Life Along the Orthodox Way
In this respect, it is worth remembering that our English word “courage” translates what the ancient Greeks called andreia, literally “manliness,” and we insist, with Ambrose and other church fathers, that elementary manliness is an essential, irreplaceable requirement of the pastoral office…
Read more here.
On people of faith just mindlessly following dogma…
I guess they have a point and if you look at the world of religion that is why you find no disagreements in the religious sphere. No heresies throughout history, no dissenters, everybody just tows the line and follows along doing no thinking at all. This also explains why there is only one world religion. Amazing how all theology books just line up together. We just keep going on non-thinking together and never questioning anything!
WHEREAS, on June 24, 2011 the State of New York Legislature, following controversial debates, passed a new law legalizing same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed.
WHEREAS, the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, under the direct leadership of his Eminence, Metropolitan Archbishop PHILIP (Saliba), and the Local Synod of the Archdiocese, continues to shepherd its faithful members throughout all of North America, and as such, are deeply concerned about the recent developments regarding “same sex marriage”.
WHEREAS, the Holy Orthodox Church recognizing marriage to be a fundamental institution and teaching that marriage and sexuality, which are firmly grounded in Holy Scripture, Two thousand years of church tradition, and canon law, hereby holds that marriage consists in the conjugal union of a man and a women and that authentic marriage is blessed by Almighty God as a sacrament of the Church.
WHEREAS, The Holy Scripture attests that God created man and women in His own image and likeness (Genesis 1:27-31), that those called to do so might enjoy a conjugal union that ideally leads to procreation. While not every marriage is blessed with the birth of children, every such union exists to create of a man and a women a new reality of “one flesh”. This can only be achieved in a relationship between individuals of opposite gender. “God made them male and female…So they are no longer two but one flesh” ( Mark 10:6-8).
WHEREAS, the Holy Orthodox Church also teaches that the union between a man and a women in the Sacrament of Marriage reflects the union between Christ and His Church (Ephesians 5:21-33). As such, marriage is necessarily monogamous and heterosexual. Within this union, sexual relations between a husband and wife are to be cherished and protected as a sacred expression of their love that has been blessed by God. Such was God’s plan for His human creatures from the very beginning.
WHEREAS, the Holy Orthodox Church is cognizant that God’s divine purpose is increasingly questioned, challenged or denied by society as secularism, relativism, social and political pressures work to normalize and legalize “same sex” unions.
NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, this 50th Archdiocesan Convention, duly assembled at Chicago, Illinois, from July 25-31, 2011, resolves through the clergy and laity of the Antiochian Christian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, the Orthodox Church cannot and will not bless “same sex” unions of any degree. It is further resolved that marriage between a man and a women is a sacred institution ordained by God, homosexual unions are not. Like adultery and fornication, homosexual acts are condemned by Scripture (Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10). However, this being said, we must stress that a person with a homosexual orientation is to be cared for with the same mercy and love that is bestowed by our Lord Jesus Christ upon all sinners. All persons are called by God to strive toward holiness.
We see the water of a river flowing uninterruptedly and passing away, and all that floats on its surface, rubbish or beams of trees, all pass by. Christian! So does our life. . .I was an infant, and that time has gone. I was an adolescent, and that too has passed. I was a young man, and that too is far behind me. The strong and mature man that I was is no more. My hair turns white, I succumb to age, but that too passes; I approach the end and will go the way of all flesh. I was born in order to die. I die that I may live. Remember me, O Lord, in Thy Kingdom!
More than forty years ago, that remarkable historian Christopher Dawson, in his book Religion and Culture, expressed this hard truth strongly. “The events of the last few years,” Dawson wrote, “portend either the end of human history or a turning point in it. They have warned us in letters of fire that our civilization has been tried in the balance and found wanting-that there is an absolute limit to the progress than can be achieved by the perfectionment of scientific techniques detached from spiritual aims and moral values…. The recovery of moral control and the return to spiritual order have become the indispensable conditions of human survival. But they can be achieved only by a profound change in the spirit of modern civilization. This does not mean a new religion or a new culture but a movement of spiritual reintegration which would restore that vital relation between religion and culture which has existed at every age and on every level of human development.”
new auxiliary Bishops for our Archdiocese. One I have met and know personally. One I know by reputation. One is new to me. I pray for them all.
The work of a Bishop is simply difficult beyond words. The hours are long. The needs are many. The intrigue and politics never stop. Opinions and reality never seem to match. And that’s just life INSIDE the church. What things, what passions, what struggles must be within the heart of the Bishop themselves as they approach and serve in this office?
May God preserve them and may we never forget to lift them up in prayer.
Each holy thing we do. Each temptation we face and overcome. Every time we choose the good, the holy, the beautiful, and the righteous is cherished by God. It’s not just our struggles and sins that will matter as we stand before Christ but even the feeblest or unforgotten act of goodness as well.
Come closer to me, closer still, O majestic Spirit of Truth. Draw near, and enter into me, more deeply than light and air enter me. Indeed, I can spend an entire night without light, but without You I cannot even lie down on my bed. I can take ten steps without air, but without You I cannot even take one.
Take up your abode in my soul more deeply than my thought can follow. The entire universe is insufficient to encourage my soul to persevere in virginity, if You do not encourage her.
The world incessantly asks for the hand of my soul, in order to be wedded to her. The world offers my soul all its treasures, if only she will abandon her waiting for You. The world whitewashes all its sepulchres,1 just to entice my soul. The world sets all its ashes out in the sun and pours flattery and pomposity all over it, just to seduce my soul.
Manifest all Your splendor, O Holy Spirit, so that my soul may recognize whose bride she is.
Come closer to me, closer still, O Power of the Holy Trinity. Enter into my consciousness more deeply than thoughts and emblems of the world can. In the same way as a wise mother, when she conceives, prepares and embellishes a cradle for her child, so prepare and embellish my mind for that which will be begotten from You, O Beauty and Purity.
Many evil thoughts lurk like serpents around the cradle of Your Son. And many wicked desires emerge from my heart and seek the cradle of Your Prince, to poison Him with their arrows.
Defend the cradle of my mind, and teach my soul how to give birth and care for an infant.
Shroud in deep darkness the journey of all malevolent visitors coming to see my newborn son. And raise aloft a most radiant star over the way of the Wise Men from the East2 men who are truly wise, because they are coming to visit my most precious child with three gifts—faith, hope, and love.3
Come closer to me, closer still, O majestic Son of God. Descend deeper into my heart than any emotion, or desire, or passion of the world can descend into it. Protect my heart from the countless merchants, from the numerous buyers and sellers, who are forever swarming in legions around my young and inexperienced heart. And teach my heart not to be crazy about the motley illusions of people and things.
Take up Your abode in the bottom of my heart, as the master of a house does in his own home, my beloved Son, and be for me a merciless judge and a sagacious counselor.
Once purity of soul and sagacity of mind occupy my heart, truly in vain will evil spirits dance attendance in order to step into it.
And my heart will be filled with an ineffable heavenly peace, and will glorify God in chorus with the cherubim and the seraphim. And enriched, it will return to the soul and the mind what it borrowed, for as their equal it will recompense them in equal measure.
And my heart will be filled with sweet love for its Lord, and with compassion for and good will toward suffering souls in the world and in Hades.
Come closer to me, still closer, my majestic Lord.
Archaeologists believe they may have found the tomb of St. Philip in Turkey. If the data holds up it would be another archaeological confirmation of Scripture.
Interesting.
The Beautiful Path 