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Through Oxford To Orthodoxy
Archimandrite Meletios (Webber), of Scottish background, was born in London, and received his Masters degree in Theology from Oxford University, England and the Thessalonica School of Theology, Greece. He also holds an E.D.D. (doctorate) in Psychotherapy from the University of Montana, Missoula. He is the author of two published books: Steps of Transformation; an Orthodox Priest Explores the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (Conciliar Press, 2003); and Bread and Water, Wine and Oil; an Orthodox Christian Experience of God (Conciliar Press, 2007).
This interview was originally published in Pravoslavnie.ru.
* * *
—Fr. Meletios, could you tell us a little about your journey to Orthodoxy in Oxford, and how you became a priest?
—I went to Oxford as a theology student in 1968, and very quickly found an Orthodox Church there. The parish priest at the time was Fr. Kallistos Ware, who is now Metropolitan of Diokleia, and the deacon at the time was Fr. Basil Osborne, who is now Bishop of Amphipolis. The parish in Oxford was both a Russian and a Greek one, coexisting in a small room in what had once been the house of the famous Dr. Spooner. I was immediately attracted to the quality of the stillness that I found in that small room. That has been something that I have consistently valued in the Orthodox Church ever since. It is a quality which is difficult to talk about, but it happens when one goes into a space which is so obviously God-filled. That is something that I found very important and very attractive at that time. Under the tutelage of Fr. Kallistos I became Orthodox three years later, and I was ordained a priest some three years after that in January of 1976, by the Greek Archbishop of Thyateira in Great Britain, and served with that bishop as his chaplain for a number of years. My first parish in Britain after I returned from my studies in Greece was in an area of London called Harrow. From Harrow I went to the United States and spent 22 years there, before returning to Europe to live in the Netherlands in 2005.
—In which parishes did you serve in the U.S.?
—In the beginning, in 1984, I served as the parish priest in the churches of the state of Montana. There were three active parishes, two missions, and several other groups. This was with the Greek Archdiocese. I used to travel a very great deal throughout the year, which was at times a little more exciting than I wanted it to be. The people were very scattered, but very few in number. A trickle of converts started toward the end of my time there, but for the most part I was serving Greek Americans.
—Were there any converts at all while you were there?
—In Great Falls, Montana there was an air force base, and we had a number of very fine converts coming to us from that direction. We baptized a few families who were attracted to the Church from that place. It would be difficult to say that the Greek community found it easy to accept non-Greeks, because they saw themselves as a sort of bastion of Greekness. They were very friendly on the whole, but they simply did not know how to react to people who wanted to join the Church who were not Greek, who didn’t speak Greek, and so on. They also found it difficult at that time (and I think this is still the case), to keep their children in Montana. Almost everyone would leave the state as soon as they were able, in search of employment or education.
—Because Montana simply does not have very much to offer in the way of employment or education?
—Certainly in Great Falls there wasn’t. In Missoula and Billings there are universities; in Missoula there was quite a thriving Orthodox community. But even then, with the exception of two or three of my former altar boys, who went to get their law degrees and then returned to practice in Montana, most people found it difficult to find professional development in Montana. It is a problem in a state which has a huge surface area and a relatively small population.
—Where did you serve after Montana?
—I went to what is known in America as “The Bay Area,” meaning the area around San Francisco, and became the chancellor of what was then the Greek diocese of San Francisco, with Bishop Anthony. I served with him as chancellor for two years, during which time I served as parish priest in Santa Cruz. After I ceased being chancellor, I was then full-time parish priest in Santa Cruz, for another nine years.
—Is that the same parish in which the murdered Fr. John Karastamatis served?
—Yes. He was not my immediate predecessor; there had been three other priests in between. I knew his presbytera quite well, and his children. He was murdered on the premises of the church, in very unpleasant circumstances, some years before I arrived, but it was still a very dominant factor in the life of parish while I was there—something they couldn’t forget.
—In your experience as a pastor in America, with the Greek population and later with a slightly more diverse group, what would you say is the most challenging aspect of being a pastor there?
—I think that there are many problems, but none of them is insurmountable, so long as the focus of parish life always centers upon the words of Jesus and the Gospel. It is easy to become distracted into the realms of, for example, Greek culture and cooking, or folk dance, all of which are wonderful activities in themselves, but can never be the backbone of parish life. The backbone of parish life has to be spiritual in nature, and based very firmly upon the Gospel. So, the interests of parishioners can be in one direction, and those of the pastor in another, and it is up to the pastor to help the people whom he is serving stay focused on what is important; encouraging them, of course, in all these other areas as well, but making sure that the spiritual core is always present in everything that they do.
—Did you ever find that it was a challenge for your Greek parishioners to have a pastor, even a chancellor, who was not at all Greek?
—Yes, well, you would have thought so. But when I was in London I was serving a community that was almost entirely Cypriot, and also Greek- speaking. I survived that experience reasonably well. They used to call me in the Cypriot dialect “O kochenos,” which means “The red-haired one,” since I had red hair in those days. I have always found that although I am not Greek, I speak Greek reasonably well, and I can feel Greek enough to participate in Greek parish life—sometimes perhaps too much so. (Perhaps a little stoic reserve would be more applicable.) But because I speak the language, with very few exceptions (and there have been some), I have never been made to feel an outsider.
Bishop Anthony (whom I mentioned earlier, and who went on to become Metropolitan Anthony, reposing in 2004, on Christmas day), was not an easy man to work with in many ways. But the one thing that always surprised me about him was that with regard to ethnicity, he was sort of color blind. He actually forgot that the people around him were Greek, or not Greek. It simply was not important to him. This was one of his great strengths, actually, in bringing the metropolis together.
—Now that you have come to Holland, you are entering into a new realm—the Russians, the Dutch, and other Europeans who are living in Amsterdam, a cosmopolitan city. Could you describe what the parish life is like in the Russian Church in Amsterdam?
—First of all, the parish itself is a great deal larger than any other parish I have served in before. Apart from those two years when I was Chancellor and had oversight over a number of parishes, all of the parishes in which I worked personally had around fifty to a hundred families. Suddenly, when I come to Amsterdam, there is a huge parish with a very flexible congregation—new people seem to turn up every week The number of languages flying around is just something that you just have to get used to. In the altar four languages certainly are quite common amongst the clergy themselves.
—Those being…
—French, Dutch, Russian, and English; occasionally there are other languages, too. This being only us communicating amongst ourselves, in order to know what we are supposed to do.
—French being a sort of lingua franca?
—Yes. I don’t think there is actually a French person there. But we do have some people who are very, very qualified in language skills. One of our deacons is an international translator who works for President Putin and other people of that ilk, as the need arises.
—Is he Russian?
—No, he is actually Dutch. He speaks four languages fluently. He occasionally translates my sermons, which I enjoy immensely. I deliver them in Dutch, and he translates them into Russian. He catches nuances in what I am saying that I’ve missed. I am just amazed at his skill. He is a very young man. It is quite exciting.
Parish council meetings (which I don’t attend) are entirely bilingual, so everything has to be said in Dutch and Russian, and I should imagine that that becomes at times something less than a pleasure.
—Twice as long?
—Twice as long; and the subject matter at parish meetings is at times not so interesting, or not so important to the central interest of the parish. But I suppose that is just parish life.
—Which is the dominant nationality there now?
—I would have to say that the dominant group would be the Russians, most of whom have come to Europe fairly recently. There are very, very few old Russians left from previous immigrations, the notable exception being Matushka Tatiana, the wife of the reposed Fr. Alexei (who was Dutch). There are very few, if any, of that generation. There are some older women—particularly women—from a new generation; but that’s another matter—they came over as old ladies.
—Is this mixture of Russian and Dutch harmonious?
—I would say that it really is. I have been in parishes in England and in the U.S., where people tended to get very defensive about languages. In Holland that is not the case, and in Amsterdam, certainly not. We have a system of trying to balance the languages which seems to work very well. And I don’t think I have ever heard a complaint that we were using one language more than another. Occasionally I have to break into English or Greek during the services, bearing in mind that I know most of the services by heart in Greek, not even as well in English. People will sometimes comment on that, mostly not in too brusque a manner, but it is often the best I can do, if I am in a situation wherein I can’t find the book I need, or if I am in a hurry.
—Do you know any Russian?
—Yes, I also use Church Slavonic in the Services.
—Can you speak to the Russians in their own language?
—To a certain extent. I need some help to learn a bit more Russian. I do hear confessions in Russian, but that is more instinctive than linguistic, and normally I reply either in English or Dutch, depending upon what the person’s language skills happens to be.
—I understand that the difficulties that occurred in the London Moscow Patriarchate parish have been more or less smoothed out by this time. But in your opinion, what could have been the underlying problem which could have made it so difficult for the new Russian immigrants to coexist with the local converts—a problem which does not seem to exist here in Amsterdam?
—I have never been a member of the parish in London, although I have known about it for forty years or so. I could be quite wrong in what I am about to say, and I certainly do not want to offend anyone. I, like many, many other people, regard Metropolitan Anthony Bloom as a very important part of my Orthodox formation, and I venerate his memory as do many, many others. I think what we saw there—somewhat encouraged by Metropolitan Anthony—was a very high level of expectation as to how the diocese would develop as he got older, and eventually what would happen after he died. But the circumstances in Russia were such, that by the time that happened, the reality was altogether different from any possible dream that anyone might have had. And I think that the reality and the dream simply didn’t mix.
I don’t necessarily think that anyone is to blame for this. I know that many feelings were hurt, but I don’t see any wrong-doing on anyone’s part; I think it was simply people doing their best to fight for what they thought was right and just—on both sides. But it is a situation with which Vladyka Anthony himself never really came to grips; and by the time the Soviet Union dissolved, he was already a very old man. Whilst he was mentally very strong right to the end, coping with the sort of ecclesiastical needs of the new Russians was something he had never had to do. He was ministering mainly to English people in very small, rural communities. There were a couple of exceptions, but on the whole, that was where his main influence seemed to lie.
Then, all of a sudden he was confronted with the huge ecclesiastical needs of a lot of Russians in cities, which was not where he was actually comfortable. That is a bit of a guess. I may be entirely wrong on that, but this seems to be part of it.
This is a point of view of someone who was not in the thick of it, an objective observer.
—How would you, in a few words, characterize this new burst of immigration coming from Russia and Eastern Europe in general? Is the majority or only a small percentage coming to the Church? How does this big wave of immigration affect the Church?
—I think that several things happened relatively quickly when the Soviet Union dissolved. One comment that was made to me by a Russian, which I find quite interesting, was that for a lot of people, once the Communist Party was, as it were, no more, they latched onto the Church as being a point of stability in social life. And it was as if the Communist Party were replaced by the Church. We are not talking here about matters of faith, but simply about social structure, how people live their lives, what they do when they get up in the morning, and how they see the world when they look out the window. If that is true, then the Church obviously has a huge burden of evangelizing, bringing the Gospel to these people. I think that is what we see happening.
Typically the Orthodox method of doing such a thing isn’t by making church life attractive, by trying to “sell” an idea, or imposing an ideology upon people, but rather to open the doors of the parishes, to welcome people when they arrive, to make them feel at home, and gradually to educate them in the prayer life, which is after all, what the Church really has to offer. Of course, it is not an activity where efficiency counts for much. You’re looking for quality rather than quantity.
I would say that the Russian population in Amsterdam is something in the region of six or seven thousand people, which in comparison with the total population isn’t that large. Nevertheless, the congregation on Sunday morning is only, say, 350 people, including the non-Russians. So, yes, there is a great deal more that can be done.
The outreach has to be for Orthodoxy on a personal level. The era for the conversion of Russia was already a thousand years ago, and I don’t think those tactics would work on a modern group—the baptism by sword-point is no longer even desirable. The long term answer is for the Orthodox in Amsterdam to live lives which are attractive enough to people who are potentially Orthodox, so that they can be attracted to what the Church has to offer. We are greatly blessed—we have a wonderful bishop, we have fine clergy, and although they are all human beings, there are very human aspects of Church life as well. The very heart of what is going on is the proclamation of the Gospel.
—What is your ministry like to the youth, and how do you bring young people into the Church? How do you feel about rock concerts, and Orthodox priests entering into such realms that are not Christian in nature in order to reach out to the youth?
The teenage years are years of rebellion. Teenagers have been rebelling in one way or another since the dawn of time. So, making teenagers conform to anything has been a heavy task for parents and educators for as long as men and women have been around.
Ultimately, teenagers on the whole—although of course there are exceptions—tend to be driven by peer pressure, and if peer pressure includes a spiritual dimension, then there will tend to be a spiritual dimension to their existence, although it may not be recognizable to anyone else. But if spirituality is entirely lacking—as it tends to be so in the Western world, even amongst fairly religious groups in the United States—you find that teenagers tend to spend time in rebellion. This means that ultimately you pray for the teenagers, and hope that they are going to come through those years without too many scars. The churches tend to pick them up once again when they become young parents. There is nothing wrong with that pattern, it just happens to be the one that seems to be in place.
Now, I know so little about rock music and things of that nature that anything I say is likely to be very doubtful, but let me put it in another context: I can’t say that I have ever met anybody who has been converted to Christianity by attending a symphony concert. Now, if that is true of symphony concerts, I think that that is also true of rock concerts. So rock music is an end in itself—I really can’t say if it is good or bad. But it is unlikely to provide much of a spiritual dimension for most people. It is a diversion, a distraction; it is away from the spiritual quest, rather than on the path. Therefore, I would say that it is somewhat irrelevant; I don’t think that having priests dress as rock stars is going to fill the churches.
—What about priests attending rock concerts in order to reach out to the youth?
—As I say, putting the same thing in the context of a symphony hall, having a priest sitting in the front row will not drive those people into the Church. The Church is good at being the Church. When the Church tries to be something else—and in the past it has tried to be all sorts of things, including government or administrator, sometimes because it had to, sometimes because it chose to—it is not at its best. The Church is essentially to do with living, and proclaiming the Gospel. The moment you start moving away from that occupation, then there is trouble.
—Viewing the youth of Europe, do you see any hope? Does materialism totally prevail, or is there any yearning for traditional spirituality amongst the young people of Europe?
I think the Church has failed to make faith a living issue for a lot of people. I am not here talking necessarily about the Orthodox Church, although I have lived in Greece, and I have seen how the Church there has fallen short of bringing the Christian life to people living in that country.
Here in Holland the churches are almost a dead issue, they are almost irrelevant to the life of the country. When youngsters come in contact with the Church—and now I am talking about the Orthodox Church—they tend to be quite taken aback by not only the spiritual strength which they encounter, but also the depth of experience which the Orthodox Church has. (I am talking about very small numbers of people.) That is because our favorite missionary method is simply to open a church door, and that is pretty much the extent of it. So if people choose to come inside, then we have a lot to share with them. But that is the limit of our activity in that direction.
Nevertheless, I also have a tremendous optimism. First of all, God is in charge, and no matter how badly we are doing, God is still God, and He is very good at being God. He has been doing it for a long time. In the end, God’s will will prevail, no matter how many obstacles we put in His path—or other people do.
This may be very wrong of me, but I see both in Europe and in the United States a quest on the part of young people towards what I suppose I could characterize as a quest for “goodness” as opposed to “rightness.” In the 1930’s and 40’s, certainly during the Second World War, Europe like most of the world was torn apart over questions of “rightness.” Goodness was not the issue at all—there was no goodness. Everything was bad. But the fascists thought they were right, and the communists thought they were right, and they tore each others’ throats out to settle it. What I do see amongst young people is a desire to pursue goodness for its own sake. This isn’t any big movement or anything of that nature.
I was a high school teacher for many years, so I have had much contact with teenagers. But simply from talking with teenagers, I would say that if there has been a trend at all, this is what it is.
—Do you have any young people in Amsterdam who have just “wandered in?”
—There are some. We also encourage teachers to bring classes. That is beginning to happen.
—As a cultural experience?
—Yes, because the Church has something very different to offer. The Dutch are living in a post-Calvinist society, where the Church has a rather dour, cold, forbidding aura about it. To come into the middle of a celebrating Orthodox community is actually quite an important event for them, even if it has no spiritual dimension at all.
—The search for “goodness?”
—Yes.
—Is it difficult for the Russians and Eastern Europeans who immigrate here to adjust to Western European life? Do they go through a period of shock? What words of encouragement would you give to those who find themselves in Holland as their new home? How can they adapt themselves without losing what is best about their own culture and personalities?
—I am never quiet clear as to why people come to Holland in the first place, unless they have a specific job offer in this country. Of all the countries in Europe, it is one of the most difficult for an Eastern European to apply to live in. Holland has its own language which is only shared with half of Belgium, and that’s that. So language tends to be something of an issue. Housing is expensive, and social services are no longer as generous as they have been in the past. Having said that, I can also say that many people, although not everybody, find Holland to be home quite quickly.
When I was little, I was intensely aware of the differences between Scotland and England. Most people, for instance, from North America, wouldn’t even be aware that there were such differences. Whenever you move from country to country, or indeed within a country, you are likely to come across some difficulties. Holland has a bureaucracy, which goes at it own pace. Holland has its own educational system, which is different from other people’s. Holland has its own medical services, which tend to have a different slant on things. You can go to a store in Amsterdam and buy marijuana, but you can’t go and buy penicillin. Things are just different.
—Do you have any comment on the decision by the European Union to deny the Christian origin of European culture? And in contrast, on the recent attempt in the United States Congress to affirm and value this origin, and the essential role Christianity has played in the development of Western Civilization? What is the portent of this statement for the European Community?
—I think that one of the most important factors in the modern world is that perhaps for the first time, the Church has become free to criticize any political leader. I think that the Gospel is, and always will be, at odds with most of the social systems we have developed, at least so far. And it is the Church’s task to call government to account whenever political governments are behaving in ways that are at odds with the Gospel. So, I think that it is interesting that America, in which the notion of the separation of Church and State really originated, or partially originated, is now wanting to affirm some Christian roots; whereas, in Europe, where Christianity is so much part of the life blood that it hardly needs to be talked about, such a statement is deemed to be unnecessary.
The high points in the life of the Church, spiritually speaking, have usually been the times when the Church has been heavily persecuted, and the low points, spiritually speaking, have been times when the Church has been allied with political power. Not always, but sometimes. So, I think it is largely irrelevant as to whether political powers seek to have their roots in Christianity or in any other religion, if they use that religion to justify whatever it is they are doing. So, the freer the Church is to comment on political life in the light of the Gospel, the better the situation is, everything else notwithstanding.
—The experience of the Byzantine Empire, which remains somewhere in the consciousness of Christian society, has as its symbol the double-headed eagle signifying the harmonious functions of two heads in one body—the Church as the conscience of the Government, and the Government as the protector of the Church. Does this have any meaning for Europeans today?
Of course, the Byzantine ideal depends upon Christian emperors. That is a great deal more than emperors who happen to be Christian. In the good examples which Byzantium gives us, we see people who are of great spiritual depth, and under those circumstances it is possible for such a thing to exist. I don’t see that the way modern democracy works is likely to bring people who are more than nominally Christian into positions of leadership.
People who are too demonstratively Christian are going to be wiped out in the primaries. That is the nature of the modern political machine. People with strong views about anything are likely to be wiped out. The people you are left with are those who are good at balancing, pleasing all sides. The Church is not like that. The Church should not be like that. The Church has a mission which hasn’t changed from the day that Jesus was physically amongst us on Earth.
It is the call to repentance, the call to bring people back to God. Very few states can be seen to have been successful in doing that same thing.
—You are speaking of states in the Western world, or states in general?
—In general. I know that Byzantium is a beautiful idea for many, many people. Holy Russia is a beautiful idea for many other people. Yet both the Russian political system and the Byzantine political system fell short of the Gospel in many ways, at least during certain periods of history, and sometimes markedly so. Neither one was of the mold of modern democracy. Unless things change dramatically in the future, I don’t see that the sort of government that existed in Russia, and in Byzantium, is going to be a possibility at all. So I would see the future being where the Church and the State might be amicable, but the Church always needs to reserve the right to criticize. And many governments don’t particularly care for that particular part of the Church’s mission.
—Do you think that this might be the underlying cause for this statement by the European Union?
—To be honest, the people who seem to be making the rules in Europe at the moment baffle me entirely. I have no idea why they say anything. Or even who they are.
—But you do not see this as setting the stage for more strictures on Church activities?
—No, absolutely not.
—They have fallen away from the Church, so they assume that all of Europe has fallen away from the Church?
—Pretty much. In some ways, that is good for the Church. Wherever, for example, Catholicism has been hand in hand with a particular government in a particular country, you haven’t always seen Catholicism at its finest.
—Being hand in hand with the government did not bring out its finest?
—Precisely. On the contrary.
—It brings out its worst?
—Well, the Spanish Inquisition leaps to one’s mind, but there are other examples.
—So, do you think that this decision could also have sprung from the Western European historical consciousness of abuses springing from a unity between Church and State?
—The Christian background of Western Europe is so vast, and so omnipresent, that nobody could actually eradicate it. It is an historical fact, there to stay. That is the basis of what’s going on. Given the arrival of Islam into Spain and parts of Eastern Europe, it has always been one variety of Christianity or another which has dominated this area for 1200 years, in some places even longer.
—And the new wave of Moslem immigration—are you feeling any pressure from this in Amsterdam?
—I am almost certain that there is a solution waiting to be found to what appears to be a problem. Most Moslem people here in Holland are very happy to lead there own lives, doing what they usually do peacefully with what are usually post-Christian neighbors. There will always be layers of fanaticism in every society, but on the whole, the Moslem presence in Holland is something that most people can live with.
However, when people turn to religion to provide themselves with what one might want to call “ego identity,” simply because that identity is not present anywhere else, it transforms the religion into something which is rather distasteful, and also makes their own psychological make-up somewhat suspect. This isn’t the best way of finding an identity. That is the problem. If people only find some sort of living identity in their religious affiliation, then we’ve got a lot of work to do. Because in the end, religions aren’t made to coexist. Religions, by definition, tend to be at odds, and this has always been historically true for Christianity as well as Islam, there has always been a tendency for one to want to wipe out the other. They don’t live side by side naturally. Quite how we can get them to live side by side with some sort of friendliness, I am not quite sure, but that is the work that needs to be done.
—Finally, do you have any words for the readers of Pravoslavie.ru.? Some wishes for the people of Russia, and her relationship to Europe?
—I suppose my view is that the communists who took over Russian society at the time of the revolution were (and I think this is true), genuinely trying to improve society. But I also believe that the way they went about it, particularly becoming adversarial towards Orthodoxy, meant that their labors were, as it were, in vain. Russia is Orthodox to the marrow. I see it in the people who come to Church, who have no real academic or book knowledge of what Orthodoxy is all about, but who have a deep, deep reverence for Orthodoxy, and the life of Christ that Orthodoxy exhibits. Russia without Orthodoxy is, and has been, impoverished. It might be splendid in some ways, but there is something desperately lacking. And I am fairly certain that in God’s time the roots will be connected with the leaves. Then, what is in the depths of Russian history—what you might want to call the depths of the Russian soul (but perhaps that’s a little more dangerous)—will begin to manifest itself once again in positive ways, through growth, outreach, and commitment to the words of Jesus. That future is very bright indeed.
Nun Cornelia (Rees)
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Is There One True Church?
An Interview with Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson—a former Protestant missionary and the translator of several books of Holy Scripture into the language of the Kogi people of Colombia, presently a student at Holy Trinity Spiritual Seminary—tells of his road to Orthodoxy. This is an Interview conducted with him on the pages of Pravoslavnaya Rus’ [Orthodox Rus’] by R. Sholkov.
* * *
RS: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
PJ: I was an Evangelical Protestant from birth. My family attended Baptist and Presbyterian churches, and my parents were firm believers in [the concept of] the “invisible Church,” i.e., [the belief] that there has never been a single church on earth which could call herself the one True Church; i.e., [a church] possessing the fullness of the Truth. All that was necessary was “to believe in Christ” and to attend that church which was “convenient.” But I could never understand why there were so many different so-called churches, all of which considered themselves to be Bible-based?
When I was 12 years old, our community was visited by some preachers who were doing missionary work in Colombia and translating the Bible for the Indians. Because I had always been interested in languages, I was attracted to this work. I was astonished [to learn] that there are thousands of languages in the world into which the Bible has not yet been translated.
I began to study Greek and Hebrew, in order to prepare myself for working in translating the Bible into such languages; and, at the university, I studied linguistics. Later, I joined the Protestant Mission of Bible translators (Wycliffe Bible Translators), in order to obtain a more detailed education.
When I was in training at Wycliffe, I became acquainted with my future wife, Styliana; now we have two sons, Nicholas and Benjamin. Styliana’s parents were missionaries in Colombia, when she was yet 5 years old. They preached among the semi-savage Kogi tribe. Her parents were very happy to receive our (my wife’s and mine) support in this missionary work. They had no time for translations; hence, after our arrival, I began to study both Spanish (which is spoken in Colombia) and the language of the Kogi people, and to translate the New Testament and the book of Genesis into their language. I was also forced to create an orthography for the Kogi, as they had never had a written language.
RS: How did you find out about Orthodoxy?
PJ: Being a missionary, I understood much. The Evangelicals repeat, over and over, that they all have the same identical faith; but each denomination has its own system of belief. Thus, I saw that the missionaries in Colombia pretended to sympathize with the Roman Catholics; but that behind their backs, they hated each other. Each denomination taught in accordance with its own belief-system, but would say, at the same time, that all Protestants nonetheless believe one and the same thing.
I began to think deeply about this—how could we teach the tribes a single faith? when one group would become Baptists, another—Lutherans, a third—Pentecostals. I discovered that each Bible translator, willy-nilly, would translate it in accordance with his own denomination’s world-view. They would say that this “will help the Indians to understand [the Bible] better.” But which translation of the Bible was the correct one? How could we proclaim catholicity? Where was the Church in all this?
Likewise, while I was translating the Bible from the Greek, I noticed that its meaning was distinct from the English and Spanish translations. The Western teaching concerning predestination (Calvinism), which always used to trouble me, did not exist in the Greek Bible. But the English and Spanish translators, willy-nilly, would introduce slight changes into the meaning of the text, in order to imbue the texts with a western and even a Calvinist meaning. I likewise noticed that the other major Protestant doctrines simply could not be Biblical; chiliasm, for example, or the justification of believers by faith alone, although Protestants explain that these doctrines of theirs are allegedly Bible-based!
I began to study Church history, in order to find out precisely whence these heresies originated, and what the early Church actually taught. Protestants, on the other hand, teach that, after the Apostles, God ceased all activity, as it were, for fourteen centuries.
RS: And how did your spouse, who had grown up in a family of confirmed Protestants react to the road along which you had begun to travel?
PJ: She always supported me; even, as it were, nudged me along! When we were wed, we promised each other that we would always seek accord in all controversial issues that might arise. The Truth is one, and we always discuss all questions until we reach an accord. What we cannot agree about is the teaching concerning the Church. Styliana was likewise brought up with the idea of an “invisible Church,” but rejected it. She believed firmly that the Church must be somewhere. It was precisely she who inspired me to find out whether Calvinism has any basis in the Bible. When I discovered that the distorted concept of predestination existed only in the West, and that the Holy Fathers of the East teach about synergy (i.e., the mutually-reciprocal bond between the Divine and human wills), my wife asked me:
“Well, what about the Greek Church, then? Perhaps it contains the Truth?”
My response was the following:
“Which Greek Church? Are you speaking of the Orthodox Church?”
I knew nothing about Orthodoxy, but I had been brought up with the understanding that Orthodoxy is as pernicious as [Roman] Catholicism—even worse, in fact. Thus, I expressed no further interest in the idea.
In the meantime, we were approaching ever closer to Orthodoxy! When we were invited to preach at meetings, I would speak about fasting and the doctrine of synergy. But people did not like what I had to say. I tried to be a proper Protestant and base my teachings upon the Bible, but people would say:
“We don’t care that you can support your words with the Bible, this is still not our doctrine.”
It was apparent that, despite Protestantism’s stand against Church Tradition, they had created their own tradition. We finally figured out that we were no longer Protestants. But we were also not [Roman] Catholics. So what were we? Where was our faith?
When we returned to America for vacation, my wife purchased a used book for 10 cents, entitled “The Orthodox Church.” I immediately read it and was struck by lightning, as it were. I did not know about the seven Œcumenical Councils and about former apostasies. Now, I read about theosis and hesychasm, about St. Gregory Palamas and the Venerable Serafim of Sarov.
This was a new world! But, in reality, it was not new, but distinctively unique; this was the Apostolic Faith. The Truth had turned out to be there, where we had not expected to find It—but [where] It had always waited for us. We understood that Christ had truly built His Church, having said to Peter:
“upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her” (Matt. 16: 18).
We believed in this as in a verity, even when our families and friends stood opposed to our beliefs.
RS: Now you are studying at Holy Trinity Seminary. What are your plans for the future?
PJ: Despite the fact that there have long-since been Orthodox temples in Latin America, we were amazed by the fact that there is not a single one in Colombia, although Orthodox [Christians] do live there. Likewise, many of our friends and acquaintances in Colombia are interested in Orthodoxy. This is a [Roman] Catholic country, but the Protestants have drawn many to themselves. The majority of [Roman] Catholics would never have converted to Protestantism, had they not noticed that their church is moving ever-farther-away from the Truth. People tell us that they want to find that original Faith which [once] existed among the ancient Saints. Thus, we think that Colombia, like all of Latin America, is a great harvest, which is awaiting its workers.
RS: What would you like to say to our non-Orthodox readers?
PJ: We are disappointed by the fact that at such a time as Orthodoxy is being reborn in Rus’, many false teachings are appearing and polluting Russia. God is one, the Church is one, and the Truth is one. I would advise the non-Orthodox readers to study thoroughly the teaching of the Orthodox Church. Not a single other church or faith can call itself the true Church. Do not depart from Orthodoxy because you see some people in it of little faith. You must not abandon the Truth on account of sinful man. Sinners are everywhere, but true Saints are only [to be found] in Orthodoxy. Do not be afraid to ask questions and to seek the Truth. Then you will be able to say with us:
“We see the true Light; we have found the true Faith.”
*****
But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed. (St. Paul [The Epistle to the Galatians, Ch. I, vv. 8-9])
F.
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Digital Natives Embrace Ancient Church
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Twentysomethings captivated by Orthodoxy
by Andrea Goodell
Tim Flinders will graduate from Grand Valley State University next month. Raised Lutheran, he also explored fundamentalist Baptism, Roman Catholicism and even Messianic Judaism before converting to Orthodox Christianity this year.
“Orthodoxy has completely transformed me already,” he said. “I feel like the first time in my life I’m growing spiritually.”
Flinders, 22, like many other young people converting to Eastern Orthodoxy, was looking for authenticity and historical accuracy in his Christian faith.
“I had so many different questions that needed to be answered,” said Flinders, who added he wrestled with the many divisions of the Christian church over the years.
He was chrismated Holy Saturday at St. George Orthodox Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Chrismation is akin to confirmation.
Recently he attended the second annual Encountering Orthodoxy Conference at Hope College.
The Rev. Deacon Nicholas Belcher, dean of students at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Boston, gave the opening keynote address, using the themes of holy week to introduce Orthodoxy to the more than 50 who attended.
Eastern Orthodox Easter, Pascha in Greek — the language favored by Orthodox everywhere — fell on the same day as Western Easter this year.
Belcher described the nailing of Jesus to the cross as “one of the most cruel things human beings have ever thought of to do to other human beings.”
Eastern Orthodox Christians, he explained, experience the crucifixion and resurrection in the now during liturgy.
“There is no sense that we are just talking about something that happened a long time ago. It is today,” he said.
Dustin Miller, a Hope senior, attended the conference for extra credit in his history of Christianity class, but said,
“I’ve always been curious about Orthodoxy.”
He, too, said he was looking for the apostolic, historical roots of the Christian church. Miller considers himself non-denominational and said he didn’t know the Hope campus had Orthodox students.
“I’ve been trying to figure it out, trying to find what best fits me,” Miller said.
The Orthodox Christian Fellowship campus club, which sponsored this month’s conference, meets Thursday nights for Small Compline (a short Psalm and evening prayer service). Then the handful of Orthodox students, one seminary student and Fr. Steven VanBronkhorst discuss topics such as biblical foundations for Orthodox worship.
He would like to see more inquirers at the OCF meetings and more students at the second annual Encountering Orthodoxy Conference.
VanBronkhorst was a Reformed Church of America minister for almost two decades before coming to the Orthodox church 14 years ago. Still, VanBronkhorst said, he sees many more today looking for the historical church than when he was doing his own searching.
“I always felt that ideally there should be just one church,” he said. “The Orthodox church is by far the most historically faithful body. … Who is going to deny that the greater part of the evangelical world has the faith? They have faith. What they don’t have is the worship.”
Tyler Dykstra of Holland was chrismated this month.
He grew up Christian Reformed, but says he “wanted more.”
“Over time I started to realize there was so much history I had not known about even though I had gone to Christian schools all my life,” Dykstra, 24, said.
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The Father Of Lights
By Constantine Georgiades
A team of 120 members of the London Robbery Squad arrested me, my builder and electrician in Devon on 17th April 1991. I had to strip, put on white paper suit and wait in a cold empty cell for 3 days and then I was charged with various conspiracy offenses and remanded in custody at Exeter Prison. I had often driven past the prison and had never considered that one day I might be a guest of Her Majesty!
As an ex-policeman, I was warned to ask for the ’43’s’ by the escorting officer, but I really hadn’t understood what that meant. A mistake had been made and I felt sure that it was only a matter of time before I would be released, so I insisted on going on the main wing with all the other men and refused ‘Rule 43’ protection.
News of my arrival travelled fast and I soon had hundreds of men wanting to vent their anger out on me, due solely to the fact that I had once been a policeman. It didn’t matter that I had left some years earlier. As far as they were concerned, I was still a policeman and ‘the enemy’.
Escorted to ‘B’ wing with 2 other inmates I was locked in a cell the size of a bus shelter. After having lived my life in relative luxury up until that moment, it came as quite a shock to have to share a cell with 2 total strangers! It was filthy, no toilet and only the use of a bucket, no sink, little ventilation and poor lighting and the stench of urine and excrement was overpowering.
As he closed the door I heard the Prison Officer grunt “Three more pieces of s*** off the street”. I knew that I had done some bad things in my time, but I never thought that I had deserved to be treated or spoken to in this manner. The three of us remained in these conditions for periods of up to 23 hours a day and trying to cope with the monotony and violence of prison life was difficult.
At first ‘bang up’ seemed like a lifeline to me as it was difficult to kill a man whilst he was locked away in a cell! Although I had a strong physical presence, I knew that I couldn’t defend myself against 600 men and I was gripped with terror. I ate very little for the first three weeks and my weight dropped by nearly 4 stone. The food repulsed me and I couldn’t bring myself to eat it, but my fellow inmate said “If you don’t eat you will die in here”. He was right of course and I had already considered that as one of my options for early release.
I spent the first 14 months on remand walking in my own strength, unable to see my children and being systematically stripped of all my worldly possessions. You can’t keep up your mortgage payments when you are in prison.
Daily I sifted through my food searching for pieces of broken glass and slivers of razor blades and smelling it for traces of chemicals. There are more ways of getting to someone that you hate in prison than you can imagine! I grew more angry by the day at the injustice done to me and I wanted revenge against those who had put me there. I scoured my life searching for answers. Every day I mourned for my son Peter who had died as a baby whilst the family were out shopping and for the welfare of my sons and I kept raking through the ashes of my broken marriage trying to make sense of my life.
The police were able to convince a jury that 2 out of the 3 of us were guilty of at least thinking about committing a crime together and we were convicted and the electrician was acquitted. I received 12 years for conspiring to kidnap and 12 years for conspiring to blackmail with a further 3 years for not having a firearms certificate to run concurrently.
Now being a convicted criminal with a lengthy sentence meant that I qualified for a single cell. I could now use a toilet without being in the company of my cellmates and on the Wednesday following my conviction I went to listen to a visiting speaker from an outside church. The room was packed with prisoners and as I entered they jeered at me. The visitor was a Bishop from Africa and he told us that he had the responsibility for overseeing hundreds of churches. No one thought to ask him what denomination he was and it seemed hardly relevant at that time. “Today I have not come for all of you; just one man and when he hears what I have to say he will know who he is and he will know that I am speaking the truth.” The Bishop went on to describe me exactly. So much so that I immediately jumped to my feet saying “It’s me! I’m the man that you’re looking for!” I went forward and prayed with him and reaffirmed my faith, which, to be quite honest, had been pushed back to the furthest recesses of my mind. I hadn’t even considered that ‘God’ could help me with these problems.
Walking back to my cell that night I had hoped for a bolt of lightning to strike me or to hear the sound of God’s voice giving me instructions, but ‘Nothing! Absolutely nothing!’ An inmate said “Well, what did God do to help you then?” and he laughed. All I could think of saying was “Nothing yet, but I have made a promise to God and I’m going to keep it”. After all, what had I got to lose? I suppose that was the moment when I had made a conscious effort to stop walking and trusting in my own strength and knowledge and I had started my early steps of walking in faith, trusting in God. It was scary and at that point I had no idea how of quickly my faith was about to be tested.
The following day, Gary, a huge drug-crazed Rastafarian called to me: “Copper! Come out here and die!” It was ‘slop out’, a time when the doors open for a few minutes in order for us to empty the toilet buckets. Gary wanted to kill me and he kept calling to me. So I walked out of my cell, looked at him and said “Don’t be stupid, you can’t kill me out here, the ‘Screws’ will see you. Come into my cell and you can kill me in here without any witnesses.” I turned and went back inside and he followed. There were 2 chairs either side of a small table pushed against the wall and I sat furthest from the door and invited Gary to sit opposite me.
He said “But I’m going to kill you!” I said “In a minute, there’s plenty of time. You can do it when we’ve finished our game of backgammon.” We both sat and played and the prison staff, who were having difficulty controlling him, locked us in together.
I told Gary all about my promise to God.
He asked me about my cross that I wore and I told him how I was baptised ‘Constantine’ in the Greek Orthodox Church in Malta when I was 5 years old and showed him my baby teeth marks on the back. I can’t remember who won the game of backgammon but Gary and I shared several hours together. Eventually the doors opened and as he got up to leave he said “I don’t want to kill you no more, man. Pray for me, eh?”
Just before I was transferred to Wandsworth Prison, I was in the Gym and I could hear both volley ball teams plotting to do me serious harm in the changing rooms at the end of the session. I recognised the signs as all the prison staff normally disappear when a planned violent attack is about to happen. Not wanting to wet myself, I went to the toilet. I looked up and said “Listen God, I know that I’m one of your children and if you want me to receive this beating I will, but, I thought that you were going to protect me?” No immediate answer… I shrugged my shoulders and walked back into the changing area where a gang of predominantly black men confronted me.
The ring leader said “Listen ‘copper’ this is not personal, okay. You have to be dealt with before you go to Wandsworth, that’s all. If we don’t do it the ‘Brothers’ in Wandsworth are going to ask why we didn’t. Do you understand?” I said “Yes, of course; get on with it then. But remember this, it’s not me that you are attacking, it’s God. I am one of his children and His Spirit lives in me. If you harm me you are going to have to answer to Him.”
A look of incredulous disbelief and fear shot across their faces and they immediately started to argue amongst themselves about ‘the brotherhood’. Using a ‘shocked’ voice, I said “Are you guys black?” There was a pause “Are you taking the p***?” I said “No, of course not. I don’t see colour, so it isn’t relevant to me, but it’s obviously important to you. If you are black, you must know what it’s like to be victimised because you have been victimised for centuries and it’s cruel. Isn’t it strange that you are now doing that same thing to me! How do you feel about that?” More arguing. “Who are you, cool hand Luke! Why aren’t you afraid of us?”
Gary suddenly appeared from nowhere and stood in between me and the ring leader. He spoke very calmly and to the point. “This is a good man. He believes in God!” He turned to look at me and said “If you gona hurt him, you gotta do me first.”
The ring leaders response spewed out of his mouth “You a f****** brother or what?”
“Of course I’m a brother! He’s a good man. Leave him alone…”
Gary had turned into an angel and I left the Gym unharmed praising the Lord! Gary told me later “You know what they wanted? They wanted your gold cross to sell for drugs on the wing!”
Shortly after that incident I was transferred to Wandsworth Prison and placed on ‘E’ Wing. I shared my cell with a man who had been convicted of murdering 2 people over a drugs debt. I couldn’t lie on my bed as it had been urinated on, so I rolled out my bedroll and lay on top. When he woke up I told him that I was an ex policeman and that I had made a promise to God and I was going to serve Him. He was shocked and said “You’re going to die in here, brother.”
I said “If that’s His will. But I don’t think so. He’s going to protect me”. I could hardly see him in the badly lit cell, but he said “Yeah, right.” During my time at Wandsworth I lived amongst nearly 1,000 convicted criminals and remained unharmed. I wrote to Gary and thanked him for helping me and he wrote me a lovely letter back.
When I was transferred to Maidstone Prison I was put on the long term lifers’ wing. On the same coach were 2 Christian inmates, one was serving life and the other 8 years for multiple bank robbery. I was put in a single cell next to ‘Wolf’y’ another Christian who played guitar and we sang lots of Christian songs together. The men knew who I was before I had got onto the wing, so I thought it best to approach them with honesty. I approached the Probation Officer who had an office on the wing.
“Please can you tell me who runs the wing?”
“Why?”
“I’ve seen it on telly, there’s always a ‘Main Man’ who runs things in these sorts of places”.
“Yes there is. Why do you want to know who he is?”
“I’m an ex policeman and I just want to introduce myself to him”.
The colour fell from his face instantaneously.
“The Governor needs to know about this right away. You are going to die in here! There are men in here who are NEVER going to be released and they have nothing to lose by killing you”.
“That’s OK I’ll be fine”.
“No! They are going to kill you! You MUST get out of here!”
He left quickly and indicated to a man called Terry who was wearing a green and blue track suit top. I approached Terry and I introduced myself to him and we walked to my cell for a chat. I explained my situation and he said “Yeah, I know you’re a ‘copper’. As you’ve been straight with me you won’t have any problems with ‘my men’. The odds of you getting plunged are very high though, so watch your back.”
I knew that there was a swimming pool at this prison, so I said “That’s OK, I’m a good swimmer,” He smiled and said “No stupid, plunged with a knife! You don’t have a clue, do you?” I said “Not really, but I have God on my side.” His smile turned to a grin and he said “You’re going to need Him big time in here, the last guy they didn’t like was disembowelled on the landing in front of everyone last week and 2 others were torched in their cells before him. Good luck!” I was intrigued and asked “How were they torched?” He replied “Petrol, from the lads on the gardens”.
Over the next 3 weeks I sank into the deepest parts of hell and the men tormented me every day with threats and verbal jibes. The Principal Officer on the wing took me into his office and said “I can’t help you if you need help. These are dangerous men. I can’t make you go on Rule 43 but my advice is to transfer wings immediately. The men all know who you are and they are making plans to hurt you”. I said “That’s OK, they don’t mean it and they won’t harm me because God is looking after me”.
I was eventually confronted by 6 angry men on the landing outside my cell. All I could think of saying was “May God bless you and protect you. He loves you all and so do I.” I kept walking. They were so shocked that they were unable to speak or lay a hand on me. However, a few days later one of them threw a bucket of human excrement over me and my cell. I had to throw everything out because the smell was unbearable!
The prison staff, who I think were more afraid of them than me, refused to give me a clean mattress or linen and in front of the other men said “Fresh linen is only issued once a week and that was yesterday. Why do you need fresh things?” They had seen what had happened and the big rule in prison is not to be a ‘grass’ so I said “I have wet my bed”. He said “Well, put it all back in your cell and wait till then”. I refused and spent hours cleaning my cell but I was still unable to get rid of the stench and I ended up sleeping on the steel straps on my metal bed, with no covers, no coat, no mattress and with the window open wide. I was frozen!
Later that week another group of 5 men charged into my classroom on the Education Block. The tutor, Ian, who was running a business studies course was caught in the onslaught. Petrified and shaking he froze to his seat. I stood up and said: “Are all you guys stupid? You can’t kill me in front of a member of staff. Let Ian leave”. I pointed to Ian and said “Look at him, for goodness sake let him go and then you can kill me without any witnesses”.
The ringleader shouted “No, we want him to stay so that he can see what we are going to do to you!” I raised both arms and shouted “Ok! In the name of Jesus Christ, I will take you all on!” He shouted back “We’re Muslims and don’t believe in Jesus as God, only as a prophet.” I said “I know the president of SUFI, he’s a friend and he would not be very happy with you behaving like this. Islam is about unity, love and wisdom, not hatred!” They looked shocked and were unable to lay a hand on me. The alarm bells started to ring and I was detained for disturbing the prison and taken to the Segregation Block for my own protection.
Now segregated from the whole prison, I was only allowed out of my cell when all the other prisoners were locked away in theirs. It was for my protection I was told, but I kept insisting that I didn’t need protection.
During my 1 hour a day legal break from my cell, I chose to take a shower instead of going to the exercise yard. On some days a prison visitor would visit me in my cell. He was locked in with me and we prayed together for my family. I don’t remember his name but God will know who he is for sure.
One evening I stepped out of my cell and the staff vanished. I believe that I was given another spiritual warning of danger. I turned the shower on and pulled the nylon curtain closed and quickly tucked myself away in the sink area. Two men, who I recognised from my wing burst into the shower with knives to attack me but I wasn’t in there. I ran at them from the side and shouted “come on then, in Jesus name!”
They fled in panic running down the stairs and I watched as the Prison Officer let them out.
After refusing continuously to go on ‘Rule 43’ for protection, I was finally spoken to by the No1 Governor.
“What’s all this about. You are causing havoc in my prison and you have to go on Rule 43!” I said “There really isn’t a problem. The men are just a bit unsettled and once they get used to me they will be fine”. He snapped back: “They want to kill you and your problem is that you are just a proud man and won’t go on ‘The Rule'”
I said:
“It isn’t pride, it’s faith. God’s watching over me and everything will be fine, you see”.
He said: “I’m going to have to speak to the Home Office as you are going to die in this prison”. I was told that I was being moved to Channing’s Wood Prison so I made a poster with a large cross on it and wrote my cell number and “I forgive you”. I asked the Prison Officer if I could go to my cell to collect some letters, which were in a plastic bag under my bed and I insisted that I went to collect them personally.
We walked from the Segregation Unit to the wing and all the men were moving about on the landing. When they saw me they all stopped and watched me walk to my cell to collect my letters and on the way out I put up my poster on their notice board. I wanted them to see that I wasn’t afraid of them. When I arrived at Channing’s Wood Prison I had no personal possession at all, only prison property, letters and my cross. I really believed that I was going to die in prison and I had sent all my property out. The only shoes that I had were a pair of old fabric slippers. I was exhausted both mentally and physically and at the lowest point in my life.
Simon, whom I had met in Exeter, was waiting for me outside Reception. He was a Muslim and as I had read his depositions previously, I believe his account of what had happened to him. I said “God has sent me here, Simon!” He looked a bit surprised and said “Why?” I said “I don’t know”. He said “You have to find out why!” and he encouraged me and joined me in my search for the truth and he later became a Christian at Channing’s Wood.
He asked to be baptised, so I referred him to the Chaplain who refused and told him to wait until he was released. So he asked me to baptise him on the wing, which I did according to canon of the true Church. I told the Chaplain what I was going to do and asked him to join us, but he refused saying: “If I start baptising the men in the bath on the wing, people are going to think that I’m insane!” So I carried on baptising the men on the wing according to the canon of the Church.
At this time I had no contact with an Orthodox Priest and I acted in faith according to the Great Commission. On some weekends we baptised between eight And twelve men at a time. We fasted and prayed regularly together and our group grew and we met in an area behind the gym, a place we named ‘Apostles Corner’. Men were surrendering needles used for drugs and handing in satanic material used for witchcraft, which I destroyed by fire in the Chapel and prayed with the men for forgiveness of sins.
Simon and I joined a Business Studies Course and we were asked to speak on any topic of our choice. I chose ‘Life’ and when I had finished talking the whole class clapped loudly. From that moment on members of the class asked for help and more and more inmates approached me asking for prayer and help to find God. The Chaplain allowed me to use one of their offices to talk to the men and to pray with them.
They gave me a job as a ‘Chaplain Orderly’ and I believe that God used me to talk to the men and minister to their needs. Although the men would come and speak to me they were not prepared to go to the normal western church services, which frustrated ‘The Team’.
Whilst praying in my cell one night, I pleaded with God to show me what He wanted me to do.
“Make it simple,” I said, “because I am not that bright and I just don’t understand what You want me to do.”
When I finished praying, I looked at my watch and it was 11.00pm. I turned the light off by pressing on a calendar which covered the light switch and climbed into bed. As I pulled the covers up to my chin I heard an audible voice say “Open your eyes!” I opened my eyes immediately because I was on my own and no one was supposed to be in my cell. I saw a hole appear in the air above my bedroom cabinet. It looked like electricity, bright and it shone brighter than diamonds. A rush of electricity came into my body through my feet and I was paralysed from head to toe. The only thing working in my body was what seemed to be a tiny area at the back of my skull, which only allowed me only to ‘think’ the name “Jesus” and even that was difficult.
I was unable to speak or call out and this sparkling hole started to get bigger and ended up about the size of about 1/2 meter wide. I could see through the hole into what looked like outer space and there were stars.
I was lifted off the bed in my body and moved into the centre of the cell. I knew that I was in my body because the bed was empty and I was suspended for a brief moment and then my body moved through the bars so that half of it was in the cell and the other half was outside and I was looking down my body into the hole. Then my whole body started to move towards the hole until it reached the opening.
I thought that I was going to go through the hole, which was still arcing with light; bright light and I then saw the form of a man with a beard arked in electricity moving through space. My body stopped moving forward and then moved back over my bed and it was then lowered. I didn’t wake up because I was already awake and when I tried to lift myself of the bed I was aware of a whirl of a holy presence around my pillow. This presence remained for what seemed like 5 minutes and then it gently subsided.
When I checked my watch it was 11.07pm.
In the morning I went with another inmate to the Chapel to run morning prayer, as the Chaplain was on sick leave and he had asked me to carry on with the prayers and the prison staff opened the doors for us. When I touched the light switch there was a loud bang and the switching unit caught fire with flames about 6″ to 7″ long covering my hand and all the lights tripped. The light switch was still smoking when the electricians arrived and they examined the whole system and were mystified as they were unable to explain the reason for such an occurrence. The system was protected from any power surge on the mains side and all that they could say was that some external power source seems to have entered the unit from the outside.
In my work at the Chapel I was exposed to all the western religions including the various mainstream Christian denominations and ministers, they came and went as the budget allowed and I served refreshments to them and the inmates after their services. I had to do that even for the Pagans who also used the Chapel for their meeting! Upon my request the Chaplain asked the Pagans to use the Multi Faith Room on the main wing as I didn’t feel that their presence was appropriate.
God used me and the men to make many spiritual things happen in the prison Chapel and on the wing. I have not written about these things before because God has already written about this through His Prophets and Scripture. Anyway, who would believe a wicked sinner like me, a convicted criminal, who only a few years ago would have been hung for the crimes for which he was convicted? Whilst in the prison and after coming out into the world I have been declared a fraud and the work that God did has been
dismissed by those who do not believe in my witness. The western Christianity refuses to believe that they have anything missing from their teaching, referring to Orthodoxy, even by some of the clergy, as Greek Mythology, Greek superstition, contrary to scripture, dogmatic and legalistic and hardly relevant for society today.
My mother died in Greece whilst I was ‘inside’ and I was told at 11.00pm by 2 prison officers who came into my cell. They confirmed my name and then said:
“Your mother’s dead!”
they turned on their heels and locked me away again, leaving me to cope with my grief on my own. I prayed all this up to God and he brought me a blessed peace, which allowed me to accept that she had fallen asleep. A year later my father died also. I was praying at the time he passed and I was aware of his passing. When the prison officer came to tell me the following morning, I said:”You have come to tell me that my father died last night, haven’t you?” He looked surprised and said “Who told you? I said “God.” I truly believe that they are both now with my son, Peter.
I asked all the ministers at the prison to explain what was happening to me in order to help me understand and not one of them had any idea of what I was talking about. A Catholic Bishop said: “I am Scientist and the brain generates electricity, so maybe that’s what happened?”
When my parole came up for review after 4 years I refused it, saying: “Parole is for rehabilitated offenders and I am innocent of the crimes that I was charged with. You may have my body but you don’t have my soul, so when you have finished playing silly games with my body just let me know”. I was consequently refused parole and sent for a Psychiatric and Spiritual Examination. When I met with the Psychiatrist she said “Are you homosexual?” I said “I have had lots of offers of homosexual relationships whilst I have been inside, but I have thanked them for the compliment and graciously declined as I have no doubt over my sexuality; I’m straight.” She looked surprised and said “Are you sure?” I said “Yes!” So she went on: “Well, you must be a woman then!” Stunned by her remarks I said “Are you serious?” and she replied: “You have the complete profile of a woman.” So I said: “Well, if I’m a woman you had better send me to Pucklechurch.” which is a prison for women.
Her austere response was:
“Don’t get smart with me!”
A member from the choir at Bath Orthodox Church came to see me after this as he had been asked to find out who I was and through him I was introduced to the Church in Bath and Father Yves came to visit me in Leyhill Prison and Father Luke from Wales also wrote to me. I asked Father Yves the same questions that I had asked the Bishop. He gave me a little book called ‘Orthodox Spirituality’ by Father Thomas Hopko, which I devoured.
It was to reveal to me the answers to so many of my questions that I so desperately wanted answer to and I went on to read other Orthodox books.
I spent over 5 years locked away from the world and during that time I missed the second stage of my sons’ lives. I met a lot of men who were struggling to find answers to the purpose of their lives and I felt compelled to help them. Men who did not know what it is like to have a father or how to be a father and are destined to continually drift in and out of the prison system. How we have failed them! I have lived with them, cried with them, listened to how they have been abused as children and loved them wherever they were spiritually and every night, in my dreams, I am reminded of them and I share their pain.
I have learned that if we commune with God, He uses us to plant and water the seed of His Holy Spirit in our brothers and sisters and it is God who makes that seed grow.
Since leaving prison in 1996 I have not always got things right, I know, but I have never lost my faith. My mother told me before she fell asleep: “If you lose your money you have lost nothing. If you lose your self respect you have lost something and if you lose your faith, you have lost everything!” I have struggled with illness and pain and still do today. I have made many mistakes and I am still a wretched sinner, but I have been blessed in so many different ways.
My gift from God has been my wife, Maria, who has since meeting me silently endured the persecutions of those that hate us.
We married in the Orthodox Church in Colchester in 2000 and through that blessing God has used Maria and the children to heal so many of the wounds that I received prior to and during my incarceration. I have been told to move on with my life, but after having known and felt some of the pain of the victims and prisoners, I am unable to stop myself revisiting them every night in
my dreams. I have tried to live my life in the world by being open and honest about my past. I have to declare my convictions to prospective employers for the rest of my life, so moving on has been made extremely difficult. God will show us as a family how we can do this in time. There are many people who are imprisoned in this world, who are confined by invisible bars in their lives and I pray for them also.
My many sins are always before me and through many tears I am assured that He has forgiven me them all and they have been forgotten, but many of those who live in the world seem unable to do the same.
So, how did I find Orthodoxy?
All I can say is that the seed of the Holy Spirit was sown in me when I was 5 years old, but, it has taken a lot of watering by many people to help me to finally commune with God. The brothers and sisters that helped me were not all Orthodox Christians, I hasten to add. God didn’t say in His ‘Great Commission’ that we should exclude any particular race or religion. Learning to live a non materialistic life has been one of my greatest blessings and learning the depth of prayer that can be achieved by moving beyond praying with the voice, mouth, lips and tongue and of course fasting, forgiveness of sins and love.
In order for me to move forward with God by living in the western world of Christianity, having an Anglican father and an Orthodox mother, was to find the root of our Christian faith and after tirelessly examining all the faiths, I came home and found true communion with God in Orthodoxy.
All glory to God!
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I Knew Right Then, In That Second…
by Trudy Ellmore, USA
My family of origin is Roman Catholic, the faith I practiced until I was 18. My love of God was deep and personal. There was never a time in my life when God was not present, even in my earliest memories. Yet, when someone witnessed to me and asked,
“Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? If you haven’t, you’re going to hell”
my reaction was one of panic. I turned away from my childhood church to a non-denominational fundamentalist church to allay my fear of damnation. There I met my first husband. After our marriage, we became involved in a Southern Baptist church where we both were baptized by immersion.
Following my husband’s death after 26 months of marriage, my infant son and I returned to my hometown. Thinking all Baptist churches were alike, I joined an American Baptist church, where I met my current husband, who was attending Seminary with the intention of pastoring in the Baptist denomination. We served the church for 5 years until he transitioned to higher education fundraising.
For the next 20 years, it was in the American Baptist denomination where my faith and love of God was nurtured and grew deeper and deeper, where I taught children and adult Sunday school classes, counseled children for baptism, served on Boards and committees, and volunteered for all sorts of ministries. It is also where I was challenged by a small-group Bible study leader to “be the church of the Book of Acts.”
That simple phrase started my quest to discover “where” that church was or if it “even was still around” and vibrant.
Simultaneously, I returned to college to finish my Bachelor’s degree. Majoring in history and taking every class possible that dealt with church history became the road which led me to the Orthodox Church. The reading list of one class included St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. His thesis made Jesus Christ – the Man real to me.
In each class, I dug through the past. As each subsequent piece of history was uncovered, my soul hungered for more understanding. I also found myself a little angry and betrayed. Why hadn’t any of my former pastors shared the Early Church Fathers and that there were ancient texts translated into English available to read and learn how the Early Church worshipped? Hadn’t they learned this in Seminary? The history professor mentioned previously offered a new class: The History and Theology of Eastern Orthodoxy.
The first book I read was The Way of the Pilgrim. I had found my answer to what would lead me to a deeper prayer life!
Also during this time period, unbeknownst to all those closest to me, I was falling deeper into severe depression to the extent that every night I prayed,
“God, please do not let me awaken in the morning.”
He did not answer my prayers. Each morning I opened my eyes only to sink further down into sorrow. I held on to an emotionally frayed rope as I dangled over a cliff, all the while digging through history to find the Early Church.
The professor invited our class to Midnight Paschal Divine Liturgy at his parish. When I walked into the church, illuminated only by candles surrounding Christ’s tomb, I was shocked into silence. He really died! At midnight when the priest lifted the icon of Christ in the tomb aloft and carried it into the Sanctuary, my heart skipped – He had really risen from the dead! What I had always believed seem to become alive in front of my eyes.
I knew right then, in that second, that I needed to become a part of the Orthodox Church, that the Orthodox Church contained that which would heal and save me.
Fourteen months later, on the Feast Day of the Holy Cross – September 14, 2004, I was received into the Holy Orthodox Church, receiving St. Athanasius the Great, Patriarch of Alexandria as my patron saint.
As I look back over my entire life, I see God in the workings of my life. As I write this, five and a half years later, I remain deeply thankful to God, Who by the prayers of my Patron Saint, led me into the Holy Orthodox Church.
The Church has, in fact, saved my life.
FF
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Recovering the Ancient Paths
by Dennis L. Corrigan
“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever”
The following is a revision of a letter (article) we wrote to the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel to explain our decision to withdraw from that organization in order to pursue our being catechized unto Chrismation into the Orthodox Church. We have revised it to make it more useful for a more general distribution by members of our congregation who may want to help in explaining our decision to families and friends.
The Carpenter’s Company is in the process of becoming a part of the Orthodox Church. This obviously means that we have had to withdraw from the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel which we did in early May, 1996. All this is actually the culmination of a journey which began for us in 1987 when the Holy Spirit commanded us to ask for the “ancient paths” (Jeremiah 6:16).
A Journey Begins
Our quest for the ancient paths did not actually get underway until June 17, 1989 when we began to meet every morning at six o’clock for prayer. We soon called it Vigil, the name given to the night office of prayer for over fifteen hundred years. We could not possibly have anticipated where this path would eventually lead us. Nor could we have foreseen that Vigil would last so long or become what it has.
When we began Vigil, the Lord’s Prayer was our prayer outline. About a month later, the Holy Spirit led us to begin to celebrate the Eucharist. Later worship was added. And as this process continued, now adding a certain element, now eliminating another, Vigil gradually became a different kind of meeting. Although its form was changing, one thing remained constant: the meeting began on its first day and has continued to the present with a strong, abiding, palpable sense of the Lord’s presence concerning which every visitor has remarked. However, the longer we maintained our daily Vigil, the further our path diverged from the path we had once traveled with Foursquare. Although we recognized we were becoming somewhat unique among Foursquare churches, we have always been confident that our conduct was well within the boundaries of Foursquare’s tolerance for diversity. More recently, however, especially since our encounter with Orthodoxy, we’ve become aware that we have been straining those boundaries.
A Spiritual Focus
By the time two years had passed, we had become a people with an intense spiritual focus. I suppose that is to be expected of a people who meet every day for prayer. We were beginning to give focused attention to issues to which we had only given lip service before.
We had all become faithful in maintaining a consistent, daily quiet time with the Lord. This was the first time that any of us had experienced consistent, long-term faithfulness in this regard.
We had become the kind of community we had only dreamed of before. We were learning what it really means to be “the family of God” as a matter of daily, practical reality.
Meeting daily as a prayer community meant that we could no longer tolerate in one another the “little” sins and acts of disobedience we’d learned to ignore when we used to meet weekly. Consequently we allowed the Holy Spirit to restore church discipline among us.
We became a people who gave themselves to the discipline of Scripture memorization. We have memorized I John, Romans, John and are now memorizing Galatians.
A Liturgical Direction
Meeting every day also made impossible the kind of innovative creativity a weekly schedule allows. Consequently, our daily worship became patterned. To our amazement, however, the more we repeated the prayers and songs we were using, the more meaningful they became to us. The result was predictable: our daily Vigil gradually became liturgical.
Enter, The Church Fathers
In 1992 on a personal retreat at St. Andrew’s Abbey, a Benedictine Monastery, I bought a copy of The Rule of St. Benedict (sixth century). Upon returning home, the leadership team began to read it together. What we discovered astonished us: The Rule dealt with situations we were facing fight then, but for which we had found little if any help from contemporary authors.
In the Introduction and footnotes were references to many others of the Church Fathers, most of whom we had never heard of before. Finding and reading these Church Fathers, particularly the Apostolic, Desert and Monastic Fathers, has perhaps been our most significant discovery. Their writings, though ancient, were more relevant and immediately applicable to our experience than anything we had ever heard or read. As a church which was becoming spiritual in focus, we had found an ocean of resource.
The Carpenter’s Company had become a church whose emphases had become prayer, strong and joyful worship and a commitment to learn obedience to God’s Word. Rather than “fulfillment” and “being affirmed” we put much more stress on “putting to death the deeds of the flesh and its passions and desires,” a consistent theme of the early Church Fathers.
A Growing Discomfort Results
When we began keeping Vigil, people who heard about it seemed to be impressed and were very complimentary. Without exception, they would say “If you keep this up for a year, you are going to have revival!”
However, as we did continue, they began to question why we were apparently neglecting the programs one might find in most churches. We assured these detractors that not having these programs didn’t mean we had neglected any of the areas of need these program customarily addressed. On the contrary, we had begun to discover that these things were more effectually dealt with by the things we were doing. Nevertheless, by stressing the things we did, we found ourselves more and more at variance with the prevailing Evangelical and Charismatic/Pentecostal culture.
While we’ve been walking on this increasingly spiritual pathway, we began to observe one thing after another in what was our own Foursquare denomination that caused us growing concern: Although we noticed these things with regard to the denomination with which we were then affiliated, they were and are nonetheless true of most Evangelical groups as well. Five examples follow:
1. The “Painless” Emphasis: About a year before the L.E.A.D. Seminars (a program promoted by Dr. John Holland, the President of the Denomination, for the “enrichment” of Foursquare ministers) began, the ICFG circulated a survey on “Fulfillment in Ministry” among all Foursquare ministers in the United States. I was alarmed at its focus on academic achievement and management style and its almost total neglect of more directly spiritual/devotional matters. I wrote a letter to this effect to Dr. John Holland. He didn’t like the letter. It was “disappointment” to him, and he asked that we get together for lunch. We did. During our conversation, Dr. Holland said, “Dennis, we don’t want to cause our people pain when they come to church. They have enough pain in the world.”
I was stunned. After pondering Dr. Holland’s response for quite a while, I could no longer avoid concluding that Foursquare had embraced and now espoused the “feel-good doctrine” of the 90’s. Is not pain the result of our sin? Although confronting sin causes pain, will not such confrontation, in the long run, lead to a more godly and joyful life? Therefore, aren’t ministers supposed to cause pain by confronting sin? Didn’t Christ our God cause pain in His spiritual directive to the rich young ruler? Did not Paul cause pain in his letters to the Corinthians and the Galatians?
2. Self-Esteem: Although not Foursquare himself, Dr. James Dobson has most certainly had as significant influence on the thinking of the contemporary Foursquare denomination as he has had on any other Evangelical group. Several years ago he wrote that virtually every human problem could be solved if we could build high self-esteem in both ourselves and others.
According to Romans 6-8, our problems emerge out of our sinful, flesh nature, not out of our lack of self-esteem. Dr. Dobson’s opinion contradicts this. Yet nowhere in the Foursquare movement or Evangelicalism at large, to my knowledge, was a significant voice raised to oppose Dr. Dobson’s variance. On the contrary, as far as our pastoral counseling practices are concerned, most Evangelicals have embraced and adopted this teaching.
3. The Addiction Doctrine: At the L.E.A.D. Seminar two years ago Dr. Ted Roberts taught about “sexual addiction.” We have but to assume that became of his role as a L.E.A.D. instructor Foursquare thoroughly endorsed what he taught. According to the implications of what Dr. Roberts was teaching, sexual misconduct is to be considered a kind of disease to be dealt with therapeutically by some twelve-step type program.
Have we not missed Paul’s clear message in Romans 6:16 – “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?” What Ted Roberts and others call addiction, Paul calls slavery to s/n. Those who give themselves to sexual sin, become slaves of sexual sin. Freedom isn’t restored through therapy, but through confession and repentance. That is clearly not what Ted Roberts was teaching.
Compounding his error, Dr. Roberts said that King David was a “classic sexual addict.” Though challenged from the floor, he defended and maintained his position. His statement was blasphemous. David did sin sexually, once, with Bathsheba, but ultimately repented (Psalm 51 – the Psalm most often quoted in the New Testament). He has always been known as “a man after God’s own heart,” a type of Jesus’ Kingly Ministry and Jesus Himself was called “Son of David.” Calling David a “sexual addict” (pervert) reflects blasphemously on the Father who endorsed him and the Son who came in fulfillment of his type, and on David who turned from his sin.
4. Majoring on Theological Minors: At one of the panel discussions at last year’s Southwest District Pastors’ Conference, a recently appointed pastor asked whether children should be allowed to take Communion if they haven’t yet been baptized. I was aghast at our District Supervisor, John Watson’s answer. “It’s not an issue? he said, “If you make it an issue, you’ll end up pastoring a church of twenty people. Making those things an issue will narrow your base and we are about broadening our base.” John’s meaning was clear: such secondary, non-essential issues must not get in the way of making our churches as big as we can.
Since when is either Water-Baptism or Communion, a secondary, non-essential issue? Has not, rather, church size always been considered of secondary importance, at best, until the very recent Church Growth movement?
5. Capitulation to Feminism: The more recent turn taken by Foursquare Women International away from being an auxiliary missionary service organization to being focused on the “affirmation” of women in a role of leadership and ministry, we believe is a clear capitulation to the subtleties of the spirit of feminism which is abroad in our land, a surrender to the spirit of this present age. Certainly Foursquare is not alone in this drift. Other Evangelical and Charismatic groups are years ahead. Although the languages used are the various dialects of “Evangelese,” the elements of the Feminist Agenda are clearly in place. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. historian to recognize that in this regard Evangelicalism as a whole is embracing a not too latent or embryonic feminism today just as mainline Protestantism did just twenty years ago.
A Turning Point
It has been a source of no little concern for us that although we have remained deeply confident that what we have been doing has been right and pleasing to the Lord; nevertheless, the more we pursued our course, the more estranged we became from Foursquare in particular and from Evangelicalism in general.
Recently, two things brought all of this to a head: Last year, we sent Robin and one of the wives of our Church Council to the Foursquare Women International Conference in Dallas. They returned with a video. I was stunned at the wholesale endorsement that Foursquare leadership at that conference gave to the ‘Toronto Blessing,” a movement so spurious that even John Wimber has disclaimed and dissociated himself from it. Is our anxiety for renewal so undiscerning that while we strain the gnats or by-law infractions, we are willing to swallow a camel of such an obvious spiritual deception as the “Toronto Blessing?”
The second thing happened about the same time. One of our members picked up a copy of The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned to It1 by someone called Theophan the Recluse. He wrote exactly the same thing as the Church Fathers. So we were very surprised to learn that this man had lived in nineteenth century Russia.
We sent to the publisher and received a catalogue of many more writers from this tradition, all of whom wrote and taught like the Church Fathers. They were not only Russians, but Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, Arabs and Egyptians as well. Unbeknownst to us, we had discovered the spiritual writers of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Orthodoxy?
After spending several months reading these writers we came across The Orthodox Study Bible published in 1995 by Thomas Nelson. It’s not unusual to find an obscure press publishing works like these. But a major publisher like Thomas Nelson publishing a special Bible for the Orthodox is something else. Who are, these Orthodox, anyway? Having this and several other questions, we wrote to Conciliar Press2, the people behind its publication, for answers and to open dialogue.
Five days later I received a call from Father Peter Gillquist. I knew Peter Gillquist as one of the regional directors of Campus Crusade for Christ who surrounded Bill Bright when I was on part-time staff in 1963. Now he is an Orthodox priest. Father Peter sent me a copy of his book Becoming Orthodox which tells the story about how he (and other regional directors of Campus Crusade I had known) discovered Orthodoxy and recounts their journey which resulted in their conversion to the Orthodox Church.
Although different in several of the particulars, our journeys were parallel. As we spoke further with Father Peter and read his and Jon Braun’s book, Divine Energy, we discovered that, although substantially different in liturgical form, the spirit and faith and doctrine that had developed among the Carpenter’s Company was in fact, Orthodox. As diverse from Foursquare as we had become, we had become like the Orthodox.
Our unanimous decision to become an Orthodox Church, therefore, is simply the logical conclusion of the decision we made in June, 1989. Although our pursuit of Orthodoxy is only less than five months old, we have been “becoming Orthodox” for the past seven years. We just didn’t know it until now. In finding Orthodoxy, we have found “the ancient path, where the good way is” (Jeremiah 6:16). Metropolitan Philip, a hierarch of the Orthodox Church has said that the Orthodox Church is the best kept secret in America. Our conviction is that we haven’t found just another church, we’ve found the Church, the one true Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of history. In the words of a young man who recently found salvation through Orthodoxy:
… at last, I finally began to see how everything did fit together, how Truth was not “scattered in a thousand pieces,” but was preserved, intact and unchanging, in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church … I had finally, through all my searching, found the key, the ultimate source of Revealed Truth in pure, undistorted form. Something had always kept me looking for the “hardcore,” no-compromising Christianity, because I knew down inside that, if Jesus Christ is God, then Christianity had to be the most radical belief in the world. And it’s not surprising that the most hardcore, radical, all-or-nothing message I’ve ever heard comes not from anything “modern, new and revolutionary,” but from the “original thing” – the One Church, the only Church, the true Church the Orthodox Christian Church, the mystical Body of Christ.
Indeed, Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever!
ENDNOTES
1. Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, P.O. Box 70, Platina, CA 96976
2. Conciliar Press, P.O. Box 76, Ben Lomond, CA 95005-0076
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Evangelicals have been drawn to the Orthodox Church by a desire for deeper authority, historic roots, and a more traditional understanding of Christian life beyond the focus on individual interpretation of scripture and spontaneous worship found in many evangelical churches. A significant group, the Evangelical Orthodox Church (EOC), officially joined the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in 1987, establishing the Antiochian Evangelical Orthodox Mission (AEOM) to retain their evangelical identity and focus on evangelism within the Orthodox tradition.
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My Journey into The Ancient Church
Fr. Jeremy, USA
My journey into Orthodoxy was not easy. But it is not meant to be. It challenged me (and continues to do so) to become the person God has created me to be, and to recognize my place in His Body, the Church.
When one becomes Orthodox they are called a “convert,” which helps to emphasize just how much of a change one must experience. Becoming Orthodox is not simply acknowledging one belief system as being superior to another. It is an ontological change, meaning it regards your entire being.
In order for the conversion process to be authentic, one must encounter this mystical body of Christ and not ask, “What do I like about this that I can choose from?” It is not “cafeteria Christianity.” Rather we must allow ourselves to be shattered upon the Rock and rebirthed into a child of the most-high God.
One of the best images of that rebirth is the phoenix. I remember reading about how Harry Potter, while sitting in Professor Dumbledore’s office, was surprised to see the Professor’s bird burn up in flames. It later rebirthed began a new life. Other ancient Orthodox accounts also draw on this parallel between the rebirth of the phoenix and the death of the old man and our resurrection in Christ.
I was raised in a conservative Christian home that leaned toward the charismatic, tongue speaking side. I attended non-denominational churches throughout most of my youth and student years. I enjoyed that type of worship for several years and stuck with it through college because it seemed alive and not full of “dead traditions.”
After college though, I became disillusioned with the modern American church scene, which often seemed to contain more hype and emotion than an authentic and life-changing presence of the Holy Spirit. I began to dialogue with other Christians as well as atheists through a blog network. These dialogues forced me to consider points of view I never knew existed. Consequently, I adopted the view that “everybody has it wrong and I don’t know what to think church is supposed to look like anymore.” My wife and I dropped out of church for a couple of years and I committed my time to studying the Bible and church history.
Eventually, I connected with a few churches in my area but couldn’t fully commit to one. I thought of that as a virtuous sort of thing, because hey, none of them had it fully right anyway. At least in this manner, I could cherry pick the things I liked.
I was a worship leader for years and, it seemed, no matter where I went I ended up assisting with or leading their music. I found minimal lasting fulfillment in it. The excitement of leading worship usually last less than an hour or two. When I left the parking lot of the church or outreach ministry, I felt the return of a nagging restlessness and emptiness.
THE RESTLESS EMPTINESS
What to do with these unpleasant feelings? Being the typical American Christian, the answer seemed obvious: become more busy with “serving God.” I hung out with the homeless one day of the week, reached out to the unchurched another day, went to a Bible study on another day, was involved in prison outreach, Sunday morning worship, etc. During a period in which I was jobless, I was involved with various spiritual communities almost every day of the week.
While a desire to be involved and serve God is admirable, I knew there was something missing. No matter how involved I was, the warm fuzzies of the event would fade away and I was left with my restlessness, emptiness, and even loneliness at times. I attempted to manage my sin the best I could, but it had the upper hand. I was a slave to my sinful desires and I exhibited self-destructive behavior that hurt both me and others.
Something had to change.
WHAT IS THIS ORTHODOXY?
I tried the charismatic movement, I ran in progressive Christian circles, and I even considered starting my own home church. Nothing had a satisfactory answer.
A spiritual mentor of mine suggested I look into Eastern Orthodoxy (he himself was not Orthodox but had friends who were). I gave him a dismissing waive, telling him I had read about them in my history books, “They’re nothing more than the Roman Catholic Church of the East.” He told me there was much more to it than that; there was a hidden depth and treasure of spiritual knowledge within Orthodoxy. I highly respected his opinion and tucked that conversation away to chew on later.
My spiritual journey continued as I outlined above: full of busyness and emptiness. But I found something odd: I kept “bumping into” Orthodox Christians in my online discussions as well as their theology in some of my readings. Every time I had a differing opinion with them, I found that I agreed more with the Orthodox Church than I did with myself. After a year or so, I sighed and decided it was time to take the advice of my spiritual mentor seriously.
As with many inquirers, I began with Kallistos Ware’s The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way. They were good primer books that helped me to understand some of the beliefs and practices of the Orthodox Church. After reading most of the way through those books and having several discussions with Orthodox bloggers, I decided the only thing left was to make an actual visit to an Orthodox Church.
For several months I wanted to attend an Orthodox Church, but I was afraid of letting people down. Eventually, I decided I would not be controlled by my fear of people’s opinions and I would go where I felt God was leading me. This was an important step for me.
I had a difficult discussion with the man who was at that time my pastor. While not everyone would need to talk to their pastor about leaving their church, I was part of the Sunday morning worship team and, on some Sundays, the primary leader. The pastor was disappointed to see me leave, and I felt a bit guilty for letting him down. I told him it might only be for a month or two. I had no idea what God had planned for me.
ENTERING A FOREIGN LAND
My wife agreed to venture out with me for our first liturgical experience: a visit to the local Greek Orthodox Church.
We were completely lost.
About half of the service was in Greek; they were swinging incense around; many people were coming in an hour late (we were one of the first ones there and were only a couple minutes early); people were standing and sitting over and over; there was (what seemed to us) a random procession where the priest walked out with some shiny dishes in his hands and everyone became solemn; there were conversations around us in Greek (nearly everyone there was Greek); and we hadn’t a clue what was happening. With all of this chanting and singing, I wondered when they would begin the actual service. There was a sermon at one point that, while brief, struck my heart and I longed to hear more.
After standing (and some sitting) for two hours they began a memorial service and I looked at my wife and whispered, “You ready to go?” She nodded emphatically and the two of us quickly walked out just as people were going up front to receive a piece of bread.
What just happened in there? we both wondered as we hurried to the car. Trying to be positive, I said, “That was an interesting cultural experience.”
Soon afterward, we decided to check out a Russian Orthodox parish that was a little further away. As we walked in and looked around in our usual clueless manner, the elderly priest walked up to us with a smile and explained that they were going to be doing their first service ever partially in Slavonic. We nodded and said, “Ok, thanks for letting us know” as I thought, “Slav…what?” There was something deep and loving about that priest, and even though we were bored with the liturgy, I felt a tug in my heart to return.
By then, my wife was finished with experimenting in Orthodoxy, though she did not oppose my continued exploration. I frankly couldn’t blame her. And if it wasn’t for an incredibly powerful and irresistible tug in my heart toward it, I would have given up on Orthodoxy as well.
Growing up in charismatic circles, I had grown used to live bands, words on large projector screens, upbeat music, and an entertaining and sometimes emotional sermon that took up most of the service time. It was the Sunday Morning Show.
To me church was supposed to loosely follow this format:
Opening song
Announcements
Three or four more songs
Sermon (which took up a majority of the service time)
Altar call
Closing song
Every time I visited the Orthodox Church, I found that I was waiting for the service to actually begin. It was then that I realized that my subconscious impression was that Sunday morning services are a sermon with an opening act, which is ironic considering I was a worship leader for years.
DIGGING DEEPER
One day, I heard that there was another Orthodox Church much closer to my home. I visited the all-English Carpatho-Russian parish and found the people to be quite inviting. After a couple of chats with the priest, he recommended a book to me called Introducing the Orthodox Church in order to help acquaint me with the service, the theology, and the church building itself.
I was repeatedly challenged in Orthodoxy: so many of the concepts were foreign to an American and charismatic Christian like me. Many of my struggles included the role of Mary the Theotokos, praying with the saints, a service that was not open to changes on a whim, submission to hierarchy, the exclusive claims of Orthodoxy as being the Church, and –as strange as it may sound- the repeated requests for God’s mercy. Aren’t we all already saved, I thought, why keep asking for God’s mercy?
But there were many aspects of it that I found to be refreshing: once I was used to a different style of worship, I realized there was a deep beauty to it. In the Orthodox Church there was no rock star worship leader or superstar pastor who took it upon himself to be the center of Sunday morning. Instead, I found that the Eucharist was celebrated as the actual body and blood of Christ made present among us, and that was the center of attention – Christ’s (invisible) presence in our midst. And it wasn’t even talked about so much as it was acknowledged through experiencing the service.
With that being the case, it was very unpretentious. Sure there are clergy with fancy vestments, incense, and bells. But no Sunday morning rock concert, no motivational speech, no hype, and no warm fuzzies. You were expected to simply show up with a ready heart and meet God there.
I also realized the altar call (which began during the revivalist movement) was absent from the typical Sunday morning service (called the Divine Liturgy). That really bothers some people. How can we get people saved without an altar call? Of course, in order to answer that, we should pose a better question: what does it mean to be saved?
In Orthodoxy, salvation is not an event that happens to us (i.e. a prayer for Jesus to come into our hearts) so that we can escape hell and go to heaven later. Rather, it is a lifestyle and an orientation of our entire being toward Christ and His Cross. Our desire is to become intimately one with Him in this life and the next. Most of the time, that process of change is a lengthy one.
In that sense, Christians are those who are “being saved” rather than “the saved.”
THE TRUE EARLY CHURCH
After arriving at the Carpatho-Russian parish, I spent a few months waffling. Part of me was ready to give up on the boring liturgical services and go back to something with a bit more hype and excitement. I was having difficulty engaging in the services. Also, some of the above mentioned theology was challenging.
So, I spent months studying the writings of the ancient church within its first 120 years after Christ’s death and resurrection. Many Protestants have a desire to return to the “early church;” quite a few (myself included at that time) think the Church became completely pagan by the time of Constantine.
But my studies blew away all of my assumptions regarding what the early church looked like. (You can read some of those writings here, they are called the Apostolic Fathers.) I had to confess that most everything I was learning was contrary to the fantasy I had in my head about the early church.
I learned there were bishops and Christians willingly submitted to them; the Eucharist (communion) was considered the actual body and blood of Christ; services were liturgical in nature; only baptized believers were allowed to stay until the end of the service when the Eucharist was served; there was no mention of instruments being used in worship; there were days and seasons of fasting (especially Great Lent as well as Wednesdays and Fridays); and many other things all within the first few generations of Christians!
As my historical research progressed, I could not help but admit, somewhat unwillingly, that the Orthodox Church was the early church they were claiming to be. However, that is not what convinced me to join. After all, what good is the claim to an outward structure and worship format if there is no life within?
LOSING INTEREST
After months of what felt like dry liturgical services, my quasi-Pentecostal mindset wondered: where is the Holy Spirit in all of this? I recognized the validity the Orthodox Church’s claims to have the same beliefs and practices as the early church, but what good is that if the Holy Spirit has abandoned them and their services are dead and boring?
It was then that I somehow came across the book The Way of a Pilgrim. It is the story of a young Russian peasant during the late 1800’s who set out on a quest to experientially understand St Paul’s command to “pray without ceasing.”
The pilgrim learns about the Jesus Prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner”) and begins to practice it rigorously. I decided that I would journey with this simple Russian peasant and practice the Jesus Prayer. My priest, who himself was experienced in this prayer life, asked that I meet with him regularly to discuss how things were going with that.
THE DIVINE SPARK
Words cannot adequately express what began to happen in my heart as I opened myself to Christ and the Holy Spirit through a disciplined prayer life. When first venturing into Orthodoxy, I began reciting a few simple selections from the Morning Prayers. I was now coupling that with the Jesus Prayer throughout the day and I began to notice changes in myself.
The prayer is not meant to be a mantra, rather it is something that is fused to our hearts. It opens us to inner communion with Christ. As this deepened, I noticed that old sinful habits that had the upper hand over me for many years were shaken. I was far from overcoming them, but a visible shift had taken place. Even my wife commented that something was happening to me; at that time she did not want to join the Church herself, but she liked what it was doing to me.
After some months had passed, the church services that I once found boring were moving me to tears at times. I sensed a deep presence of Christ in the worship and even in the icons. The power of the Holy Spirit overcame me in a way that was very quiet, yet vivifying and profound. It was something into which God had allowed the briefest glimpses throughout my life. Now, it was happening more frequently and more deeply.
THE POINT OF NO RETURN
I came to the realization that Orthodoxy truly was not offering me a new set of beliefs with old ways of doing things. The offering was oneness with the Body of Christ and the Holy Spirit.
There were still some theological questions and hang-ups, but those seemed less important. I concluded that if this is where I am meeting God Himself, then this is where I belong. If there are differences of belief, then maybe it is me that needs to change and not the ancient Christian Church.
With everything that had happened, I felt like the twelve disciples when Jesus had scandalized the multitude by stating they must eat and drink His body. He didn’t shout, “Hey guys, come back. I was just being metaphorical and stuff.” Rather, He let them go and asked the disciples if they too would leave. Peter spoke for all of us when he said, “To whom shall we go?”
And that is exactly how I felt.
I was convinced that Orthodoxy was Christianity in its truest and most powerful form. At the start of my journey, I briefly studied Buddhism and Taoism (the latter of which I found to be attractive), but everything I liked about those I found to an even fuller extent in Orthodoxy.
LANDING GEAR IS DOWN — I’M COMING HOME
After years of feeling spiritually homeless I knew where I belonged. Keeping with an early tradition of the Church in which many converts were brought in the day before Pascha (Easter), I was chrismated on Holy Saturday and partook of my first communion on Pascha.
It was a cold, wet morning, but nothing could quench the fire within; I was exploding with life, joy, and love. No longer was I part of the nameless, placeless, faceless tribe! I wanted to embrace the entire world and shout to them about the love of Christ that I found in Orthodoxy. During those initial months, I probably seemed like a fanatic and I wouldn’t be surprised if I annoyed some of my family and old friends.
SETTLING INTO ORTHODOXY
The coming months and years had many challenges. I continued to discover the life-changing power of God’s grace in the Orthodox Church, but the “old man” does not die easily or quietly. As St Ignatius Brianchininov said, our flesh does not like to be crucified.
In my Protestant years, we practiced sin management. In other words, “sin is bad, so try not to do it. And if you do sin, say you’re sorry and move on.” During those years I surrounded myself with noise and distractions so I wouldn’t hear my heart or conscience.
It was not the same in Orthodoxy.
Instead, I was learning inner quietness and that Christian virtue was not simply a nice idea, but the direction in which we should be striving to become one with Christ. The commandments of God were not given to us because God has a quirky dislike for certain things; rather, they reflect who God is. If salvation is oneness with God, and sin is breaking oneness, then, I realized, to break the commandments is to break my communion with God by participating in behavior with my soul and my body that is contrary to the very Being of God.
Heaven and salvation are not a place or an eternal destination. Rather, they are a state of being in which we experience oneness with God Himself. This life prepares us for that oneness, and I began to realize the depth of my selfish desires as the Holy Spirit further enlightened my heart. I learned first hand why the Church is called a hospital for the soul and salvation is considered to be therapeutic (and not an instantaneous magic trick).
TAKE A LITTLE TIME
One of the most important decisions I made on my journey into Orthodoxy was that I would not hurry. After the first month, I realized through the haze of challenges there was something within me deeply drawn to it. I decided I would purposely take a year to explore it; by then I felt I would know for certain whether or not it was for me.
As I progressed in my journey, I believed that if I waited until I was 100% convinced of all beliefs and practices in Orthodoxy, then I may never join. It is completely foreign to our westernized form of Christianity and entering into the life of the Church requires time and grace in acquiring a new heart and mind. I personally feel that if one is mostly convinced and has no major hang-ups, then entering into the grace of the Church will help them resolve any minor lingering thoughts or doubts. Of course, this is my opinion and not pastoral advice.
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE VIRTUES
Once one has joined, they may be a bit overwhelmed – I was. There are cycles of feasts and fasts, a church calendar with daily readings, morning and evening prayers, prayer without ceasing is taught, services throughout the week, confession, pre-communion prayers, an expectation to actually live this faith, and all sorts of practices. It is easy to feel Frustrated with The Spiritual Struggle.
As one Greek Orthodox theologian* wrote, it is sometimes better to establish the positive virtues before the negative. Positive virtues, meaning those things you add to your life, include establishing a prayer rule, learning the Jesus Prayer, going to church services, spiritual reading, etc. Negative virtues are things that are “taken out” of your life such as sleep (prayer vigils), food (fasting), and other forms of abstinence. These latter virtues, while perhaps being practiced initially in small doses, are strengthened as one’s spiritual life deepens and a desire for them begins. More important than my opinion though is the direction that your spiritual father discerns for your path of salvation.
All virtues have one aim: to attain to union with God (aka, theosis). This is accomplished through the grace of God and humility (the latter of which is our synergistic cooperation with God). Without either of those, the virtues can still be practiced to some degree but will often lead to feelings of spiritual superiority and pride.
WRAPPING IT UP
In summary, I was spiritually hungry for something deeper than the intellectual Christianity I found in some circles and the hype-based emotionalism I found in others. I wanted an experiential faith filled with wisdom regarding the scriptures and the power of the Holy Spirit. In short, I wanted to encounter God Himself.
Orthodoxy, on the surface, seemed an unlikely candidate. It took some time to realize there was nothing wrong with the liturgical form of worship; rather, I was closed off to the movement of the Spirit. Once that was shown to me through prayer, it was an easier course from there.
If you are considering Orthodoxy, then as I said above, take your time. Read books on it that spark your interest and visit your local Orthodox parish. If you’re not sure what to read, ask your priest and check out a list in my Resources.
Also, online discussion forums were not helpful to me early in my journey. There are really knowledgeable and caring folks in many forums, and there are also some people who enjoy flaunting their opinions or over-zealously attacking anyone who is not well-versed in the fathers. Watching people fight and call each other heretics mostly discouraged me during my initial steps toward Orthodoxy, but I do recognize that some groups have been instrumental in assisting others in their journey.
Last of all, approach Orthodoxy in prayer. But also, learn the Orthodox way of praying. My martial arts sensei used to say, “Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.” In other words, if we learn something wrong and practice it for years that way, we will not suddenly get it right.
It is the same with prayer. The fathers of the Church offer thousands of years of wisdom in regards to prayer, how to pray, what happens in the spiritual realm during prayer, and how to come out victorious. For that reason, one of the first things I would recommend to an inquirer is to glean the wisdom this Church has to offer on prayer. A good Prayer Book can assist with that.
Godspeed on your journey.
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FEBRUARY 2016 at SAINT NICHOLAS RUSSIAN Orthodox Church, Bangkok, Thailand
MY WIFE's BAPTISM and CONFIRMATION (We call it Chrismation. Baptism and Confirmation are 2 Holy Sacraments done on the same day. The Romans Latins separated it hundreds of years later by way of innovations. The Romans Latins once also had the Baptistry in separate buildings outside the main church buildings. These still exists in Rome, Italy in some ancient places).
My wife was tonsured and also anointed with Holy Oil in all of her 5 senses per ancient Baptismal Rite (Protestant don't know anything about this). Strands of hair were cut and given to her. It signals surrendering and offering oneself entirely to God.
Take Notice, the baptistry is in a shape of a Holy Cross.
My wife was submerged 3 times.
A MIRACLE HAPPENED
At baptism, my wife felt 5 or more entities leaving her body from her tailbone all the way to the crown of her head. For over 20 years my wife had the ability to prophesy and tell the future with 100% accuracy. (This is just like the story in the Acts of the Apostles wherein a slave girl was freed from demonic possession through baptism by Saint Paul. She earned money for her Master by fortunetelling. Her Master sought to kill Saint Paul for this since she could no longer fortune tell). My wife knew she was possessed and fought with the demons for over 20 years. Her Father and Mother took her to many demonic Buddhist satanic rituals and at these ceremonies she became possessed by many demons.
A Buddhist monk tried to help her, but told her that he had no power to expel demons. He sent her to the local Roman Catholic Church. An elderly Vietnamese Priest prayed with her and that helped her for a period, but not entirely. The Buddhist monk told her that there is only One God, and Buddha is not God. He went on to say to her that at 42 years old she would meet me and I will lead her into the House of God. She was 15 years old at the time.
About this Buddhist Monk
She asked the Monk why he did not become a Christian. He replied that being a Buddhist monk is only a profession. He was always taught at the early age about God the Father, but because he lacked any formal education this is all that he knew. He's a Chinese Thai, raised in a well to do family, but his inheritance was stolen by his older sister and brother in law. They drove him out of the house and he became homeless. A Buddhist monk who was an Abbot at a particular temple took him in. That was how he became a Monk. Then he was taught the esoteric arts of the hidden secrets. He was able to foretell the future. All the same, he always firmed in his belief that there is only One and Only God who created all things and He governs all. Siddhartha Gautama Buddha was just a man, and nothing more. Human beings deified him and made him into the supreme god. They erected statues and bow down to worship and pray to these statues and make petitions asking for favors not knowing that these statues, and for that matter the Buddha, cannot hear prays or grant blessings. Demonic beings entered into and live inside these statues made of cement, concrete, pewter, bronze and other material. Buddha owned nothing. In fact, the soul of the Buddha is in hell, and he leads millions of souls to hell.... At the time of this elderly monk's death, followers found less than $3.00 USD in his possession. He lived in poverty. I pray God have mercy on his soul since this old man pointed my wife to Christ Jesus. He spoke the truth about God.
About the Baptism of Moo
Father Serafim (Russian Priest now stationed in an island in Southern Thailand to serve Russian population) and Father Anton, a Laotian Priest (now called Father Micah, a Hieromonk, Priest-Monk) also officiated in my wife's baptism.
My wife's Maternal Grandmother also attended her Baptism and Chrismation (confirmation).
Roman Catholic Church Departed from Christ Jesus Years Ago:
Just to let you know, Pope John Paul 2 came to Bangkok and held a Mass at the National Stadium. My wife and her Catholic school came to attend that event from Paknampo, Nakorn Sawan Province, some 4 hours North of Bangkok...
Roman Catholic Church teaches Universal Salvation:
At this event, John Paul 2 preached "Universal religion" a la Freemasonry. He said that all religions are good and lead to salvation. This is worst than heresy. It is a lie from hell. If this is so, there was no need for Christ Jesus, God the Son, to come to the world, lived for 33 years, suffered terrible tortures, and died on the Cross for the sins of the whole world... This is what modern Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Rite Catholicism teach. Hence, I could no longer remain a Roman or Eastern rite Catholic, and became an Orthodox. I am so glad and very happy that Moo is also an Orthodox, too. We are Russian Orthodox.
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Congo, 2021: African prostitute baptized an Orthodox Christian two hours before she passed away
Father Chariton Musungayi from Goma in the Eastern Congo:
"...It was six in the afternoon. It was already dark when a young woman unknown to me was knocking persistently on the door of my house waiting for me to open it. I responded, and I asked her what she wanted.
-Father, I want you to read me a blessing.' She looked very upset, she spoke abruptly. She did not tell me many things, she just asked me to pray for her. We went into the church and I read a blessing over her. She departed without saying a word, not giving me any other information about her life, nor explaining why she wanted me to read her a blessing. Three days later, she came to me again. She again asked me to pray for her. We entered the church, I read a blessing over her, and, when I finished, she asked me:
-Father, are you afraid of me?'
-No, I replied.
Her face was much calmer than before. She again departed without a word, with her head bowed down.
Three days passed and she once again came to me, late at night. When I read the blessing over her, I asked her to not come so late. She looked at me and I noticed her eyes were full of tears... She said to me:
-Father, I am a prostitute, this is my job. I do not move about during the day, because everyone knows who I am and I am ashamed to be seen in public. That's why I came and came again in the evenings. I come to you because I feel good when I enter the Church. I want to tell you that the first time I came here, I felt an inexplicable force inside me and that night I did not sin. I have nothing to do with the Church, nor am I Orthodox.
After that, she departed and I never saw her again. Sometimes I would ask the church guard if he had seen that young woman circulating in our city, and he always replied in the negative.
Six months passed, and one afternoon she came again, this time her body supported by a friend. She smiled when she saw me. I recognized her immediately. I brought her in, and made her lay down on a bench that we had in the Church. As her friend explained to me, she had asked for her help, saying:
-I want you to take me to the Orthodox Church, with the many ringing bells. I want you to take me there today, not tomorrow!
I looked at her and she said:
-Bless me, Father, bless me.
I immediately thought of something, so I asked her:
-Do you want me to baptize you, to become a Christian?
She replied:
-Yes, Father, you will give me much joy if you baptize me. God will help me.
I began the preparations for Holy Baptism. I also gave her a baptismal gown, and she put it on. After reading the Catechism, I baptized her, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, and I gave her the name Georgia. I also put a Cross around her neck; then I brought out the portion of Holy Communion that is kept in the Artophorion and she received Holy Communion. Her face was calm and happy.
She said:
-Father, I thank you very much. I give glory to God for this moment, which made me worthy to be baptized. The doctors were tired of my illness and they told me to go home. I beg God to forgive me for everything that I have done in my life. Please, father, I want to take this baptismal gown with me, so that they can dress me with it when I die. I do not want anything else!
I was amazed at hearing these words and gave her the gown. Her friend thanked me, she took Georgia and they departed. As they left, I looked at the time: it was 6:30 in the afternoon. Two hours later, I was informed that Georgia the prostitute had fallen asleep! God had called her into His heavenly Kingdom!
Our God is just. He had prepared her in a way that our mind cannot grasp. People spoke very badly of her; everyone regarded her as garbage - but not her Creator. We buried her, wearing her baptismal gown and the Cross that I put around her neck... How beautiful was our Georgia!
God’s notion of justice is one thing, and man’s idea of justice is entirely different. God does not desire the loss of a single soul, as long as they acknowledge Him as their Savior and Redeemer".
The event of Georgia’s baptism and her death was narrated to us in a letter by Father Chariton Musungayi from Goma in the Eastern Congo.
Source:
http://grforafrica.blogspot.com/2021/03/congo-prostitute-baptized-orthodox.html
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A letter from the first Taiwanese Orthodox Christian missionary Pelagia Yu to the Greek people
I am Chinese, born in Taiwan and my Christian name is Pelagia. I was a Protestant Christian, and it took me five years to become Orthodox. I love to read the Holy Bible and have all of its publications in the Chinese language.
I have visited Greece and discovered that it is a truly unique country. While travelling in your country, even before I arrived, on the plane I saw how different in temperament Greek people were, how cheerfully they conversed with each other, how they laughed and how they applauded the pilot after the landing, something unheard of for us Asians, who are more conservative and do not easily display emotion. I learnt after this experience that the expression of freedom requires passion and liveliness.
In Greece, I visited many churches, I participated in the Divine Liturgy, and when I received Holy Communion it reduced me to tears even though I did not understand the Greek language, because the Orthodox faith is the same, no matter what the language.
I would have liked to be born Greek, to have been born Orthodox, to have received Holy Communion and venerated holy icons from my years of infancy right up until my death.
I cry for me and my compatriots, because instead of Holy Communion, we eat and drink food sacrificed to idols.
I would have liked to be born Greek, so my ears may be filled with holy hymns.
I cry for me and my compatriots, whose ears are filled with the noise of sutras and the screeches of those who worship the idols.
I would have liked to be born Greek, so that I may smell the sweet aroma of incense.
I cry for me and my compatriots, who are constantly assaulted by the pungent smell of the smoke rising up from the sacrifices offered up to the idols.
I would have liked to be born Greek, so that my hands could touch the holy icons, the holy relics of the Saints and be filled with the love of Christ.
I cry for me and my compatriots, whose hands touch the idols and the things sacrificed to them, but who in reality are holding on to nothing.
I would have liked to be born Greek, so that I may light candles to Christ – not like here, where we burn money as an offering to the spirits.
I was searching for the Truth, using more than 30 different publications of the Holy Bible, which unfortunately, were all full of errors (translated by non-Orthodox).
I would have liked to be born Greek, so that I may read the Holy Bible in its original form!
I cry for me and my compatriots, because, although we have eyes, we are blind.
I would have liked to be born Greek, so that I may be able to see the grace of God all around me.
I cry for me and my compatriots, who are surrounded by temples dedicated to false gods.
Yes, I am Orthodox, but living in Taiwan, I have very limited opportunities to experience the Orthodox Christian way of life.
I cry for me, because I do not have the ability to show my compatriots the greatness of our faith. The people here want to see signs and miracles.
I cry for me and my compatriots, because we do not have the gift of hearing of and seeing so many miracles, so many holy words that you have seen and heard over 2000 years in Greece, and which you still see. Taiwan is not an Orthodox country, our feast days and holy days do not look at all like yours.
I am disappointed that in Greece, although you have so many beautiful mountains, you do not look after them, you burn them down. However, I am amazed that practically every mountain in Greece has at least one monastery. We have mountains filled with Buddhist temples and monasteries.
I would have liked to be born Greek, so that I may go and pray at an Orthodox monastery easily.
I cry for me and my compatriots. For the first time, I visited an Orthodox monastery dedicated to St John the Forerunner in Pelion. I travelled to Greece from Taiwan – 16 hours on the plane, a few hours on the train to Larisa and another hour with the monastery car, that was driven by one of the nuns.
I saw the ancient ruins of the Holy Monastery, I saw so many other places in Greece that have been abandoned and my heart bled. In Taiwan, we do not have such a wealth of archaeological artefacts, holy and beautiful places, but you do not appreciate them.
I cry that we do not have beautiful icons. I cry because I feel like Christ is weak and naked here.
Greeks, you think you are poor due to the economic crisis you are going through, but you do not know how truly rich you are.
Taiwan is a country with a huge amount of material development and progress, and yet it remains in the darkness of Satan and our spiritual life is empty.
In Greece, I saw a lot of people, especially on Sundays, drinking and celebrating and not going to church. But here in Taiwan our fellow citizens, mainly young people, even if they wanted to, find it impossible to come to church, because the only Orthodox church in the entire country is a small room on the 4th floor of a huge apartment building on the outskirts of Taipei. Many times, people cannot fit into the church and remain outside for the duration of the services.
My brothers and sisters in Greece, even though I am spiritually handicapped, I still have my legs active so that I can kneel before you and beg.
I pray that you consider me like the poor man Lazarus, so that you may throw to me some crumbs from the spiritual treasures you have, of the gifts you give to your churches, of the many little churches you build on all corners of your homeland.
Our Orthodox flock in Taiwan, as you know, is small – less than 100 people. We are not wealthy. We do not have the means to buy a decent place in the city that will be able to meet our needs for worship, catechism and teaching. Fr. Ionas conducts lessons on a regular basis, targeted mainly at the young people of our city and of course, open to whomever wants to come and meet us in person; those people that up until now have only had the opportunity to see the Orthodox Church in Taiwan through the Internet.
We do not ask for help to build an Orthodox church building here. It would cost millions. Please help us to buy a bigger place in the city centre, which we will convert into a church, for the sake of our nation, our brothers and sisters, who have never had the opportunity to hear about and know our Christ. We are a country of 23 million people! And yet we have need of your help.
My brothers and sisters in Christ, if the need arises, I will do whatever is in my power to repay a little of your love. I will do whatever is needed with all my heart and for the duration of my life.
I thank you. Forgive me.
Pelagia Yu.
Source: Translated by P.S.Z. This article was originally published in Greek in the Periodicαl “Agios Kosmas o Aitolos” (Issue 84 – first quarter 2011) and online at http://www.iersyn.gr/pelagias_letter.php (Tuesday 22nd February 2011).
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Japanese fighter baptized Orthodox Christian
September 29, 2012
From his childhood years he focused on the martial arts, which led him to study traditional Eastern religions, especially Buddhism.
After a period of many years, Tokashi Kishi came to know Christianity, the result of having read very many books. Christianity for Tokashi was another ethical teaching and appeared to him something like Buddhism.
After a visit to Russia he felt an inner desire to learn more about Orthodoxy. His desire to become a Christian became even stronger when he returned to Japan, where following his Catechism in the Japanese language, he accepted the Orthodox Church.
A short while ago he visited Russia again, and announced his desire to be baptized an Orthodox Christian. With the blessing of Metropolitan John of Belgorod, the Japanese martial arts fighter was baptized and received the name of Saint John the Baptist.
https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2012/10/japanese-fighter-baptized-orthodox.html
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2001: Abel-Tasos Gkiouzelis, Greece - My conversion from atheism and Protestantism ("No Name Church", "2x2's", "Workers & Friends") to Orthodox Christianity
Hi my dear friends! My name is Abel-Tasos Gkiouzelis (Abel-Anastasios Gkiouzelis) and I will tell you about my conversion from the Protestantism to Orthodox Christian Church (Eastern Orthodox Church).
I was born in Athens, Greece, in 1981 in the Protestantism, in the small Protestant sect of “Workers”, in the Worker Sect which also called “Church Without Name”, “Two by Two Church”, “Friends & Workers”, “The Truth”, “Christians”, “The Non-Denominational Church”, “Christian Convention Church”, “The Christian Church”, “No-Name Church”, “The Faith Missioners”, “Nameless House Church”, “The Damnation Army”, “Dippers”, “Go Preachers”, “The Jesus-Way”, “The New Testament Church”, “Pilgrims”, “The Reidites”, “Tramp Preachers”, “The Testimony”, “The Way”, and with at least 20 still concrete names, who was founded in Ireland on 1897 by William Irvine, Edward Cooney and Jack Carroll, for this reason also the are known and as “Cooneyites”, “Irvinites” or “Carrollites”.
Until 1997, 16 years old, Ι went regularly to meetings of “Workers” believing that this is the Truth. At home but also in entire building in which I stayed, often hosted all over the world preachers who call themselves “brothers and sisters Workers” and teaches that it is the first successors of the Apostles. Unfortunately, I could not imagine that there were “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves apostles of Christ”(2 Corinthians 11:13 ), which in deed make and women in “Apostles”, which is not testified in the New Testament.
In 1997, 16 years old, Ι started to find the meetings of “Workers” boring and so stopped going to them. The months went I began to feel hate for this “Christianity” those whom I had known since birth. My dislike for Christianity gave the baton to a complete disregard for God and indifference for God led me to atheism. And my soul, however, was actually empty. I felt a void that I wanted to fill ti with something. And I tried to fill my void with the rock music. I tried to imitate the life of hippies of the 1960s. I had the hippies as model in dressing, music and ideas. I was believing that there is not sin and that all permits. So, when the “Workers ” visited our house, I put deliberately hard rock music. I wanted with this way to show them that I had break away from their team. From their “Christianity”.
Deep my soul, however, I wished the faith in the God. But now I hated, I felt a repulsion for the Christianity. So I began to read for the ancient Egyptian religion of Pharaoh, placing in my room several Egyptian idols.
I had changed. I was not henceforth the “Worker meeting young boy”. The “meetings old boy” had changed. I tried to make new friends who would not know the old “meetings boy”. After one year, in 1998, 17 years old, I Knew experienced some Christians Orthodox persons, aged 20-21 years old, students in TEI-University of Athens, which is in the neighborhood, feeling very glad that I found this good friends company where one help and supports each other in difficult times. I was avoiding talk to them about God. I had enough discussions about God. The “Workers” occasionally asked me what I’m thinking about my future and jokingly, I replied that I want to be a hippie. And he tried to explain me what were the hippies and that this is not a good choice for the life of somebody.
Next year, in 7 September 1999 in Athens, where I lived, there was a great earthquake which was new to me. For several days were aftershocks and day by day more and accumulate within the fear of something worse leading evenings I could not, not to sleep, nor even to lie on the bed. One evening, while I was awake and the rest my family slept, thought to settle my library so as it turned from it all books and other things, deep in a shelf and powder I found in a small New Testament which he had given several years before.
I arranged the library and, as I had the whole evening in front of, I thought to read some New Testament, since not sleep nor did anything else. With that in spring in a random page and I began reading I was surprised. My heart was filled with calmness, courage and joy. All fright which I had accumulated in me from the first earthquake and repeated aftershocks disappeared immediately. Plus I do not feel fear of aftershocks. Immediately thought that God exists and that He just showed it to me!
The next morning I got happy phone my friends and I told them: “Do you know what to do to avoid fear the earthquakes? Still read the New Testament!”. They were surprised with what they hear. They never expected to hear something like that, because I never had left might appear my Christian side. So I began to believe again that God exists and Sunday for the first time after two years I went back to meetings of “Workers”. Everyone there was glad to see me and welcomed me with a warm “welcome”. So from then normally go again to meetings of “Workers” and particularly first of all.
One day I tried to talk to a girl person, called P., with whom were friends, about the meetings of “Workers” where I was going. I told her that every Sunday in the apartment building that I was living, we have some “meetings” where we read the Gospel and sung several Christian hymns suggesting her to come if she want it. P. with the thought that I found in some Christian sect that are now trying to muzzle proselytizing heresy, left shocked, turbulent, hurried, not knowing what to the fork and how to troubleshoot the call on heretical gatherings. And I could not understand why she left. I asked her the next day and received no answer.
One day P. asked me if I am baptized Orthodox Christian. I fell into embarrassment. I was afraid of saying the truth because I did not know how she felt. So I told her, “I don’t Know”. She replied me “You must Know if you are baptized Orthodox or not”. Cluttered and awkward again I said her that I would call in my house to ask about it… I asked my mother if I am baptized Christian Orthodox and she told me: “Don’t you know? What are you ask me? Of course you’re not”. I said to her, and she showed convulsed and embarrassed for once and formal learning that I’m not Orthodox Christian.
Next day my friends with a calm manner tried to talk to me, telling me that I was in the fallacy of heresy and the Christian Orthodox Church is the Truth of Christ. Then I stopped being the calm “boy of meetings” and I filled rage. I forgot that I discuss with someone who really loves me, with my friends, with-full of rage I began to speak against the Orthodox Church, accusing it of not properly clergy, not knowing that there are reverent and proper clergy. My friends embarrassed about the behavior of me and they stopped the discussion and they tried to calm down me.
The next day on when I had calmed down, my friends company from TEI-University tried again to explain to me that I am in heresy. I answered them again filled rage, talking them with hate about the Christian Orthodox Church, leading my friends company to grieve much for the bad behavior of me, for the bad behavior of their friend. I understand that I spoke badly but my ego will not let me admit it.
Next day, my friends again for other one time, with calm manner and love of Christ tried again to explain to me that I was in fallacy. But it was very difficult from them because they did not know the Holy Bible by heart. While they started with calmly about the Christian Orthodox Church and while I still full of rage prepared to respond to them I though in myself:
“I know that these persons really love me and they have demonstrated it too many times to various problems and difficulties in TEI (University) etc. Also never they have told me lies. Never they have derided me. Regarding the Christian Orthodox Church about they are trying to talk to me at this moment… I know nothing about the Christian Orthodox Church. How can I be sure how all that they say to my are wrong? First I must go to see what is the Christian Orthodox Church and after I will can to have a conclusion…”.
So, instead of angrily replied, I replied them with calm and I assured my friends that I will go to looking for where is the Truth, going to see what is the Christian Orthodox Church, too.
After few day, I decided to go alone in the Christian Orthodox Church of my neighborhood and while I stund from a Picture-Icon of Christ and Virgin Mary I maked (I was doing) my Cross and I said to Christ:
“My Christ I don’t Know if the place, the Orthodox Church, in which I find this moment is correct. Also I don’t Know if the way with which this moment I pray, that I pray with Your Picture-Icon and that I make-doing my Cross, is correct. However, I Know that You say in the Holy Bible, “If someone knocks Me I will open him” give me an answer where is the Truth. Is it in the “Workers” or in the Christian Orthodox Church? And if You give me an answer I will not deny You! And before you see to me where is the Truth I will not discuss with any Christian Orthodox clergyman in order to explain to me what the Orthodox Church teaches or any “Worker” in order to explain to me what the “Workers” are believe. I will wait to see me where is the Truth. Please, answer me where is the Truth and I will not deny You! Amen”.
From that day my friends didn’t told me again about the Christian Orthodox Church. Some day just told me that I will must make-doing my cross whenever I passed in front of a Church. And I accepted. And I started to go alone on a Sunday the Orthodox Liturgy prayed sincerely to see God ‘s Truth and one Sunday alternately I went in meetings of “Workers” praying again warmly to see me our God where is the Truth. Also, each night knelt to bed before lying down, praying again to God to see me the Truth. My friends did not tell me anything on this matter, but they knew from me that I was going to the Christian Orthodox Liturgy, too.
One day, early in 2000, offer my friends if I wanted to go one day excursion to Aegina Island (Greece) to visit the Monastery of St. Nectarios. And I answered “Yes, let’s go”, thinking that it had nothing waning.
Over the monastery of St. Nectarios I asked them to stay a little lonely. I took a walk and I went to the place where was the tomb of St. Nectarios. I saw some persons to kneel in front of the tomb of St. Nectarios and to prayed. It seemed strange to me, but I did impressions.
When empty the small chapel with the tomb of St. Nectarios and I stayed alone I knelt and said to the Saint: “St. Nectarios, if you are live in the heaven with God and hear me and if the Christian Orthodox Church is the Truth, help me and show me…”.
After a few minutes I got up and went to meet my friends who waited for me at the exit of the monastery. Just my friends saw me, they thinking that something awful happens to me. And with interest asked me, “Are you Ok? You somehow appear… Does you happens something good or something ugly?”. Full query, I ensured them that all it’s well, realising however that I felt a calm which rather it they had distinguished my friends who uneasy asked me if I am fine of not. I ensured them one more time that all it is a joy and that only that I done it was prayer as doing all there in the Monastery. The calm which I felt I didn’t interpreted and I didn’t reported it to my friends. Just I knew that I had felt it.
The next day when we came back in Athens I called P. to tell her my impressions from the monastery of St. Nectarios of Aegina Island. Before I called her I knew very well that the day before we had gone to St. Nectarios of Aegina. When, however, I called P. I said her that we had gone to Monastery of St. Andrew (Apostle Andrew) of Aigina! But there isn’t “St. Andrew of Aigine”. There is only St. Apostle Andrew. And there is not any Monastery with the name of St. Andrew in Aegina.
My friend P. thought that I was made (that I was doing) jokes and she was wondering how can I don’t remember where we had gone just the day before. I had completely forgotten the name of St. Nectarios and I insisted that we go to the St. Andrew of Aegina. When P. reminded me that we had gone to the St. Nectarios of Aegina and not to the St. Andew, immediately I remembered where we had gone and with amazement how could I forget I said her, “Oh, yes, I’m sorry”.
The months are going on and I was going one Sunday to the meetings of “Workers” and one Sunday alternately to the Liturgy of Orthodox Church, praying always hotly to the God to answer me where is Truth. All these months I and my friends from TEI-University did not have any discussion about where is the Truth. They did not wanted to pressure me. Simply they prayed for me knowing that no prayer does not go lost. Even smallest.
In the summer of 2000 my friends company of TEI-University, offer me if I wanted to going to Church of the Virgin Mary in Tinos Island, Greece. I accepted thinking again that it had nothing waning. In Tinos Island (Greece) stayed for two days because it was far away. The first day we visited the church-chapel of the Virgin Mary in Tinos Island that there is the miraculous Icon of Virgin Mary. I went front to the Icon of Virgin Mary where she has the Christ in her arms and with heartfelt prayer I said: “My Jesus Christ, show me where is the Truth and I will not deny You!”.
After, while we left from the church-chapel of Virgin Mary, my friends stopped in a bench outside from the Church that there sold small candles, Icons of Virgin Mary, books etc. and I was waitting them. Someone from my friends told me: “If you want buy a small Icon of Virgin Mary”. So I bought one small icon of Virgin Mary.
In the evening we went to our rooms at the hotel and I put the small icon into a sachets on the nightstand and light up a candle wax. I lied in bed and fell asleep without even noticing. In the middle of the night I woke suddenly startled and immediately I saw that the candle towards the bedside table had melted and the wooden nightstand catched fire (it was on fire). I got up quickly and awestruck with a cloth, put out the fire. Since then I looked at the sachets the small icon on the nightstand, I thought that possibly the Virgin Mary help me to wake up so suddenly and promptly anticipating the fire before it spread further.
The next day when we came back in Athens, I hung the small icon of Virgin Mary on a wall inside my room. I didn’t believe yet that the Christian Orthodox Church is the Truth Church of Christ, but something told me that Virgin Mary had helped me to woke up in time before to expand the fire. And for these reason I decided to put the small icon of Virgin Mary in my room. So I waited for with distress how would react my parents when they will see the small Orthodox Icon. After some hours at evening my parents were saw the small Icon and for first time they occupied that their son (me) relates himself with the Christian Orthodox Church. They told me with anger and neurously to throw out and I tried to explain them that I didn’t doing something wrong-bad and that I has every right to have in my room everything that I want. The troubles were continued on a daily basis. For the fear to they throw the small Icon of Virgin Mary when I was absent from the house was taking with me the small Icon and when I came back I was hanging it again.
One night my mother insisted that I throw the small icon. She said to me that “if the icon of Virgin Mary tomorrow morning it will here in your room I will throw it”. And, this time, I told her calmly “You can doing what ever the God illuminated you… “, thinking to myself that if God accepts Orthodoxy as Truth He illuminated her not to throw it. And if God accepts the “Workers” as Truth illuminated her to throw it. And so I understand what the Truth is.
When the next morning I woke up at 7:00 to go to TEI-University, I saw that my mother went to her job and she hadn’t throw away the small Icon of Virgin Mary. I felt very glad that she didn’t throw the small Icon but… I was not yet isconvinced about where is the Truth. So, I left from my home to go in University. I left the small Icon in the wall. The midday I came back in my house, and I realized astonished that the Icon was absent. My brother and my sisters came back at home and someone of them was hiding the Icon under a book. I fount it and I didn’t tell them something about the small Icon of Virgin Mary.
At 14:00 I was distressed because I could not unterstand where is it the Truth and I began to prepared in to meeting at 15:00 my friend P., in the centre of Athens, in Plaka, for a time-walk. But when I was absent my mother at 15:30 would returned from her job in the house. And I thought if it would be supposed to left the icon hung in my room or I would must be took it with me from the fear to throw my mother the Icon as to told me previous evening. So I decided to left the small Icon in the house and whether that will happened (if she throw the Icon or not) that will was a proof about where it is the Truth. With the hope that the God answer me where is the Truth, I maded my Cross, I kissed the small icon of Virgin Mary and I left it hung in the wall.
So I met in Plaka of Athens my friend P. and as we walked at some point P. said me that she did not feel well and that dizzy. She had indeed pale and I told her to sit down on a bench that was near there and I went to buy her an orange juice. As I put my hand in my pants pocket to pull out money to pay, knowing that in my pocket I had only money and keys, I thought it catch a shaped object “Q”, that is object with like crick. Over the agony, I paid with no attention, I paid the orange juice and gave it to P. and she drank it and she assembled.
They continued to walk in the Plaka of Athens, and after half an hour, whilst just walked in silence for something specific, I wondered to myself if it was my idea of what I looked it catch in my pocket half an hour ago shaped “Q “, like something with crick and spontaneously I put my hand in my pocket to municipalities if indeed caught something or was just my idea. Surprised to discover that in my pocket was the small icon of Virgin Mary, and “Q” which in shape was caught was the crick that the small icon has to hang!
Immediately I told to P. what happened but she did not believe me. She told me whether I took the small icon with me like other times and that I did not remember it. And I replied her that I took it this time with me and that even left the small icon at home as a criterion to where is the Truth. My friend P. didn’t believe me and she said to me: “Ok, when you come back at home, you hang the small icon again to see what your parents tell you”. So the afternoon as I came back home I was hang the small icon and when my parents saw it created a fuss. The evening before lying down to sleep, to corp the icon for fear my parents throw away.
The next morning I left for TEI (University) and I took together the small icon and when I returned home in the evening I hang it again in the wall of my room.
When my mother saw it, made a great fuss and she said me with angry: “I told you that if you would hang the icon again I throw it. But you hung it and I take it and after you went and took it from me, inside my bathrobe”.
When I hear these words, I was surprised. I know that something supernatural had happened, but in any case I don’t expect that will confirm it and my mother. And I told her exactly what had happened, stressing that I didn’t took the icon from her bathrobe, but miraculously founded in my pocket. My mother quickly went to my room and corp the small icon by opening the windows to be discarded. I run anticipating before she throw it.
With all these I just believed that our God showed me that the Christian Orthodox Church is the Truth. So I decided to talk with an Christian Orthodox clergyman-priest. I went in the Orthodox Church of my neighborhood and I spoke with priest Father Andrew, narrating to him the whole story of how I believed to Cristian Orthodox Church. Father Andrew listened to me carefully and he said to me in the end: “You have every right to believe what you want but because you live with your parents in the same house, is better to you have the small icon with you together, not to sag it for not having troubles at home. And in the future, God first, in your home you will bore what you want”.
Since, I had the small icon with me together and I went every Sunday only to the Orthodox Church.
My father before married and maked family had become “Worker” with the result can be interpreted the Holy Bible in the Protestant way, ie misinterpreting and omitting several passages hagiography (verses). So he called me with a view to demonstrate how through Holy Bible proves that the Orthodox Church is not the Truth. I had hoped that I could be proved otherwise. But I knew nothing of anti-heretical hagiographic (verses from Holy Bible) argument.
My father began arguing that the holy icons are idolatry and I answered him that it is not idolatry because we don’t worship the wood or the pictured saints and the veneration that is honorable and not worship, something with which my father did not agree. Then my father began to show various hagiographic (verses) without which he argue was against holy confession, Priesthood, fasting and, as well, against the Saints and the Virgin Mary. Unfortunately, although I know that it is not right, I didn’t not know how to prove it hagiography (verses), preferring not to answer at all.
The days went by and every day my father asking me to show me and other hagiographic passages (verses) which, as mistakenly claimed, proves that the Orthodox Church is wrong. Sometimes I went to talk with him, because he insisted and sometimes not, because I know that my father misunderstand the Holy Bible and that I was not at a position to prove it because I didn’t knew about Holy Bible. One morning as I was leaving for TEI-University, I was stopped by my father to show me something in the Holy Bible. Began to bring me back argument against Orthodoxy and this time he managed to convince me that Orthodoxy is located in fallacy.
So I convinced that Orthodoxy is wrong heading into TEI-University thinking if I should made to the company that eventually became convinced from his father that the Orthodox Church is wrong. So, under punching my hand and thinking that I agree with my father that Orthodoxy is false, I decided that I will tell it to them.
In TEI-University I met my friend P. and I told her that I was convinced from my father that Orthodoxy is wrong. So P. without anger but with emphasis and tears in her eyes said to me: “Are you forget everything that Virgin Mary did to you? Are you forget everything?”.
When I listened these words severally mentally shaken and immediately I said to myself: “She has right. I asked Christ to show me where is the Truth and He showed me, knowing that I will be continuous war must remain solid and will come also the time during which learn and how through Holy Bible proves that the only Truth is the Christian Orthodox Church”. So when I returned at noon in my home, with these same words that I said to myself, I said to my father confessing that the Orthodox Church is the Truth regardless at the moment I do not know how to prove it by Holy Bible.
The days passed and I keeps going steadily every Sunday to the Orthodox Liturgy and I felt to grow up in more a leaf in favor of the Orthodox Church. So one day I said to Father Andrew that I would like to be baptized Christian Orthodox. Fr. Andrew answered me that “To be baptized Christian Orthodox you should really believe rather than at the barrel e.g whether to marry an Orthodox girl or for other reasons”. I assured him that I really believe that the Orthodox Church is the Truth and that the Orthodox Church is the Church that founded by Christ and I wants with my heart to come in His Church and I don’t doing it for other reasons”. So, Fr. Andrew said me that we should find a godfather.
Unfortunately, months went by, and we didn’t find a godfather. Father Andrew wanted to baptism me but he was told me that he wanted to find a trusted person for godfather and I answered him: “God will find someone”.
One morning in late March 2001, I passed outside a church-chapel near the neighborhood and thinking that it has ever been in this church decided to lit a small candle. The small church was dedicated to St. Apostle Andrew. As prayed into the small church the vicar priest of the church, Father Emmanuel asked me: “Who are you? Where are you from? Are you from this neighborhood? We haven’t seen again here”. I surprised, I took his blessing (I kissed him hand) and I told him that I’m a neighbor. After I told him my story, about how I believed and that I want to be baptized Orthodox. Fr. Emmanuel surprised looked the sacristan-woman who was also there and told her that if I desire they can indeed baptized me there. Then Fr. Emmanuel explained to the resurrection that I be baptized must truly believe and not barrel for any other reason. And I assured him that every day more and a leaf growing in favor of Orthodoxy.
So, by the Grace of God after two weeks of catechism, on 7 April 2001, Saturday of Lazarus I baptized Christian Orthodox, with godfather the son of Fr. Emmanuel, in this church of St. Apostle Andrew.
On the occasion that I was baptized in a chuch (chapel) of St. Apostle Andrew and “St. Andrew of Aegina” which I had said instead of “St. Nektarios”, I thought that maybe St. Nektarios had helped me to believe and be baptized, as I requested him. So, I bought a book of his life in order to ask more about his life. As I read surprised found that the folk name of St. Nectarios, before he became a monk was “Anastasios”. Like me. And after when the St. Nectarios became a monk named “Lazarus”. And I baptized “Saturday of Lazarus” (feast day of St. Lazarus). And that then St. Nectarios became a priest named “Nektarios”.
Almost immediately I remembered an incident from the time when I was at school, about 1993, 12 years old. In the time of Gymnastics I sat with peers who were discussing something and I heard them without myself taking part in the discussion. Suddenly, without myself to the will, inconsiderate, I switches them from the discussion by asking so spontaneously: “Hey Guys, how about we become when we will are 20 years old?”.
My classmates started laughing about this question and I realizing that I told something “wrong” by talking and I tried to fix it by saying “uh… e… I say how I am when I’m 20 years old”. Realizing, however, that I said something irrelevant to discussion I didn’t asked again.
Just now, after 8 years I found that those which I said at the time in high school was not an ordinary recklessness. Because on 31 March 2001 I was 20 years old (I was born 31/3/1981) and after one week, on 7 April 2001, I baptized Christian Orthodox.
I thought all of them can be simple coincidences and that really St. Nektarios had helped me to believe in the real Truth. In to the unbroken apostolic succession Orthodox Church. In the Church founded by Christ. And for which he said “I build my Church, and the gates of hades will not prevail against it”(Matthew 16:18 ). I remembered that one of the names of “Worker Sect” is “The Truth”. But the “Truth” of “Workers” is false. It’s a lying “Truth”.
With the Grace of God, I continued to damage the spiritual life in the Orthodox Church, in real Truth. However, the devil did not remain inactive and before spending two months from my baptism, the devil began to sow heretics thoughts against the embassy of the Saints. So I started thinking why would I pray to the Saints and not only pray directly to Christ. Although I know that these thoughts were heretical and wrong, I could not with anything to get it out of my mind. I kicked again and again. I felt clearly that the devil makes war of putting all these thoughts, but I could not doing nothing. So, I asked for help from God.
On the afternoon of 8 May 2001 while I was in the Church in the evening prayer of the feast of St. Christopher and continues all these heretical thoughts, when I saw the icon-image of St. Christopher started patiently enter thoughts against this particular Saint. The icon-picture of St. Christofer to pass a river, having at the back of Christ as a child. I could not understand how this is done, from the moment the St. Christopher lived in the 3rd century A.D..
At the end of the Vespers a lady gave to me an identical plasticized small icon of St. Christopher saying me that the St. Christopher is a patron of drivers. I was perplexed and asked her to learn about the life of St. Christofer. She told me that he was idolatry to originate cannibal tribe, but he was very good and virtuous. He was big with great physical strength and so very often help disability, elderly and children to cross a raging river much of the area where they lived. One time as he tried to lift a child to spend it on the opposite bank found surprised that despite his power, he could not lift it. After he was revealed that this child was the Christ, and appeared to congratulate him for a job well help and love which offers fellows. And then St. Christopher believed in Christ, was baptized and became worthy to Witness and now he is a Saint Martyr who killed for Christ.
I was glad for the life of St. Christopher. The heretical thoughts continued and I begged St. Christopher to help me to stop the bad thoughts. I did not like to bore thoughts against the Saints. I feel that someone else whispering bad thoughts constantly in my mind. And I realized that he was the devil. While the bad thoughts like “Why do you pray to the Saints and not only to Christ?”, continued, and I could not stop them, begging God to help me.
This time (2001) I went to TEI-University and I worked in McDonalds (2000-2002) of the centre of Athens, too.
So, in May 2001, after a few days, when I finished from my work-McDonalds at noon and I led for my home with my car, I realized that from fatigue sleepy and my eyes closed. As I tried to hold open unwisely thought the Avenue of Athens-Corinth from which I was going is a straight and that we would be able to keep my eyes open and while running at higher speed to be faster, I would arrive in a fourth at my home well. As I started to cross the avenue and increasing speed to reach home sooner, my eyes closed and hastily exposures. I opened the windows of car and the music radio.
I thought it was a quarter that should have patience and barrel would reach. As I began to drive in the bridge of Kifisos I heard a loud collision while I thought someone crashed while I opened my eyes, which I were not understood that it was closed and I saw broken panes. And then I saw that I had crashed myself. Immediately I came out and I was surprised when I saw where I was. Moving up the bridge of Kifisos without realizing I had fallen asleep and crossed the entire bridge asleep, and that part of the avenue after the bridge crashed in cars that were stopped In first traffic light after the bridge and causing pile. The frond of my car crashed very match but had not anything happening to myself.
So, straight my mind went to the St. Christopher and generally the embassies of the Saints. Immediately I realized that I had helped by St. Christopher and that Christ accepts our pray to the Saints, who after death is not in a stupor as they say the heretical, but also they live after death, they can hear, they can see, they can understand and help people. Like the Prophet Moses had died though (Deuteronomy 34:5) he appeared in the Transfiguration of Christ (Matthew 17:3-4 ) and as though Abraham who also died in about 1800 B.C., from heaven “saw it and was glad”(John 8:56) (he saw the Incarnation of Christ). And so by Grace and the help of God completely dissolved from my mind the heretical thoughts against the Saints.
After, I began to feel the desire to get to know other young persons that are conscious Orthodox Christians inside the Church and I began to pray to God to send me some persons. And God answered immediately with a reply which He had “preparation” many years ago. Our family dentist who had come in my baptism and has extended family, said me that her children go to a priest in the center of Athens, who engaged in anti-heretical and apologetic work of the Church and that every Sunday makes speeches on youth in style Q & A (questions and answers), where they were asking questions about faith and disbelief and he answered to them. And she offer to go there, me too. And she told me that I will have the chance to meet a lot of new young persons from the Orthodox Church and yet I can ask the priest various questions that I have been on the Orthodox Faith.
So, on June 2001 I went to meet the priest who called Father John. Father John asked me to tell him my story of how I believed and was baptized and happily I recounted his. When I finished my narration Fr. John said to me: “You believed in a miracle. But that the Orthodox Church is the only Truth is not only established through the wonders but also only from Holy Bible. Because and the devil can doing wonders. And Buddhists do wonders and many others with the power of the devil doing wonders. But God loves you and He maked a wonder in your life to believe Him”.
I surprised with what I heard and I asked Fr. John to explain me that reveals this up during the Holy Bible. Also wondered how my parents just read Holy Bible and being outside the Church and Fr. John replied that they misunderstand the Holy Bible.
Then he mentioned the words of Christ Himself who said of his Church that it will establish and will not be interrupted when your work forever and ever: “I will build my Church, and the gates of hades will not prevail against it”(Matthew 16:18). Roman Catholics were detached from the body of the Church in 1054 AD and the Protestants left from Roman Catholics on 1517 AD. And then as now established at least 33,000 different Protestant heresies where one does not accept the other and all claims that the Church had stopped Her work and its restarted when themselves founding the protestants sects. So the words of our Lord “build my Church, and the gates of hades will not prevail against it”(Matthew 16:18 ) match only the Christian Orthodox Church. The Christian Orthodox Church is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Christ and His Apostles on 33 A.D.. Also, the Christian Orthodox Church has the Apostolic Succession.
The Christian Orthodox Church is also called Eastern Orthodox Church, Orthodox Catholic Church, Orthodox Church and Orthodoxy. (But, be careful: Christian Orthodox Church is not same with Coptic Orthodox Church, Eastern Catholic Churches, Church of Armenia, Oriental Orthodoxy and Eastern Christianity, that they are also called Monophysites, Copts and Chalkedonians and they are heretical false sects because they left from Christian Orthodox Church on 451 A.D.)
On September 2001 I started going in speeches for young people which they have Fr. John in style A&Q. I asked many questions, quite benevolent wonder which I had on how all those who teach the Orthodox Church, having abolished the Protestants like Holy Icons, Virgin Mary, Priesthood, Confession etc., it turns up during the Holy Bible.
Fr. John answered to me many questions but because I had a lot of questions told me to come after speaking to his office to give me an anti-heretical book. And he gave me one that automatically negate the heretical protestants teachings with only hagiographies passages (verses) from Holy Bible. So I read the anti-heretical this book and God blessed me to believe the Christian Orthodox Church from the Holy Bible, too.
After a few months, on 2002, I learned that Fr. John want to build a monastery in Attica, Greece, which will deal divine confession and apology against heresies, atheists, buddhists etc. with anti-heretical books. And Ι said to Fr. John that I want abided by his monastery.
So, on 29 November 2002, the eve of St. Apostle Andrew, I came officially escorted of Fr. John, and I waiting and making daily prayer to God given us a place monastery.
In the summers of 2002 and 2003, I worked with my father as painters. These two summers I had gone with my father to Mykonos Island (Greece) to paint a new hotel. There I asked as to whether there is some local Saint and I learned about St. Manuel of Mykonos, who was married in Mykonos and he was martyred in Chios Island, Greece. The memory day of St. Manuel is on 15 March (+1792).
So, I asked Fr John to pray every day to St. Manuel of Mykonos and he said me: “Ok, pray to help us to find a place for our monastery”. So I prayed to Christ, to Virgin Mary and St. Manuel of Mykonos to help us to find a place to build monastery.
After 5 years, with God’s Grace we found a temporary place for Monastery and on 25 November 2007 I went to lived there. And to show me our God, for another one time, that the Saints of God helps us and that we must invoke them without any hesitation on 15 March 2008, the feast day of St. Manuel of Mykonos, I was tonsured an Orthodox monk with the name “Abel” that gave me the Bishop of Piraeus in honor of St. Forefather Abel (Adam’s son in Old Testament) noting surprised that on 29 November where I desided on 2002 to be a monk, is the feast day of another Saint who called St. Abel of Valaam, Russia (+1831).
After 6 years, on 2013, we find a place from monastery and now we went there.
Every day and every night I pray for all the people to coming inside the House of Christ, to the Orthodox Christian Church (Eastern Orthodox Church).
I wish you all the best!
Abel-Tasos Gkiouzelis
Email: gkiouz.abel@gmail.com
Feel free to email me...!
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Conversions of murderers to Holy Confession
The late Preacher and Father Confessor Archimandrite Venedictos Petrakis (+1961) reports:
"Through the preaching and the Sacrament of Confession at least ten planned murders were prevented!
One of those who renounced his murderous plans, as soon as he came out of the church after confession, began to say to those who were in the square: 'Everyone, run to Father Confessor to make you human!' He himself, not only did he disown murder and forgive his enemy, but he also managed to bring him to confession.
In another village, an old woman whose only son had been murdered, as soon as she came out of the church after confession rushed to the shop, approached the murderer of her son and forgave him, and she even urged him to confess! The murderer, deeply moved, proceeded to the Sacrament of the Holy Confession in tears!
In another village of the same area, some people who had come under orders and decision to execute me, also repented and confessed...".
INS
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The conversion of Fr. Nikolaοs Loudovikos from atheism to Orthodoxy with the help of Saint Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia, Athens & Oropos, Greece (+1991)
Fr. Nikolaos Loudovikos, Greece:
When I was 20 years old, I was an anarchist...
I had long hair, I had earrings and I was tyrannical to
spiritual people, my teachers...
They sent me to a Christian boarding school and I caused havoc...
One day, at the urging of an uncle, I decided to visit Saint Porphyrios...
I thought I would meet a naive old man, but I was quickly proved wrong...!!!!!
As soon as the Saint Porphyrios saw me he said:
"Ηey you, you want to believe, but your strong mind won't let you...!
But one way or another, know that He loves you, Christ is waiting for you and will win you over one day...!!!
Hey, come tomorrow and we'll talk !"
The next day I went to talk to him...!
As soon as the Saint Porphyrios saw me he said:
"Hey you, do you like poems? Because I'm a poet, too.
Shall we go to the forest to recite to you?"
He took me by the hand and started reciting poems...!
As I listened, I burst into tears and cried. Why...?
Because the poems that the Saint Porphyrios was reciting were my poems...!!!
The ones I had written and hidden in a notebook, believing that one day I would publish them...
I was shocked!
INS
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A young man in Athens, Greece, in 1963, during the summer months was tempted in the flesh beyond his strength. He made up his mind to put an end to the struggles of abstinence, for as he said he could no longer bear the weight of the flesh. He thought of his Elder, the Elder Amfilochios Makris of Patmos Island, Greece, but he was too far away to help him. He left his aboad and headed towads the center of Athens. It was getting dark. The journey took an hour. He kept on praying but the flame of the flesh would not cool down. So, the young man who had never been to the cinema before, said to himself: "Let me start with an X- rated movie", which was then showing at the Rex cinema. He bought a ticket and stood near the advertising posters. Inexperienced as he was, he understood almost nothing. As he squinted to look, he turned his face away in case someone he knew saw him. And there beside him was the figure of Elder Amfilochios with tears in his eyes! That's where it all stopped. He returned home and wept bitterly like Peter.
INS.
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The conversion of an Australian man from Hinduism to Orthodoxy with the help of Saint Gabriela Papagiannis missionary of India, from Greece (+1992)
Saint Gabrielia Papayanni (+1992), missionary of India:
«Once, in India, there was a very great "master", of those so called guru (at the time I was working in the small hospital that belonged to his ashram - his "monastery"). One day, a very cute 26 year old youngster from Australia came to the ashram, having brought with him a big box. He showed up where this great "master" was, surrounded by people who heard him speak... When this young man entered, he blushed with joy and excitement, looking at the "master" the way we look at, if I may say, the icon of a Saint! So after the "master" took a good look at him, he said: "So you're the one who came from Australia? What have you brought us?" The poor guy could not speak from excitement, and yet the other one insisted: "Did you bring us bananas? Did you bring us fruit? Did you bring us sweets? What did you bring us?" The poor guy began to open the box and took out papers and more papers and more papers... "Hey, show us now what you're going to give us." In the end he took out tapes and the tape recorder he had brought to record the voice of this great "master"! "Oh!.... Is that it? Is that all you've got? Go show him his room!".
So the poor guy went to his room, sat down, locked himself in and didn't want to come out at all. He was shocked! He expected to see a man who had almost deified him, and now he saw him waiting for bananas and fruit like a commoner, finally telling him to go to his room since he hadn't brought anything... But the poor guy had come to capture the guru's voice and send it back to Australia (... for everyone to admire his achievement, because of course, in all this there was a little bit of ego...) The young man, as you may have gathered, was in real shock. The next day they tried to get him out of his room to go and listen to the teachings, but he did not want to.
One day he told me: "You tell me that when God wills something, it is done, and that when you leave yourself free in God's hands, He does it for you, and that the only way to reach God is through Christ, who takes you by the hand and educates you and takes you where you need to go; and all you have to do is leave yourself in His hands." "Yes," I said to him, "as long as you really let go of yourself in Him!" Another day he said to me: "You say that we must leave ourselves completely in God's hands, and then... Fine! So let's go the two of us with no money to a mountain, to an unknown place, to see... Will we find food and shelter, as you say?" "No question about it! Of course we will!" "So you're sure?" "I am sure." "If I see this, I will believe in Christ and give up all the "masters" and all the gurus."
But my children, the Bible says "do not tempt the Lord your God, and do not seek a sign". But then I had such a longing and certainty that this young man, having been born in a Christian country, must not lose his Christ. What could happen now? So I said to him, "Yes, we will go." We only had enough money for the train and for sleeping the first night; very little, a rupee (something like a hundred drachmas). The next day we would wait and see what would happen. I was so sure! It was as if I was going to a familiar place... Well, this young man had brought some fruit and we took it along with us.
The next day in the morning, we set off for the mountain. We climbed and climbed and climbed... And it was noon. At one point we sat down on a hill to rest. He said to me: "No miracle yet." I said, "You're in too much of a hurry. I told you that tonight, God willing, we will find a place to stay." "Fine", he said. But not before long the sun began to set, for we were on a mountain where it was setting fast. We looked down into the valley, and to tell you the truth, I was beginning to think that somehow... the miracles I was expecting were a little late in coming, but God knows best ... He turned to me and said: "And now what do you say?" "I say tonight we'll sleep where God wants us to sleep." And not before long, as dusk approached, just as the sun was about to set, we saw a tropical hat slowly coming up from below the hill, then a face, and then two Indian figures. Soon we saw that the face with the tropical hat was a woman wearing glasses; she seemed to be old and European. The two Indians were young girls. Gradually their faces were coming up until they finally reached us.
"Good evening." "Good evening." "Where are you coming from"? "We're coming from down there." "Where are you going?" "To friends". He glared at me. He might have wondered whether I was lying. "So where are you from?" "I'm from Greece and the young man's from Australia." She said:"And I'm from Holland. I was brought up in America and these two Indian girls you see, are two of the six daughters I've adopted here and I've helped them study nursing. What do you do for a living?" I said: "I teach physiotherapy and now I've just finished from a hospital." "Ah! God sent you. Are you perhaps free to come to our house tonight? These two girls of mine are on leave for a month. Maybe you'd like to teach them a little..." I said, "I'd love to... But I have this young man with me and we were going..." "I've also adopted a boy. They'll share his room, and tonight we'll all be a family." "Thank you and God for bringing us together. The young man from Australia, indeed, was completely dumbfounded...
God had worked his miracle and I was elated! At that time I had an indescribable excitement. India was my great adventure with the Faith of God, for I had gone there without knowing anything, in a foreign country and in a foreign language. Anyway, we arrived at their little house in the mountains. It was a nice house on a hill. She told me how she had left for other places when she was young, how she had lived there for so many years, and that it was only her friends who supported her because she didn't belong to any organization and all that, and how God had blessed her.
That night, the Australian guy was so moved that he told me with tears in his eyes "My sister Lila, sit down at the piano and let's play all the Christmas songs now! Christ has just been born in me!" And I sat at the piano and we started singing in high summer all the Christmas songs! And the girls started singing with their mother and her son and everybody... And this guy, Alan, was literally in the bliss of God.
But you see, God performs his miracles as and when He needs to. Because this young man was so misguided in other directions and because God wanted him, He did all of this for us. And I was so sure that he couldn't be lost like that, at 26, with all these workouts that cause squint and all sorts of other things, when they are not... Anyway. We stayed there for a fortnight. I showed the girls what they wanted, and then he went back to Australia. This lady, the missionary, had invited me every summer ever since and I used to spend some time with her. They never forgot that story, especially when I told them what happened to that young man later because his story wasn't over...
Another year had passed, and another, and he was back to the workouts and the others there. I had gone far away, up a mountain and no one could find me. As he told me later, he remembered what I had told him and thought: "Just as Sister Lila says yes when she is invited, so will I say yes this time and wherever it takes me", for again he wasn't happy there. So he got up and went to the place where he thought he would find me, where we first met. But they told him "She won't be coming back this year, she's up on the mountain." Now look at this coincidence! Someone came to where I was and said to me "You know, Alan from Australia is in that place." "Oh", I thought, "I'll send him a letter to come here", not knowing the recent troubles he had gone through... And as he was waiting for an invitation from someone else for a big change in his life or I don't know what, here comes my letter. It was the only invitation he got!
Back on the road, he came to that mountain where there were no Europeans, only he and I. So he came and said to me: " What happened then was good and holy. But in the meantime, I saw a lot of things not being done the way you said. That is why I came back to India, in search of the Truth." "But I've already told you, my boy, that the Truth is not a theory, it is Christ who said, 'I am the Truth'. What else do you want? Do you want more miracles?" "But you say you always live in miracles." "Yes, I live in miracles. The fact that you are alive and came back, that we have our eyes and our feet, all this is a miracle. You see where I work with the lepers? You see the blind? You see all these sick people here? Why them and not us? Did you ever ask that? By Grace, we have it all! By Grace! In spite of all our sin! By Grace we are as we are. By the Blood of Christ's sacrifice! Don't you understand that? And as we were talking, an old man came crying... "Run, my boy is seriously ill in the hospital. Come on!" And off we went. This little village was very small and the hospital was not very... The doctor said to me: "You've come to see the boy. He fell from a scaffold and it seems to me that his spine is broken and that he will be dead by morning." We saw the boy. He was eighteen years old. I was so moved to see this boy that I started to stroke his forehead a little, and I said to his father :"No. God's miracles are great! The boy will live. Don't worry."
"Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here I am." (Isaiah 58:9)
At that moment, the boy opened his eyes a little. His father expected him to die. But when he heard that his boy could live, he turned to me and said: "Hey, if my boy is going to live, give me some money to go eat, because I'm hungry." The instinct of self-preservation! I said: "I don't have any money, this guy will give it to you", and the young man from Australia gave it to him. We left. The next morning he said to me: "Let's go and see if the boy is still alive." When we got there, we found the doctor at the door and he said: "I'll tell you one thing, you'll be surprised. Nature sometimes plays games like this! The boy is well and this morning he set off on foot with his father to their village, ten miles away." Hey... The Australian guy this time almost fell down! He was really overwhelmed. He turned to me and said: "Now, I believe in the omnipotence of God. I believe in Christ! I am a Christian in my soul! I'm going back to Australia! I have found what I was looking for!"
The young man left... The years went by. I left India, too... I went to Bethany, became a dokime and one day I got a letter from this young man again, saying: "My great pride has brought me to despair. Three young women almost drowned while swimming, and because I was a very good swimmer, I jumped into the water and rescued them. But I had such a great pride that I loudly announced it to the whole world, and in the end I lost my mind and they put me in a mental hospital. I got out afterwards, they said I'm fine, but I don't feel good. Now what do you advise me to do?" At that time I had met Father Lazarus, the English Orthodox in India. I said to him, "Go back to India. But this time go straight to Father Lazarus, I beg you." I sat and wrote to Father Lazarus. The young man went to him...
When Father Lazarus wrote to me, he told me that for a whole year the young man was just looking at him. He attended the Divine Liturgy every day but didn't speak to him at all. Ηe was an enigma. One morning he said to him: "Father, I've known Sister Lila for so many years, but she never asked me whether I had been baptized, nor if I was a Christian. She must have thought that, since I was born in Australia, I would be. But I am not baptized. I'm not even a Christian! Please, baptize me!" Father Lazarus' joy was great. He baptized him and named him Adrian. He changed his name from Alan to Adrian. He received his blessing and went off to become a missionary... These are the great and astonishing miracles of God!"».
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An Orthodox priest from Exeter, England, tells us his own unique story of how he came to know Orthodoxy
One of the priests of the parish of Exeter, England, the eldest one, told us his own unique story through which he came to know Orthodoxy:
I was in Paris, it was raining and I had to go somewhere to stay dry. I saw a door near me and entered. I can't say I saw the exterior of the church because it was raining; I just saw the door and entered. If it hadn't rained, I wouldn't have gone in! Opening the outer door abruptly, I tripped and fell into another door and so I got into the church. Not wanting to disturb anyone, I sat back in the corner and watched. Once I became more confident, I went ahead because I wanted to know what was going on, where I was. I saw the icons, the crosses and thought it must be a church. I wondered if it was a synagogue, because I'd never seen vestments worn in such a way. I liked the vestments, the incense, the whole visual impression of the service, and I didn't want to leave. I heard the choir in a completely different language, not even French. It was Slavic. I was sitting and looking at the icons. And if they had told me then that in eight years I would be doing the same thing as a Deacon, I wouldn't have believed them at all.
While I was in the temple and I saw the way in which the service was taking place, the order of the priests and the faithful, I felt that heaven was there and I thought: 'If there is a God - because I was wondering until that moment if there was - this is the way He should be worshipped.' Since then, in our parish, they say that 'Nicanor went into the temple to be protected from the rain of heaven and he found himself in Heaven! I always say to anyone who comes to the Orthodox Church for the first time, 'Enter the temple, go to the middle of the church and you will see in front of you the gates of Paradise!', which is nothing but the iconostasis.
Before I became Orthodox, I was a believer in the English sense of the word: God was always there! I knew how to pray when I wanted to. Besides, for I happened to come from a military family, I had the mentality that 'if God is good enough for the Royal Navy, then it is good enough for me!' That was the depth of my theology!
I went back to England and heard that there was a bishop in London, Antony Bloom, but I didn't pursue the matter. One day I was watching a film on television about the French Revolution. At that time the television programme ended at midnight and it was the custom on the BBC to invite someone to end the day. The epilogue that night was some prayers presented by Bishop Bloom of the Russian Orthodox Church. I was about to turn off the television, but I tripped on the carpet in front of it and so I could not turn it off. Listening to the prayers, I was surprised and sat down again to watch the rest. Then, the icons from the church in Paris came to my mind!
I did not have his address, but I wrote him a letter saying 'I heard you on television a week ago and I am interested in becoming Orthodox. Could I meet you sometime?' I wrote on the envelope 'Bishop Antony Bloom, Russian Church, London', I knew nothing else. After all, there wouldn't be many such churches in London! Finally he replied and I met him for a whole afternoon. Later he suggested that I contact a priest. I was in correspondence with him on matters of Orthodoxy, so we had something like a correspondence course in Orthodoxy! We continued this communication for quite some time and one Easter I became Orthodox and after a few years a Deacon".
ANT. INS.
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Athanasius Yoo, M.D., B.D., Korea: Why I Became An Orthodox Christian
My long pilgrimage to the Mother Church has been completed. As I think back over the long road of this pilgrimage, I become filled with deep emotion. For by the grace of God, I, a stray sheep, have found the lovely bosom of the Good Shepherd, the true body of Christ, – the One, Holy Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Therefore, it is my conviction that my humble retrospections should in nowise come to naught to those who are outside of the true Church of Christ.
I am a Korean and a medical doctor by profession. My father was an Elder of the Presbyterian Church in Korea and my mother a very devout deaconess of same. Consequently I was brought up in an unusually religious atmosphere.
My mother hoped that I would become a minister of the Presbyterian Church. But I had no interest in that profession because the example of the Protestant ministers at that time was much too superficial and did not impress me as being Christian at all. And so I entered medicine instead, finished medical school and began practicing in Seoul, Korea. I continued my medical practice until the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire. The fall of Japanese imperialism, and the subsequent independence of Korea, impressed me greatly with the frailty of life and of the world.
After a period of sincere prayer and meditation, I decided to dedicate myself to the ministry. I entered the Presbyterian Theological School in Seoul, Korea … with deep conviction and fervent faith for my newly chosen profession. Soon after, however, I was confronted with the malignant teaching of higher biblical criticism and of rationalistic modernistic doctrine. The evil shadow of Harnack and Deissmann, the poisonous sabotage of the Tubingen School, the narcotic abomination of Schleichermacher and Rutschul dominated the School. The revival of twentieth century Arianism and Nestorianism was promoted and the so-called “social Gospel” emphasized. Moreover, the Second Coming of Christ and the doctrine of everlasting life were counted as convictions of the ignorant. Had I not entered this Theological School, I probably would have kept my peace of mind. But once I had learned the false theology of this school, I lost my peace of mind. Indeed, I found it impossible to accept these heretical Protestant teachings without going against my conscience and good faith.
As a result, I began to look for more conservative Protestant teachings in order to find consolation . . . but I could not find any. With deep unrest and despair, I began reading some Roman Catholic theological books and my interest in the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church concerning the Virginity of the Virgin Mary, the Apostolic Succession, and Transubstantiation, was greatly aroused. However, because of the lack of books, my reading in Roman Catholic doctrine was limited. In the meantime, I continued my theological studies at the Presbyterian seminary and after my graduation from there was advised to be ordained. But I refused ordination because I now felt that the ministry of the Protestant Church lacked Apostolic Succession and was therefore null and void.
After much thought and hesitation, I finally became a Roman Catholic in 1950. Up until this time I had no contact whatsoever with the Orthodox Church.
Upon studying Roman Catholic doctrine, however, I found many false teachings in it also. Those that bothered me especially were the following:
1. The withdrawal of the cup from the laity during Communion.
2. The Doctrine of the Infallibility of the Pope.
3. The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
4. The Doctrine of Purgatory.
5. The Doctrine of Indulgences.
6. The universal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome.
7. The exclusive Latinity in the Mass and in other services.
If I refused to accept the above doctrines, I would be under anathema. And so I remained in a state of confusion. In order to resolve the problems I had about the Roman doctrine, I began studying the writings of the Church Fathers. These along with scholastic theology, I read for a long time. My conclusion from all these studies was that the Roman Catholic Church, too, had gone astray as had the Protestant. In doubt, despair, and agony, I decided to go to the United States in order to escape my doctrinal troubles. I arrived in the United States in 1955.
In the United States, I studied advanced medical science and also continued my theological studies. For the first time I was given the opportunity to read into Eastern Orthodox theology. Up until this time I had had no contact with Orthodox Christians or with any Orthodox Church. Thanks be to God, however, for He led me by His Holy Spirit to the primitive, conservative, and most pure and virgin faith of Christianity! For I discovered that in the Orthodox Church, Christianity with all its richness and essence was to be found. In the bosom of the Orthodox Church, my despaired soul found a resting place, a heavenly harbor! With great joy and hope, I decided to become an Orthodox Christian about a year ago. At first I hesitated to make a hasty decision for fear of disgracing myself by frequent changes of denominations. But gradually I became convinced of the validity of Orthodoxy.
By the Grace of God, I was convinced that I must serve Him through the priesthood of the Orthodox Church. And so I began following the way of the Cross, willing to sacrifice anything. Through the kindness of His Eminence, Archbishop Michael and His Grace, Bishop Athenagoras of Elaia, I was given permission to study Orthodox theology at the Holy Cross Orthodox Theological School in Brookline, Massachusetts, in preparation for the priesthood. My desire is to return to Korea as a medical-priest missionary after my ordination into the Orthodox Church, and join the Orthodox mission which already exists in Seoul, Korea.
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2011: Number of Orthodox Christians in Ireland doubled over five years
According to the latest 2011 census there are over 45 thousand Orthodox Christians in Ireland, reports Interfax-Religion.
This figure is two times larger than it was in 2006 and four times larger than in 2002. Thus according to the official data Orthodoxy is the fastest growing religion in Ireland, says the website Russianireland.com.
The largest center of Orthodoxy in the country is Swords, the county town of Fingal, where 1168 Orthodox Christians reside according to the 2011 census data.
The census also showed that the majority of the Orthodox Christians in Ireland are Romanians (26%), followed by Irish (20%) and Latvians (12.5%).
“Orthodoxy is not something new or strange In Ireland; it has always existed here. It is well-known that Irish Christianity before the 11th century was very similar to ours. But after Ireland was conquered by the British this denomination had been intentionally removed by the Pope. That is probably why many Irish perceive Orthodoxy as something special and dear”, said the Rector of the Patriarchal representation of the Russian Orthodox Church in Dublin, priest Michael Nasonov.
According to him, there are seven parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ireland already.
The most common religion in Ireland is Roman Catholicism (3.86 million people, 84.2% of the population), followed by Protestantism (over 134 thousand people) and Islam (over 49 thousand people).
http://orthochristian.com/57148.html
INS.
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Saint Paisios of Holy Mount Athos, Greece (+1994) and the Tibetan Buddhism young George from the Far East
George, a young man of sixteen or seventeen, came to Mount Athos to go from one monastery to another. Though Greek by blood, he had been raised abroad from early childhood among Tibetan Buddhist monks in their monastery. He had made a great deal of progress in meditation, and he had become an accomplished sorcerer, able to summon any demon he wanted. He was also an expert in the martial arts. Using the power of Satan, he made impressive displays of his abilities: he broke hazelnuts in his palm, and tossed away the shells while the nuts remained attached to his hand. He could read closed books. He struck large rocks with his bare hand, and they shattered like walnuts.
Some monks brought George to the Elder Pasios (Saint Paisios) so that he could help him. George asked the Elder what powers he had, what he could do, and the Elder answered that he himself didn’t have any power, and that all power is from God.
George, wanting to demonstrate his power, concentrated his gaze on a large rock in the distance, and it shattered. Then the Elder took a small rock and made the sign of the Cross over it, and told him to destroy it too. He concentrated and performed his magic, but he couldn’t shatter it. Then he started trembling, and the satanic powers―which he thought he controlled―since they weren’t able to break the rock, turned against him and hurled him to the opposite bank of the river. The Elder picked him up in a miserable condition.
“Another time,” recounted the Elder, “while we were talking, he suddenly stood up, grabbed me by the arms and spun me around backward. ‘Let’s see Hadjiefendis get you lose, if he can,’ he said. I felt it was like blasphemy to say that. I moved my hands a little, like this, and he was jerked away. He jumped up in the air and tried to kick me, but his foot stopped near my face, like it had hit an invisible wall! God protected me.
Elder Paisios and the young George from the Far East“At night, I kept him there, and he slept in my cell. The demons dragged him down into the pit and thrashed him for failing. In the morning he was in a bad state, injured and covered in thorns and dirt. He confessed, ‘Satan beat me up because I couldn’t defeat you.’”
The Elder convinced George to bring him his magical texts, and he burned them. “When he came here,” the Elder recalled, “he had some sort of charm or amulet with him. I went to take it, but he wouldn’t give it to me. I took a candle and said, “Lift the leg of your pants up a little.” Then I put the lit candle against his leg―he yelled and jumped up. “Well,” I said, “if the flame from a little candle is for you, how are you going to endure the fire of hell that you’re going to end up in because of what you’re doing?”
The Elder kept the young man close to him for a little while and helped him, so long as he was willing to be obedient.Elder Paisios and the young George from the Far East He felt such compassion for him that he said, “I would leave the desert and go out into the world to help this boy.” He made an effort to learn if he had been baptized and even found out the name of the church where his baptism had taken place. Shaken by the power and the grace of the Elder, George wanted to become a monk, but he wasn’t able to.
The Elder would refer to George’s case to show what a delusion it is to think that all religions are the same, that everyone believes in the same God, and that there’s no difference between Tibetan Buddhist and Orthodox monks.
The place of magic in Buddhism is unknown to many Westerners, who for the most part have been introduced only to a modernist Buddhism that excludes such content. A useful corrective is provided by the scholar Georges Dreyfus, the first Westerner to receive the Geshe degree of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism.
“Unlike modern intellectuals, Tibetan scholars are never tempted to reject magical elements and often engage in these practices, though they may view them as limited in their effects and not relevant to the soteriological goals of the tradition. In this regard they are also unlike modern Buddhists, who are profoundly uncomfortable with the magical practices that exist in Asian Buddhist traditions” (pp 303–304). George Dreyfus, Sounds of two hands clapping. The education of a Tibetan Monk Dreyfus discusses at length the Tibetan Buddhist practice of propitiating the “mundane” “dharma protectors”. “These violent spirits have taken an oath … to protect the Buddhist teaching. Despite this commitment, they are not completely tamed and are prone to quasi-human emotions such as anger, jealousy, and so forth. Hence, they are partial and can be enlisted in morally unseemly actions such as helping practitioners to secure worldly advantages or even kill an adversary” (p. 299). In fulfillment of their oath, meanwhile, the spirits “protect the person or the group, often by violent means,” from“‘ enemies of Buddhism’ (bstan dgra)“ (p. 300). Although “many Tibetans feel the tension between the reliance on these deities and the normative ideals of the tradition,” they “figure prominently in the ritual life of Tibetan monasteries…. But most of the rituals devoted to these deities are not performed in public but in the House of the Protectors (dgon khang), a separate temple devoted to them” (p. 300). Indeed, “Tibetans are often unwilling to introduce outsiders to [the practice’s] secrets. Temples are always open to anybody, but the House of Protectors is often less accessible and can even at times be closed to non-Tibetans” (p. 302).―eds.
From the Book: Elder Paisios of Mount Athos
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Blessed French Mother Nun Mary Magdalene Le Beller, hermitess of cave of St. John Climacus of Tholas (Wadi Et-Tlah), Sinai (+2013)
"A saint does not shine outwardly. All of his riches are within, in his soul."
Blessed Mother Nun Mary Magdalene Le Beller of cave of St. John Climacus of Tholas (Wadi Et-Tlah) was born in France.
Mother Mary Magdalene met the elder Elder Sophronius and Saint Porphyrius and matouska Lubuska of St. Petersburg where blessed her to live in the Sinai desert.
She visited the Holy Land and stayed for a little while where she is orthodox baptized on the River Jordan. Then she prayed to St. John of Scale, to show her the way of her salvation and the place for her lonely life. And she led her steps in the Sinai desert. She lived near the cave of St. John Climacus of Tholas (Wadi Et-Tlah). When St. Paisios the Athonite last visited Sinai, he gave her the blessing to live in the desert after having examined it and bless the typical prayer. She lived great rejection, many considered it crazy and fallacious.
The cave of St. John Climacus is about a one hour hike from the village of St. Katherine and probably 1.5-2 hours hike from the monastery. The trail is adventuresome amongst large boulders the size of small houses.
After suffering from a painful disease, she reposed in the Lord in her cell at the age of 67-68 on Thursday December 12, 2013, the feast of Saint Spyridon the Wonderworker and Bishop of Tremithus, at 13:00 pm.
Her relics repose in the cemetery of the monastery of the Prophet Moses of Pharan. She was humility and love incarnate.
INS.
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The most-venerable Eldress Mary Magdalene, known in the world as Marie Madeleine Le Beller, was from Paris and went to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage and was baptized an Orthodox Christian when she was forty years old at the Jordan River in 1986. There she prayed to St. John of Climacus, to show her the way of her salvation and the place for her solitary life of total dedication to God. She went to the Sinai desert, and lived near the cave of St. John of Climacus in the Valley of Tholas approximately 8km from st. Katherne’s monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai.
For the first six months at Sinai, Mary Magdalene slept outside among the boulders and rocks, having only a sleeping bag, with scorpions and poisonous snakes as her only companions. Many considered her to be a crazy and delusional woman. She had sold her home in Paris and bought a piece of land from a Bedouin just below the cave of St. John of Climacus. There was already a carob tree and a well. She built five cells , a small chapel on top of rock, planted olive trees and a few apple trees, a vine, a garden, and built a small cistern. She also built a wall all around it.
In this place Mary Magdalene lived a simple life, tending to her garden, making prayer ropes, and later in life she occupied herself with woodcarving which she used to decorate her chapel with icons.
Initially she would go to the monastery every Sunday, but later on she would go every fifteen and on great feast days in order to receive Holy Communion.
Some fathers from the monastery of saint Katherine took pity on her and protected her, but many rejected her and made her life difficult. Once they forbade fr. Paule to accept her confession and did not allow her free hospitality at the hostel for women. She had strong faith and recalled the blessing the she had received from elder Sophrony, st. Porphyrios and matushka Lubuska the fool for Christ of st. Petersburg to be there. It seems that those fathers who did not like her thought that she should not live alone in the desert, and should have stayed at the female monastery in Faran, where she should first have lived at least for a year and a half in obedience. However, st. Paisios the Athonite, on his last visit to Sinai , when he visited the monastery in Faran, gave the nun Mary Magdalene his blessing to live in the desert after examining her and blessing her rule of prayer.
She would go to Jerusalem every Holy Week and Bright Week, then return to her cell at Sinai. After the Pascha of 2009, she no longer went to Jerusalem.
On the 18th November in 2012, a Sunday, she went to Crete to be examined at the Venizelio Hospital, and was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer.
From there she went to Moscow where she knew the bishop who oversaw the hospital of the Russian Church. There they did prolonged medical examinations and asked her to undergo surgery and chemotherapy at the largest medical center against cancer in Russia. But she did not accept, desiring to die at her beloved skete. She went to saint Seraphim of Sarov’s Hermitage, washed herself in his spring, and took great courage.
She returned to Sinai via Italy, where she visited the Church of saint Nicholas in Bari, and there she met a Russian woman named Euphrosyne, whom she asked to attend to her at Sinai. Euphrosyne responded positively and accompaniedher to Sinai, where she attended to the eldress till the end, without any material benefit. Euphrosyne was a gift of God because she spoke only Russian, which Mary barely spoke and understood. But they had excellent co-operation and was a good caretaker to her (for about ten months ), winning over the love and the respect of the fathers.
After Pascha of 2013 Mary could barely move anymore, let alone go to the monastery, but she bore the cross of her painful disease with great courage patience, without medical assistance and hospital care.
On the 12th of December in 2013, a Thursday, at 1:00 PM, eldress Mary reposed in the Lord in her cell, next to the cave of St. John of Climacus. Fr. Paule of Sinai rushed to her and had served a Divine Liturgy in her skete to commune her before her blessed repose.
The next day, after Fr Paule served another Divine Liturgy, they had her body brought to the local hospital to confirm her death. There she was kept frozen until the issue of a burial permit from the French Consulate. Then a strange thing occurred that brought admiration from those there. A snowstorm took place covering the area in white snow. The monastery therefore sent fourteen workers, all Christin Copts, to carry her body along the rugged terrain in the middle of a blizzard to her skete. Although it would take two hours to reach her skete from the motorway (which under normal conditions would take an hour), when they raised up her sacred relic it took them just 45 minutes later the snowstorm began again.
The permission to bury her was given on the night of December 17, 2013. She was buried the next day, a Wednesday, at the cemetery of the female monastery of the Prothet Moses in Faran according to the wishes of the fathers of the monastery of saint Katherine, even though it was her wish to be buried at her skete. No one who was near and dear to her attended her burial except Euphrosyne , who had served her with great self-denial. A German obstetrician who was known to her changed her garments for the burial, and stayed up all night beforehand to read the psalter over her body, but she had left for Jerusalem before the funeral.
Archbishop Damianos of Sinai and hieromonks Michael and Eugenios did the funeral, with four nuns of the monastery in Faran.
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Miracles of the Archangel Michael the Taxiarch to Mother Stavritsa the Missionary (+2000)
My name is Stavritsa Zachariou, and I am a Greek American. In 1969 I went to Africa as a missionary. I am 75 years old, and 15 years I spent in Africa, near our suffering brothers, sowing the seed of the Gospel. I stay by myself in Nairobi, Kenya, and from there I go to Kampala, Cameroon, and other places, where the seed of the Gospel of Christ needs to be sowed.
I am a missionary of the Archdiocese of America. With the help of God and of benefactors, we built 12 holy Churches in [Africa]. We built the 10th holy church in honor of the Archangel Michael, and I wanted to paint his icon from the prototype from the north gate of the Patriarchate. As I was finishing the icon, when I went to the post office, I received a letter from Fr. Soterios Trampa. I know Archimandrite Fr. Soterios, who was a missionary for many years in Korea, and who also served as a preacher of your Metropolis, along with Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Athens from 1968-1973. In his letter was a small booklet on the Taxiarch of Mantamados. Then I learned about Mantamados, and the bas-relief icon of the Archangel Michael. Fr. Soterios wrote: “I am sending you the information on the Taxiarch of Mantamados, that you might come to know his wondrous icon. Within this you will see one of his many miracles, which occur daily to the glory of God. I served there in the past, and I especially honor him...”
I began to read the booklet on the Taxiarch, including the miracle of the sword. As I continued reading, I reached the place regarding the passing of the sword from some unknown person to Mr. Diamante, when there was as if some marked commotion in the icon [that she had painted]. I turned around to see what was happening then and, O my God!!!! The Archangel of the icon began to come to life, to take on flesh and bones! I was astonished! I knelt before it and began to pray with tears and to ask for his help and his protection. After a short while, slowly the icon began to return to its natural state.
I was supposed to go for a trip to Kampala. I always thought that when I would go on some trip, that I should take with me the icon of some Saint from my icon corner. That time, I took with me the little icon of the Taxiarch of Mantamados.
We reached the border of Kampala and Kenya, and Kampala at that time (1988) had a military regime. When we speak about a military regime in the center of Africa, it means that human life is cheaper than the life of a blackbird!
As we were passing through, my driver (a Kenyan and my Koumbaro) did not notice that at one place there was a stop sign and he kept going. Five wild motorcyclists surrounded us. They got off their motorcycles, drew their weapons, and knelt, preparing to fire at us and to take our car and our possessions as spoil. That is what usually occurred there...
Then, I don't know what strength was within me, but I opened the door of the car..I exited with the icon of the Taxiarch in my hands, and approached them, crying out:
“For God's sake, stop! I have with me the Taxiarch of God, who is dark-colored like you, come see him!!!”
Automatically, it was as if someone grabbed them by the hands. They calmed down, left their weapons in the grass, and ran up to me, took the icon, like something holy and venerable, and began to examine it carefully and to shout. They bowed their faces to the ground and holding my hands, they asked for forgiveness. Then I saw that one of them was injured badly in the hand by a knife. I took my first aid kit from the car, nursed the wound and dressed it. We became friends! The most impressive thing is that, there was sown the word of God, and the five of them received Christ, and became Christians!
After all of this, I promised to the Archangel to come to Greece, to Mantamados, to thank him. And today, I feel very blessed that the Lord made me worthy to fulfill my promise. I thank Him from all my heart!
(Amateur translation of text, from Protopresbyter Eustratios Dessou, “The History and Miracles of the Taxiarch of Mantamados,” Volume II, pg. 158.)
Source:
https://full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com/2014/05/miracles-of-archangel-michael-taxiarch.html
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