The life of self-centeredness and self-satisfaction lived by most of today's "Christians" is so all-pervading that it effectively seals them off from any understanding at all of spiritual life, and when such people do undertake "spiritual life," it is only as another form of self-satisfaction. [...] But this is not the Christian ideal at all, which if anything may be summed up as a fierce battle and struggle. The "contentment" and "peace" described in these contemporary "spiritual" movements are quite manifestly the product of spiritual deception, of spiritual self-satisfaction--which is the absolute death of God-oriented spiritual life. [...] Christian spirituality is formed in the arduous struggle to acquire the eternal Kingdom of Heaven, which fully begins only with the dissolution of this temporal world, and the true Christian struggler never finds repose even in the foretastes of eternal blessedness which might be vouchsafed to him in this life; but the Eastern religions, to which the Kingdom of Heaven has not been revealed, strive only to acquire psychic states which begin and end in this life.
18 January 2010
Fr. Seraphim of Platina on "Modern Life"
from Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future:
15 January 2010
The Monk John the Tent-Dweller
From the Synaxarion:
The Monk John the Tent-Dweller was the son of rich and illustrious parents living in Constantinople during the Fifth Century, and he received a fine education. He loved to read spiritual books, and having perceived the vanity of secular life, he preferred "rather than the broad path one that was narrow and infirm and extremely rigorous". Having persuaded his parents to give him a Gospel, he set out secretly to Bithynia. At the monastery "Unceasing Vigilance" he received monastic tonsure. The young monk began to asceticize with zeal, astonishing his brethren with unceasing prayer, humble obedience, strict abstinence and perseverance at work.
After six years he began to undergo temptations: thoughts about his parents, about their love and fondness, about their sorrow -- all this began to overtake the young ascetic.
Saint John disclosed his situation to the archimandrite and he asked to be released from the monastery, and he besought the brethren not to forget him in their prayers, hoping that by their prayers he would with the help of God, both see his parents and overcome the snares of the devil. The archimandrite gave him his blessing.
Saint John returned to Constantinople in the clothes of a beggar, and known to no one. He settled at the gates of his parental home. The parents sent him food from their table, for the sake of Christ. For three years, oppressed and insulted, he lived in a tent (or hut), enduring cold and frost, unceasingly conversing with the Lord and the holy Angels. Always with him was the Gospel, given him by his parents, and from which he unceasingly gathered out sayings of life eternal. Before his death the Lord appeared in a vision to the monk, revealing that the end of his sorrows was approaching and that after three days he would be taken up into the Heavenly Kingdom.
Only then did the saint show his parents the Gospel, which they had given him shortly before he had left his parental home. The parents recognized their son. With tears of joy they hugged him simultaneously with tears of sorrow, in that he had endured privation for so long at the very gates of his parental home. Saint John gave final instructions to his parents to bury him on the spot where stood his tent, and to put in the grave the beggar's rags that he wore during life.
The saint died in the mid Fifth Century, when he was not yet 25 years of age. On the place of his burial the parents built a church to God and alongside it an house of hospitality for strangers. In the Twelth Century the head of the saint was taken by Crusaders to Besacon (in France), and the other relics of the saint were taken to Rome.
The Monk John the Tent-Dweller was the son of rich and illustrious parents living in Constantinople during the Fifth Century, and he received a fine education. He loved to read spiritual books, and having perceived the vanity of secular life, he preferred "rather than the broad path one that was narrow and infirm and extremely rigorous". Having persuaded his parents to give him a Gospel, he set out secretly to Bithynia. At the monastery "Unceasing Vigilance" he received monastic tonsure. The young monk began to asceticize with zeal, astonishing his brethren with unceasing prayer, humble obedience, strict abstinence and perseverance at work.
After six years he began to undergo temptations: thoughts about his parents, about their love and fondness, about their sorrow -- all this began to overtake the young ascetic.
Saint John disclosed his situation to the archimandrite and he asked to be released from the monastery, and he besought the brethren not to forget him in their prayers, hoping that by their prayers he would with the help of God, both see his parents and overcome the snares of the devil. The archimandrite gave him his blessing.
Saint John returned to Constantinople in the clothes of a beggar, and known to no one. He settled at the gates of his parental home. The parents sent him food from their table, for the sake of Christ. For three years, oppressed and insulted, he lived in a tent (or hut), enduring cold and frost, unceasingly conversing with the Lord and the holy Angels. Always with him was the Gospel, given him by his parents, and from which he unceasingly gathered out sayings of life eternal. Before his death the Lord appeared in a vision to the monk, revealing that the end of his sorrows was approaching and that after three days he would be taken up into the Heavenly Kingdom.
Only then did the saint show his parents the Gospel, which they had given him shortly before he had left his parental home. The parents recognized their son. With tears of joy they hugged him simultaneously with tears of sorrow, in that he had endured privation for so long at the very gates of his parental home. Saint John gave final instructions to his parents to bury him on the spot where stood his tent, and to put in the grave the beggar's rags that he wore during life.
The saint died in the mid Fifth Century, when he was not yet 25 years of age. On the place of his burial the parents built a church to God and alongside it an house of hospitality for strangers. In the Twelth Century the head of the saint was taken by Crusaders to Besacon (in France), and the other relics of the saint were taken to Rome.
13 January 2010
Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Christianity
I was recently invited on an internet radio show, The Black Fridays, to talk about Christianity as it existed in the Pre-Norman period of British history. The title links to the Fridays' webpage, where you can listen to yours truly expound on the topic for a bit. While the information I gave out was sound, I fear I was a little scatter-shot in the approach. It was much more conversational, and less informational, than I might have preferred. So, I thought that I'd give a little outline, more or less, to make things make more sense (if people bother to read this at all).
Despite all the craziness and weirdness that has been published about the Celts in the last few decades, the truth is we really do not know all that much about their indigenous religion. There is a good reason for this; they didn't write things down. It was only after the Christian era that Celtic myths, legends, and stories were compiled by Christian monks, for the reason of preserving them. The Celts are a curious people, though, because of their seeming uniqueness in Christian history. With few exceptions, the Celts converted to Christianity without suffering martyrdoms or conquests. They simply embraced the religion--and it flowered in the British Isles in beautiful ways for centuries.
The indigenous Celtic Church seems to have been, from its beginning, eastern in orientation. Legend has it that St. Joseph of Arimathea brought the Christian faith to Brittania near the time of the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem in AD 70. These early Christians, many of whom knew Christ and the Apostles, brought with them the Johannine traditions (liturgical and calendrical) that marked them as having continuity with the other communities founded by the beloved disciple. The Celtic Christians also kept to some of the same customs as the Jewish Christians, even into late period, such as the matrilineal descent of kings, and the vocation of priesthood passed down through families.
It is into this world that one of the most famous of the Celtic Christians was born--St. David, who became the Patron of Wales. His mother, St. Nona, was a nun who had been raped by sea-raiding pirates, probably from Ireland. She gave birth to him at the spot known now as St. Non's Well, in modern Pembrokeshire, and a stream of water sprang up from the earth. St. David is connected, also, to the legends of King Arthur; while the sources do not agree on their exact relationship, they all agree that he was a relative of the historical Arthur. Indeed, at least one of the legendary accounts say that he presided at the Mass at Arthur's coronation as King of the Britons. St. David was renown for the strictness of his asceticism, and for his love for his flock. He lived a life of astounding holiness, and was known to have been responsible for the rebuilding of the chapel at Glastonbury--where St. Joseph had first brought the Christian Faith to the Isle centuries before. So strong was the connection between St. David and these early Jewish Christians who came to Brittania seeking refuge from persecution at the fringes of the Roman Empire, that he went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he was consecrated as a bishop. Thus it is that, alone of episcopal sees in the West, the bishops of St. David's could trace their apostolic succession, not to Rome, but to the mother church in Jerusalem at St. James the Just, the brother of the Lord.
The next century and a half following the repose of St. David saw much trouble in the Isles. The Western Empire had fallen; the Legions, that for so long had protected the British Celts, had been recalled to the continent, never to return. Raiders, first from the pagan Irish, then from the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians began to pillage the Isle of the Mighty. Then, as the European continent became embroiled in warfare through the migrations of the Goths and the Vandals, these Germanic invaders came to Britain to stay. Eventually, over the next century or so, there were established the Heptarchy--the seven kingdoms of Old England: Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Sussex, and Essex.
After years of struggle with the indigenous Celtic Britons, the Anglo-Saxons kingdoms were, one by one, brought into the Christian fold...mostly through the missionary activities of their Celtic neighbors. Christianity flourished under the Christianized Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until the year 1066.
It was then that William the Bastard (whose good press would later label as "the Conqueror") landed in England, with the backing of the Roman Pope, launching a proto-crusade to bring the local church in Britain firmly under Roman domination, where it was to stay until the English Reformation, which established the English Church as its own entity apart from both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic communions. The systematic repression of the indigenous church in Britain was carried out with exceptional thoroughness; Celtic and Anglo-Saxon churches were demolished, and new, Norman-styled churches were constructed over their ruins. The local clergy were cast from office, and new bishops from Normandy were brought in to replace them. In fact, the last Anglo-Saxon bishop died in 1069, anathematizing the Pope of Rome.
Of the curious links to the Orthodox east, aside from the foundations of the Church in Britainnia with St. Joseph, and the introduction of monasticism from the Egyptian desert fathers, the links to Constantinople, curiously, come precisely through the Scandinavians who caused so much grief during the period of the Heptarchy. The viking trade routes through what is now Russia, with their major center of power being in Kiev, provided a vehicle for Eastern Roman trade and contact to Britain. This is proved by the fact that, in so many of the Anglo-Saxon archaeological finds, the golden byzant, the official coin of the Byzantine Empire, is found more than any other foreign coinage. Indeed, when the last Saxon king of England, Harold Godwinson, was defeated at the Battle of Hastings, his wife and son fled to, of all places, Kiev Rus to live out their days in exile.
Hopefully, this will help you make some sense of the podcast. I hope you enjoy! If you do, please be sure to leave some comments on The Black Fridays' message board.
Despite all the craziness and weirdness that has been published about the Celts in the last few decades, the truth is we really do not know all that much about their indigenous religion. There is a good reason for this; they didn't write things down. It was only after the Christian era that Celtic myths, legends, and stories were compiled by Christian monks, for the reason of preserving them. The Celts are a curious people, though, because of their seeming uniqueness in Christian history. With few exceptions, the Celts converted to Christianity without suffering martyrdoms or conquests. They simply embraced the religion--and it flowered in the British Isles in beautiful ways for centuries.
The indigenous Celtic Church seems to have been, from its beginning, eastern in orientation. Legend has it that St. Joseph of Arimathea brought the Christian faith to Brittania near the time of the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem in AD 70. These early Christians, many of whom knew Christ and the Apostles, brought with them the Johannine traditions (liturgical and calendrical) that marked them as having continuity with the other communities founded by the beloved disciple. The Celtic Christians also kept to some of the same customs as the Jewish Christians, even into late period, such as the matrilineal descent of kings, and the vocation of priesthood passed down through families.
It is into this world that one of the most famous of the Celtic Christians was born--St. David, who became the Patron of Wales. His mother, St. Nona, was a nun who had been raped by sea-raiding pirates, probably from Ireland. She gave birth to him at the spot known now as St. Non's Well, in modern Pembrokeshire, and a stream of water sprang up from the earth. St. David is connected, also, to the legends of King Arthur; while the sources do not agree on their exact relationship, they all agree that he was a relative of the historical Arthur. Indeed, at least one of the legendary accounts say that he presided at the Mass at Arthur's coronation as King of the Britons. St. David was renown for the strictness of his asceticism, and for his love for his flock. He lived a life of astounding holiness, and was known to have been responsible for the rebuilding of the chapel at Glastonbury--where St. Joseph had first brought the Christian Faith to the Isle centuries before. So strong was the connection between St. David and these early Jewish Christians who came to Brittania seeking refuge from persecution at the fringes of the Roman Empire, that he went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he was consecrated as a bishop. Thus it is that, alone of episcopal sees in the West, the bishops of St. David's could trace their apostolic succession, not to Rome, but to the mother church in Jerusalem at St. James the Just, the brother of the Lord.
The next century and a half following the repose of St. David saw much trouble in the Isles. The Western Empire had fallen; the Legions, that for so long had protected the British Celts, had been recalled to the continent, never to return. Raiders, first from the pagan Irish, then from the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians began to pillage the Isle of the Mighty. Then, as the European continent became embroiled in warfare through the migrations of the Goths and the Vandals, these Germanic invaders came to Britain to stay. Eventually, over the next century or so, there were established the Heptarchy--the seven kingdoms of Old England: Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Sussex, and Essex.
After years of struggle with the indigenous Celtic Britons, the Anglo-Saxons kingdoms were, one by one, brought into the Christian fold...mostly through the missionary activities of their Celtic neighbors. Christianity flourished under the Christianized Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until the year 1066.
It was then that William the Bastard (whose good press would later label as "the Conqueror") landed in England, with the backing of the Roman Pope, launching a proto-crusade to bring the local church in Britain firmly under Roman domination, where it was to stay until the English Reformation, which established the English Church as its own entity apart from both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic communions. The systematic repression of the indigenous church in Britain was carried out with exceptional thoroughness; Celtic and Anglo-Saxon churches were demolished, and new, Norman-styled churches were constructed over their ruins. The local clergy were cast from office, and new bishops from Normandy were brought in to replace them. In fact, the last Anglo-Saxon bishop died in 1069, anathematizing the Pope of Rome.
Of the curious links to the Orthodox east, aside from the foundations of the Church in Britainnia with St. Joseph, and the introduction of monasticism from the Egyptian desert fathers, the links to Constantinople, curiously, come precisely through the Scandinavians who caused so much grief during the period of the Heptarchy. The viking trade routes through what is now Russia, with their major center of power being in Kiev, provided a vehicle for Eastern Roman trade and contact to Britain. This is proved by the fact that, in so many of the Anglo-Saxon archaeological finds, the golden byzant, the official coin of the Byzantine Empire, is found more than any other foreign coinage. Indeed, when the last Saxon king of England, Harold Godwinson, was defeated at the Battle of Hastings, his wife and son fled to, of all places, Kiev Rus to live out their days in exile.
Hopefully, this will help you make some sense of the podcast. I hope you enjoy! If you do, please be sure to leave some comments on The Black Fridays' message board.
A Medieval Welsh Poem
"The Advice of Addaon"
I asked all the priests of the world,
The bishops and judges,
What most profits the soul.
The Lord's prayer, the Beati and holy creed,
All sung for the sake of the soul,
Are best practiced until Judgment Day.
If only you shape your own path
And build up peace,
You shall see no end of mercy.
Feed the hungry and clothe the naked,
Sing out in praise,
For you have escaped the Devil's number.
But the proud and idle, pain on their flesh
On account of excess,
Must be winnowed until they are pure.
Too much sleep, drunkenness and sipping of mead,
Too much pandering to the body,
That is their sweet bitterness before Judgment Day.
They who commit perjury for land and deceive their Lord,
Who pour scorn on the humble,
Shall know regret on Judgment Day.
By rising for matins and by midnight vigils,
By praying to the saints,
Every Christian shall receive forgiveness.
I asked all the priests of the world,
The bishops and judges,
What most profits the soul.
The Lord's prayer, the Beati and holy creed,
All sung for the sake of the soul,
Are best practiced until Judgment Day.
If only you shape your own path
And build up peace,
You shall see no end of mercy.
Feed the hungry and clothe the naked,
Sing out in praise,
For you have escaped the Devil's number.
But the proud and idle, pain on their flesh
On account of excess,
Must be winnowed until they are pure.
Too much sleep, drunkenness and sipping of mead,
Too much pandering to the body,
That is their sweet bitterness before Judgment Day.
They who commit perjury for land and deceive their Lord,
Who pour scorn on the humble,
Shall know regret on Judgment Day.
By rising for matins and by midnight vigils,
By praying to the saints,
Every Christian shall receive forgiveness.
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