hierarchs and Ecumenical Teachers, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom.  On this day of their feast, we honor the lives and witness of these holy and brilliant men, who brought glory to God through their amazing service to the people in the name of Christ.  Their lives offer to us a genuine image of the power of the Gospel, the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, as they each believed in Him to the depths of their hearts, souls, and minds and as they were transformed by His presence into godly men imbued with divine power and wisdom.  Further, the Three Hierarchs present a witness of the Gospel through their ministry of teaching, their defense of the faith, and their love of learning, together with service to others characterized by compassion, humility, and sacrifice.
The lives of Saints Basil, Gregory, and John Chrysostom are beautiful testimonies of their acceptance of and total commitment to the Gospel.  Each was influenced by holy family members and teachers who had received the message of Christ and believed.  Each overcame struggles of mind and soul, challenges that were ultimately resolved in complete acceptance of divine grace.  Through their life-long commitment to God, they conveyed the priority and purpose of our human existence in receiving the Gospel and being restored to communion with God.

The belief of the Three Hierarchs in the Gospel was the foundation for their lives of service to God and to others.  What they believed and preached, they lived. The Gospel was for them not only a message of truth leading to true life and salvation, it was and is a ministry.  For Saints Basil, Gregory, and John Chrysostom the purpose of the message of God’s love extended beyond their own spiritual destiny to the needs of others.  Thus, they served in compassion and humility, denying their own selves and sacrificing any personal gain for the sake of their fellow human beings.  They lived the Gospel because they took upon themselves the example and ministry of Christ, oblivious to what they suffered, and generously offering all so that souls might be saved.

The Three Hierarchs were fully aware of the transforming power of the Gospel. It is the power of the Gospel that changes our understanding of all facets of our human existence.  This was reflected in the love of learning and language expressed by the Three Hierarchs as they affirmed the great potential of our God-given human abilities and the role of the mind and word in communicating the truths of life and faith.  This is why today is also a celebration of Greek Letters.  We recognize the role that Greek thought, language, and culture has had in furthering knowledge and understanding of our world.  Methods of thought encouraged intellectual clarity and contributed to great scientific discoveries and advances; the Greek language became a foundation for many areas of modern language, offering conciseness and structure; and Greek culture as an expression of thought, art and language, set standards in literature, rhetoric, art and architecture.  Saints Basil, Gregory, and John Chrysostom recognized the relevance of this in communicating the Gospel of Christ.  In addition to acknowledging the benefits of learning in the development of the mind, they also tapped the resources of Greek language and thought in order to illuminate great theological truths and to explore the implications of the divine revelation for our minds, souls and all of the created order.  They also saw the relevance of adapting various cultural elements, which were expressions of the creativity and ingenuity of humanity, as means of communicating the Gospel.

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, on this feast day of the Three Hierarchs and the celebration of Greek Letters, let us look to the example of these great Saints of our Church and emulate their love of God and their faith in the Gospel of salvation.  May we build a life of service and witness on the foundation of our belief in what Christ has done for us.  May we also be grateful for the great inheritance we have received, one that nurtures a love of learning and language in the service of God and the ministry of the Gospel so that all humanity may hear, believe, and receive a Gospel leading to eternal life.

With paternal love in Christ,

†DEMETRIOS
Archbishop of America

goarch.org/news/threehierarchsencyclicalel-en

Kevin Allen wrote this back in 2007 but it hit the Orthodox blogosphere again because it remains timely, especially as we emerge from our ethnic enclaves to engage American culture with meaning and purpose.

Read the full article:

www.aoiusa.org/blog/2010/01/there-are-more-buddhists-in-america-today-than-eastern-orthodox-christians