The Orthodox Church: An Introduction by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware

The Orthodox Church was founded by our Lord Jesus Christ and is the living manifestation of His presence in the history of the mankind. The most conspicuous characteristics of Orthodoxy are its rich liturgical life and its faithfulness to the apostolic tradition. It is believed by Orthodox Christians that their Church has preserved the tradition and continuity of the ancient Church in its fullness compared to other Christian denominations which have departed from the common tradition of the Church of the first 10 centuries. Today Orthodox Church numbers approximately 300 million Christians who follow the faith and practices that were defined by the first seven ecumenical councils. The word orthodox ("right belief and right glory") has traditionally been used, in the Greek-speaking Christian world, to designate communities, or individuals, who preserved the true faith (as defined by those councils), as opposed to those who were declared heretical. The official designation of the church in its liturgical and canonical texts is "the Orthodox Catholic Church" (gr. catholicos = universal).

The Orthodox Church is a family of "autocephalous" (self governing) churches, with the Ecumenical (= universal) Patriarch of Constantinople holding titular or honorary primacy as primus inter pares (the first among equals). The Orthodox Church is not a centralized organization headed by a pontiff. The unity of the Church is rather manifested in common faith and communion in the sacraments and no one but Christ himself is the real head of the Church. The number of autocephalous churches has varied in history. Today there are many: the Church of Constantinople (Istanbul), the Church of Alexandria (Egypt), the Church of Antioch (with headquarters in Damascus, Syria), and the Churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Cyprus, Greece, Poland, Albania and America

There are also "autonomous" churches (retaining a token canonical dependence upon a mother see) in Czech and Slovak republic, Sinai, Crete, Finland, Japan, China and Ukraine. In addition there is also a large Orthodox Diaspora scattered all over the world and administratively divided among various jurisdictions (dependencies of the above mentioned autocephalous churches). The first nine autocephalous churches are headed by patriarchs, the others by archbishops or metropolitans. These titles are strictly honorary as all bishops are completely equal in the power granted to them by the Holy Spirit.

The order of precedence in which the autocephalous churches are listed does not reflect their actual influence or numerical importance. The Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch, for example, present only shadows of their past glory. Yet there remains a consensus that Constantinople's primacy of honor, recognized by the ancient canons because it was the capital of the ancient Byzantine empire, should remain as a symbol and tool of church unity and cooperation. Modern pan-Orthodox conferences were thus convoked by the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople. Several of the autocephalous churches are de facto national churches, by far the largest being the Russian Church; however, it is not the criterion of nationality but rather the territorial principle that is the norm of organization in the Orthodox Church.

In the wider theological sense "Orthodoxy is not merely a type of purely earthly organization which is headed by patriarchs, bishops and priests who hold the ministry in the Church which officially is called "Orthodox." Orthodoxy is the mystical "Body of Christ," the Head of which is Christ Himself (see Eph. 1:22-23 and Col. 1:18, 24 et seq.), and its composition includes not only priests but all who truly believe in Christ, who have entered in a lawful way through Holy Baptism into the Church He founded, those living upon the earth and those who have died in the Faith and in piety."

The Great Schism between the Eastern and the Western Church (1054) was the culmination of a gradual process of estrangement between the east and west that began in the first centuries of the Christian Era and continued through the Middle Ages. Linguistic and cultural differences, as well as political events, contributed to the estrangement. From the 4th to the 11th century, Constantinople, the center of Eastern Christianity, was also the capital of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire, while Rome, after the barbarian invasions, fell under the influence of the Holy Roman Empire of the West, a political rival. In the West theology remained under the influence of St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) and gradually lost its immediate contact with the rich theological tradition of the Christian East. In the same time the Roman See was almost completely overtaken by Franks. Theological differences could have probably been settled if there were not two different concepts of church authority. The growth of Roman primacy, based on the concept of the apostolic origin of the Church of Rome which claimed not only titular but also jurisdictional authority above other churches, was incompatible with the traditional Orthodox ecclesiology. The Eastern Christians considered all churches as sister churches and understood the primacy of the Roman bishop only as primus inter pares among his brother bishops. For the East, the highest authority in settling doctrinal disputes could by no means be the authority of a single Church or a single bishop but an Ecumenical Council of all sister churches. In the course of time the Church of Rome adopted various wrong teachings which were not based in the Tradition and finally proclaimed the teaching of the Pope's infallibility when teaching ex cathedra. This widened the gap even more between the Christian East and West. The Protestant communities which split from Rome in the course of centuries diverged even more from the teaching of the Holy Fathers and the Holy Ecumenical Councils. Due to these serious dogmatic differences the Orthodox Church is not in communion with the Roman Catholic and Protestant communities. More traditional Orthodox theologians do not recognize the ecclesial and salvific character of these Western churches at all, while the more liberal ones accept that the Holy Spirit acts to a certain degree within these communities although they do not possess the fullness of grace and spiritual gifts like the Orthodox Church. Many serious Orthodox theologians are of the opinion that between Orthodoxy and heterodox confessions, especially in the sphere of spiritual experience, the understanding of God and salvation, there exists an ontological difference which cannot be simply ascribed to cultural and intellectual estrangement of the East and West but is a direct consequence of a gradual abandonment of the sacred tradition by heterodox Christians.

At the time of the Schism of 1054 between Rome and Constantinople, the membership of the Eastern Orthodox Church was spread throughout the Middle East, the Balkans, and Russia, with its center in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which was also called New Rome. The vicissitudes of history have greatly modified the internal structures of the Orthodox Church, but, even today, the bulk of its members live in the same geographic areas. Missionary expansion toward Asia and emigration toward the West, however, have helped to maintain the importance of Orthodoxy worldwide. Today, the Orthodox Church is present almost everywhere in the world and is bearing witness of true, apostolic and patristic tradition to all peoples.

The Orthodox Church is well known for its developed monasticism. The uninterrupted monastic tradition of Orthodox Christianity can be traced from the Egyptian desert monasteries of the 3rd and 4th centuries. Soon monasticism had spread all over the Mediterranean basin and Europe: in Palestine, Syria, Cappadocia, Gaul, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Slavic countries. Monasticism has always been a beacon of Orthodoxy and has made and continues to make a strong and lasting impact on Orthodox spirituality.

The Orthodox Church today is an invaluable treasury of the rich liturgical tradition handed down from the earliest centuries of Christianity. The sense of the sacred, the beauty and grandeur of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy make the presence of heaven on earth live and intensive. Orthodox Church art and music has a very functional role in the liturgical life and helps even the bodily senses to feel the spiritual grandeur of the Lord's mysteries. Orthodox icons are not simply beautiful works of art which have certain aesthetic and didactic functions. They are primarily the means through which we experience the reality of the Heavenly Kingdom on earth. The holy icons enshrine the immeasurable depth of the mystery of Christ's incarnation in defense of which thousands of martyrs sacrificed their lives.

Source: http://www.antiochian.org/node/25438

Safely Home To Heaven

The following letter from an Orthodox nun to a troubled layman is a warm, sane and usable remedy for anyone troubled with doubts about the mercy and compassion of God.

Dear P.,

Christ is Risen!

I was glad you called this weekend and let me know how you are doing. It sounds like you have a pretty good case of Calvinist-Jansenist indigestion [1]: uncomfortable and debilitating, but not inevitably fatal. A lot of western converts to Orthodoxy—Americans, Germans, etc., suffer from this to one degree or another, especially early on in spiritual life. Our gerondissa at St. Paul’s calls it the Medieval Sickness, a combination of moralistic nitpicking, pride, secretiveness,lack of faith in God, and lack of belief in the compassion of God. It makes one pretty joyless, prone to ill-considered and short-lived bursts of ascetic effort (often as not alternating with equally ill-considered and short-lived bursts of carnal distractions of one sort or another), often melancholy, often judgmental. If you know much about the early history of New England colonization, you can see that the Puritans represent the acme of this spiritual type.

Those who have this mindset tend, by nature or training, to see God always as the stern, unappeasable Judge, whose dealings with man are always based on law and justice, and who demands of us an exact fulfillment of rules and rubrics. And we, in fulfilling these, do not really hope for, or believe in, the transfiguration and renewal of our souls and minds. At best, we hope that our scrupulous fulfillment of the Law will induce God to overlook our flaws and sins which we, in our heart of hearts, feel remain always with us, unforgiven, unchanged, and unchangeable. In such an atmosphere, one’s spiritual life is not really a journey into communion with God through repentance and deification, so much as a dreary pendulum of efforts to appease an inscrutable and implacable God, interspersed with the outbreaks of resentment and frustration this causes us. Naturally, as you have observed, this leads either to a mental breakdown, or to the abandonment of participation in church life, which we come to feel is not “working” for us. This is not an Orthodox view of God. And having this false image of God makes having an Orthodox experience of God difficult.

People born in what remains of the Byzantine world don’t suffer from this as readily as we do. (They have other crosses to carry, of course.) And unless they’ve dealt with it in working with westerners, they don’t always find it easy to understand. Greeks, for example, can be rebellious, worldly, egotistical, materialistic, avaricious, cunning hedonists, but they have a basic optimism and confidence in the goodness of God, the beauty of the world, and their own worth as immortal persons, which makes repentance less complicated for them. Even if they have turned away from the Church, in their hearts they still have a fundamental understanding that God is a loving Father, the Theotokos is a longsuffering Mother who will come to their aid if they turn to her, and the world of creation is ultimately a place of meaning and beauty. In a funny way, they enjoy a sinful or worldly life, while they’re living it, more than we do, because they enjoy life more than we do, and they repent in a more child-like way because they can still touch a child’s belief that home—the Church—really is the place where

“when you go there, they have to take you in.”

The dread Pantocrator, gazing down in majestic judgment from high up in the dome of the city cathedral is also Christouli mou, “my little Christ,” who really listens when you run in to your neighborhood church on the way to work to cry and light a candle because your daughter is in trouble at school. The untouchable and all-holy Mother of God is also Panayitsa mou, who really will take your part before the court of heaven because, just like your own mom, she’ll always stick up for her children, no matter how badly they’ve behaved.

Once, a man was being chased by the police for having committed murder. He ran to our monastery, banged on the gates to be let in, and claimed sanctuary there. (Under Greek law, he would be safe as long as he remained inside the walls.) He cried until they let him in, and then demanded to see Fr. R., saying he wanted to go to confession. Fr. R. came down, took him into the catholicon, and closed the doors. Soon the police arrived, having traced him and found his car down the road. They also banged on the gates wanting the man brought out. Fr. R. came out of the church, wearing his epitrachelion, and told the police they needn’t wait. The man was with him, but had business to finish with God first, and when they were through, the man would come down to the police station and turn himself in. The police asked who would stand surety for the man’s appearance. “The Apostle Paul,” Fr. R. said. The police left, and after a while the man came out of the church, peaceful and changed in his countenance. The sisters fed him, and he drove away to turn himself in. He was tried, found guilty, and sentenced.

That is the Christian soul of a man, and a culture, at work. The man knew he was guilty of a crime at law, but he knew also that his heaviest burden was the sin that lay upon his soul. Instead of committing suicide, or taking thirty hostages in a shopping mall, he ran to the church to be washed and clothed and fed, spiritually and physically, before going to make his peace with Caesar. He accepted punishment in this world with a peaceful heart, knowing that he was already freed of punishment in the world to come. In the same way, every man wounded by sin in a fallen world, who runs for salvation to the Church, finds the arms of Christ open to him.

You have seen for yourself that the sort of thinking you mention in your letter is crazy and self-defeating. God does not sit up in the sky, setting us impossible tasks we must perform at any cost, no matter how unsuited they may be to our nature and abilities. He doesn’t begrudge our innocent pleasures, or enjoy our failures or mistakes. Humility is not self-hatred, and self-reproach is not neurotic self-obsession. “If I do something I enjoy doing, then it is definitely not God’s will… If I am asked to do something I have no talent or desire to do, this is God’s will… I must always be suffering.” A classic exposition of the Jansenist manifesto! Fortunately, it has nothing to do with Christ, or with life in Christ. You are on the right track when you suppose the answer lies in looking at Christ, and following His commandments. And those commandments are compassed like this:

“To love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. In this is all the law, and the prophets.”

Trials and sufferings will come upon us, if we are looking to keep this Great Commandment, but they will come unsought. We needn’t invent them for ourselves, by putting gravel in our shoes and ashes on our food, or forcing ourselves to be a bad radio announcer when we could be a good landscape gardener because we think God will finally like us (or at least let us slip past His eye) if we do as many of the things we hate as possible.

Self-accusation is also a big bear-trap for self-hating Puritans like you. I was reading an article by Elder Sophrony of Essex [2] last week. Someone was asking him about the psychological and emotional problems so prevalent in western life, and whether he felt that secular psychiatry offered any help. He said that, with the exception of syndromes directly attributable to malfunctioning brain chemistry, he felt that psychiatrists often do more harm than good by making people focus too much on themselves and too little on God and their neighbor. He said they begin to concentrate too much on the “designated problem,” often not the real problem anyway, and then try to change it by yet more self-analysis and introspection, which only makes us prey to many kinds of illusion. In this interview, done a couple of years before his repose, Fr. Sophrony said he doesn’t advocate too much introspection even for monastics or his other spiritual children.

“You know, we pick and poke away, hunting for every little mistake or thought, and we make ourselves crazy, all for nothing. It becomes an obsession, and really makes a wall between us and God, leaving no room for grace to act. Yes, we must know in general our sins, and that we are sinful and deluded beings, but we must never lose sight of the fact that we come to God in prayer, not to be obsessed with our sins, but to find His mercy. Otherwise the devil takes everything away from us… joy, hope, peace, love… and leaves us nothing but this obsession with our mistakes. That is not repentance. That is neurosis.”

The remedy? I knew a woman once, a spiritual child of Elder Sophrony’s, a middle-aged married woman with several children, who was overtaken suddenly by a painful psycho-spiritual illness: severe depression with suicidal thoughts, which took the form of religious mania. She was obsessed with forebodings of damnation and despair of forgiveness; made long catalogues of her minutest daily thoughts, no matter how fleeting, etc. In desperation, with her marriage almost over, she went to Essex and begged Fr. Sophrony for help. He told her to throw out all of her notebooks of sins, to read the Gospel of St. John every day for a year, to say the Jesus Prayer as much as she could [3], to receive Holy Communion as often as possible, and to come back to Essex for some time every year, to rest and pray there. She did as he said, and made slow progress at first; but after a few years she became free and whole again.

She told me at first that she had to say the Prayer out loud as much as she could, because the minute she stopped, she began falling back into her “old crazy mind” as she called it; but little by little, she began having more time free of her fears. The Gospel of St. John, after many repetitions, forced her to see that God is really a God of love, who cares for her in a personal sense. This was reinforced by her practice of the Prayer and her visits with Fr. Sophrony.

Over the course of time, she proved to have quite a gift of intercessory prayer for others and spent the remainder of her life, as her children were grown, living a quiet life, “only a housewife” to all appearances, but spending much time each day in prayer for others, a form of charity in which she was much aided in the great compassion for the sufferings of others that her own torment had given her.

You asked for suggestions. Naturally, anything I offer is subject to your own confessor’s direction, but the following suggestions come to mind: Your case may not be so extreme… but it can become so. I would suggest you begin making an effort to cut off these darkly accusing thoughts by saying the Prayer when they arise, and also reading the Gospel as much as you can. You might find it helpful to simply prepare your confession from a prayer book for now—using the list of sins in the Erie prayer book* or another, but using this to prepare only on the day you go to confession. Don’t allow yourself to brood over them outside that allotted time of preparation for the Sacrament. For this period, you shouldn’t need more than an hour, at the most, to prepare for confession.

Once you’re done, you’re done. No cheating. After you go to confession, drive away by the Jesus Prayer all thoughts which try to remind you of the sins confessed, or make you think you’re still not “really forgiven”. Don’t be discouraged if they return, and don’t make yourself more upset by castigating yourself over it. Just try, as peacefully as you can, to keep saying the Prayer. You may also find help by saying several knots, or a rope, to the Mother of God. She’s very good at helping us up when we feel lost in the uttermost depths. So, pray simply, and simply pray. Don’t brood over the unchangeable past. Self-accusation time should be limited to once a week, or whenever you prepare for confession, for now.

Don’t worry if you don’t feel joyful on feastdays or other times when you “ought” to feel joyful. Joy is a gift, like life and sunlight and air and flowers and food. It comes and goes, according to its own rhythms and seasons, and its presence doesn’t mean someone’s holy, any more than its absence means someone’s doomed. For beginners in spiritual life, feelings are not as important as acts and habits.

We must build the habits of prayer and life in Christ, and let the feelings follow when (or if) they may. When you pray, don’t get all worked up into a fret by monitoring yourself constantly, trying to measure how many seconds of compunction you achieved or whether you felt 1.5 degrees more repentant than yesterday. Just say the Prayer, and keep your mind on the words of the Prayer. The more we scrutinize ourselves, the less we’re paying attention to God. Might as well chuck the prayer rope and spend an hour looking in the mirror instead. If your mind wanders, don’t make a mental note to accuse yourself of being distracted from 1:06 to 1:09 on Tuesday. Just gently put your thought back on the words of the Prayer, and use the words as an anchor to tug you back to the here-and-now if you drift away. That’s enough.

It may be, as you suspect, that you’ve collected a few mistaken ideas about how to live an Orthodox spiritual life, and that these mistaken ideas have colored some of your experiences and influenced some of your decisions, especially those having to do with monastic life. Well, mistakes are just mistakes: chances to learn better and different ways of being and doing, not indictments of our right to exist or our hope for salvation. Give thanks to the Lord that in His mercy He is opening your eyes to see these things now, and to think and act upon them with His help. It’s spring now in the natural world, and springtime for the soul too. You have a chance to do a little spring cleaning in your natural house, and start off a summer of new growth with cleaner windows on the world and fresher, brighter rooms inside your heart. Do not be tricked into believing the demons who tell you that you are

“committing a blasphemy even at Liturgy, because you do not ever seem to get better.”

It is they who are locked in their hatred of God and man, and who blaspheme, full of rage because they know they will never change, and hatred for us because we can. First of all, it is not our task to judge whether we are ever “getting any better.” That is the Lord’s business, not ours, nor yet the devil’s. Secondly, you are a beloved child of the living God, Who died and rose that you might also die and rise, and live forever in joy with Him. The Lord Who broke the bars of death and harrowed the pit of hell is quite capable of bringing you safe home to Heaven, if you will get out of the way and let Him in. “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Be of good cheer. I wish you well, and hope to hear from you again.

In Christ,

M.

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Endnotes

1. Ed. note:Calvinism (also called the Reformed tradition): A Protestant Reformation theological system that emphasizes the rule of God over all things, but alters the traditional Christian understanding of free will and man’s relationship to his Creator to emphasize doctrines of the total depravity of man and predestination. Protestant theologians following this trend were John Calvin, Bullinger, Zwingli, and many others including the English Thomas Cranmer.

Jansenism: A 16th-18th century Counter-Reformation Catholic movement in northern Europe that echoed Calvin’s teachings in emphasizing original sin, human depravity, and predestination. Originating in the writings of the Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen, it especially found a stronghold amongst French Catholics. Several of the movement’s propositions on the relationship between free will and “efficacious grace” were condemned as heresies by Pope Innocent X in 1653, and the ban on this teaching was reaffirmed by subsequent popes. 2. (Ed. note) Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) (1896-1993): Spiritual son of St. Silouan the Athonite, and compiler of his works, Fr. Sophrony founded the Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Tollshunt Knights, Essex, England in 1959. The community is now under the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

3. (Ed. note) The Jesus Prayer: A traditional prayer often used by Orthodox Christians: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

* (OCIC Ed. note) She is referring to the Old Orthodox (Old Rite) Prayer Book published by the Russian Orthodox Church of the Nativity of Christ in Erie, PA.

Source: http://www.antiochian.org/node/25463

The Optina Martyrs

In the year 1993 the whole Orthodox world was shocked by a tragic event, which had happened in Optina Hermitage: three inhabitants of the monastery were brutely murdered on Easter night. They were hieromonk Vasily (Roslyakov), monk Ferapont (Pushkarev) and monk Trophim (Tatarinov).

The Easter service in Optina began as usual. According to the existing tradition, the religious procession to the skete of St. John the Baptist,which is situated to the east of the Monastery, and back was coming to an end. The festive Easter peal was heard coming from monastery and skete belfries. The number of people was enormous—up to 10 thousand people (as the militia later reported, which were guarding the Monastery during the festive service,). After the Liturgy the monks went to the refectory to break the fast. After completing the meal, two of the bell-ringers, monk Ferapont and monk Trophim, returned to the belfry to continue the Easter peal. By then it was ten past six. Suddenly the bell ringing became uneven and then stopped completely. A terrible crime was committed on the belfry—the monks were villainously killed with stabs from a knife.

Monk Ferapont expired at once. After the stabbing Monk Trophim uttered a loud shriek: “God, have mercy upon us!” and “Help!; having risen a bit, he rang the bell—and fell down.

The murderer ran away to the   skete, where hieromonk Vasily was also going in order to hear confessions. The criminal stabbed him in the back with the same knife.

Then the murderer climbed over the monastery wall and threw away a blood-stained self-made knife. It was double-edged, five centimeters wide, and resembled a sword. It was engraved on its blade with “ 666” and “satan”. The same inscription was found later on a knife in the pocket of a greatcoat that was abandoned by the murderer.

The murderer Nikolay Averin inflicted knife wounds to the back. According to the investigator, the injuries were inflicted with unusual professionalism “and deliberately—they were not too deep—to make the victim bleed to death over a long time”. In fact, hieromonk Vasily suffered for several hours, though monks Trophim and Ferapont died immediately.

Averin killed monks Ferapont and Trophim while they were announcing to the world on the belfry the Resurrection of Christ. And hieromonk Vasily was killed when he was going to the skete to hear confessions. Having committed the murder, Averin slipped the edge of the monks’ robes to their heads and pulled their klobuks over their faces.

It seemed that there was still life in monk Trophim. He was brought to Vvedensky Cathedral, but a few minutes later he passed away.

In spite of a terrible wound, Hieromonk Vasily lived longer than the others. He looked at the people surrounding him and even tried to rise. He was also brought to the Cathedral and was put next to the relics of St. Elder Ambrose, and then he was taken by ambulance to the local hospital in Kozelsk. There he soon passed away.

It was also surprising that the monks began to give away their possessions before their murder, including their personal tools, saying they would not need them any more (which was all the more unusual at the time when there was such a lack of tools in the monastery that one had to bring them from home or get them somehow through friends, otherwise one could not do his work). Everyone in Optina monastery was surprised by this occurance, but after the murder it became clear: the monks had foreseen the glory of martyrdom prepared for them.

To understand why the monks were ready to die, it is necessary to know what kind of life they lived.

For more than ten years people in Optina monastery have been collecting information about monks Trofim, Ferapont and Vasily.

A Joyful Ascetic

Monk Trophim

Leonid Tatarnikov, the future monk Trofim, was born in the village of Dagon , Irkutsk region, on the 4th of February, 1957. When he was a baby he cried day and night incessantly for almost two years, so that some people thought he was unlikely to survive. But he became quiet as soon as he was baptised, and since then became a smiling healthy boy.

Leonid grew into a tall beautiful young man, and girls liked him. Besides being handsome, he was erudite (he would read all night long, and was even nicknamed Bookworm), hard-working and never touched alcohol. Girls tried hard to marry him, some even turned to magic. One of them actually told him, "either you will be mine, or no one's!" But Leonid stayed calm and had but one word to address a girl: "sister". He was a born monk, but he understood it much later.

Having finished secondary school, Leonid studied in a railway services college. After completing his service in the army he worked as a sailor on a trawler.

When Leonid was getting a foreign passport, for some reason he changed his name and became Alexey. Alexey tried quite a number of occupations: photography, horse-breeding for a local horse farm, and shoe-making (the shoes he made were such that everyone in the town queued to get a pair). He was a member of various hobby groups, such as a yacht-club, wrestling and karate societies, as well as classical and folk dance schools. He was very flexible. At thirty years of age he could still do the splits without straining. Together with his sister Natasha, Alexei studied in a classical dance school and won prizes in competitions. Once he was even offered to enter into a contract and become a professional dancer, but he refused.

Monks Ferapont and Trophim

The future monk was looking for the meaning of life and still could not understand what was lacking. He took up "well-being" and even gave up eating meat. In his room there hung a time-table according to which Alexei went without food for ten days twice a month in the vain hope to give up smoking (he took to smoking at a very early age). Then he began to go to church, and the priest told him he had to choose between God and nicotine.   Alexei finally rid himself of his long-term habit.

How on earth could this cruel man of an unknown build overpower three monks?! And what monks! Monk Trophim could tie a poker into a knot (there was an episode when some drivers tried to straighten out a dent in a truck wing with a sledge-hummer, and all their attempts fell flat untill Trophim did it with bare hands). Two-meter-high hieromonk Vasily in his previous life was known to be one of the best water-polo players in the country. He used to be a member of a combined team of the USSR . His reaction time was stunning and he was famous for an amazing mighty throw. Even while dying he was able to deliver a shattering blow. Monk Ferapont was very good at martial art (aikido, karate).

The committee of inquiry affirms that the whole point is the stabs were delivered to the back. But the belfry where monks Trophim and Ferapont were killed is rather small, and a stranger can’t get there unnoticed. However, it’s clear to an orthodox person even without any investigation that the monks could not requite violence using the same violence. It was their last temptation. A real monk mustn’t bloody his hands.

Evidently, by then monks Trophim, Vasily and Ferapont were ready for death. According to the witness’ recollections, the martyrs had foreseen their death. Monk Trophim had often spoken that he had little time left – half a year, a year. While Ferapont, once a silent monk, began asking everybody to pray for him.

On Pentecost day, 1990, Alexei had a vision. He immediately decided to become a monk and bought a ticket to Optina monastery. But when he was ready to leave, his passport, money and ticket were stolen, and he made it to Optina in only a month and a half. His spiritual search lasted a long time untill at the age of thirty-six he stayed in Optina monastery and took monastic vows, becoming monk Trofim.

Having settled in the monastery, he found this holy place rather neglected. The locals, who after World War II built a village on the monastery territories, cursed this land which bore nothing, although it had been very fertile before. Tomatoes use to grow there in such quantities that they were given for free to anyone who asked for them. Now the land bears fruit again. The monks have managed to cultivate this poor soil, and the hard-working monk Trofim took part in that, too.

The local farmers say that wherever monk Trofim planted potatoes for old people, there were no Colorado beetles, while there were plenty of them in the neighbouring gardens. Some people even came to the monastery to ask what kind of prayer the monk was saying. By now some farmers take a pinch of earth from his tomb and, having dissolved it in water, use it to sprinkle their gardens.

Trofim valued time, and he had time for everything. His main duties were those of senior bell-ringer, sexton and tractor operator. Besides that, he worked as a receptionist, candle-seller, house-painter, baker; he worked in the bookmaker's shop, in the warehouse, in the forge. People surrounging him had a feeling that he could do everything. Only after the murder did they learn that monk Trofim had never before been a forger, a tractor operator, a baker, a bookmaker, and had never learnt how to ring the bells. God made him able to do all that for his prayers.

When they decided to bake their own bread in the Optina monastery (in the beginning of the nineties bread supplies in Russia were limited), the task was appointed to monk Trofim. Nobody knew how to bake bread in the monastery. The monk had to run around to find a receipt. But as a result his loafs were spongy, light and tasty. His bread was called "healing" in the neighborhood. When leaving the monastery, one businessman even asked to have the special receipt of monastery bread. The man explained that his sick stomach did not digest bread at all, excluding the monastery "healing" bread. They gave him the receipt but he did not know the most important thing: how thoroughly monk Trofim prayed on each baking and how many bows he made in front of Icon of the Mother of God "The Grower of Crops" ["Sporitelnitsa hlebov"].

Trofim was a real monk—secret, focused inward, and there was no external, ostentatious devotion in him. There were no bad people in the world in his opinion, and anyone at any time of day and night could ask him for help and would receive it. It was to monk Trofim that everybody went asking for repairs for a watch, photo camera or even boots.

He prayed a lot but slept little, and he ate very modestly, limiting himself even in water. But in spite of those restrictions he was never sick and never seemed to be tired. And everybody in Optina got used to his perseverance. It was difficult to imagine this strong monk, always happy and lively, to be an ascetic one and to have a custom to eat nothing during the first and the last week of the Great Fast.

However during the last (for Trofim) Fast one could notice signs of fatigue in him. It was getting clear for Optina's inhabitants that the monk was on the verge of exhaustion. As a rule, at five in the morning, when all the monks were going to the midnight service, it was hard to recognize faces in the darkness. But one could always recognize monk Trofim even from a long distance because of his flying long gait. He was hurrying to church overtaking many others on his way. But during his final days it became hard to recognize him. Sasha the Prosphora-maker remembered an incident, when he was slowly going to midnight service and had overtaken somebody in the darkness. Turning around to see who it was, he could not believe his eyes that it was Trofim. Sasha noticed that Trofim was going so slowly and with such effort as if he was carrying an unbearable burden.

The mother of monk Trofim did not manage to be in time for her son's burial. When the news of his death had come, she was being treated in a hospital after a stroke. The doctors prohibited her from flying by airplane, so she had to travel by train from Siberia . She came to the monastery and spent some time there. She even wanted to stay there for good but they blessed her to go back home and to turn to God her other children. Thus through the death of a beloved brother and because of a mother's efforts, her children had come to God. Once Lena , a younger sister of the monk, saw Trofim in a dream. He looked so worn out in that dream and had such a sorrow in his eyes that the girl shivered hearing his voice as for real: "I'm so tired. I have worked my tail off praying for you all but you are still not going to church." And at one time 14 of Trofim's relatives had been baptized together.

He lived without touching the earth.

Monk Ferapont

The future monk Ferapont was born into the world Vladimir Pushkarev on the feast of the icon of the Mother of God “The Unburned Bush”, 1955. He was born in a remote desolate town of the Taiga, where lumber cutting paid only pennies, and many suffered poverty or drank. All of the workers were unbaptised since the nearest church could only be reached by plane, and no one had the money for that.

Everything in Vladimir ’s life was normal. He attended school, then the army (compulsory, and then additional voluntary service), where he learned the Eastern art of warfare, which he later discovered was mixed with occultism. Having finished the army, he studied agriculture. After that he worked as a technical-forester in a lumber range in Baikal. He never drank, never smoked, and everyone respected him. But his life in the world was made difficult because certain people considered him a sorcerer.

It is well known that Vladimir ’s conversion occurred during his time working as a lumber jack. They say that once and old man appeared to Vladimir in the Taiga, who gave him a book about magic and arranged another meeting on the same spot in a year. Vladimir did not like the sorcerers and they did not appear for their second meeting. But he performed magical tricks for fun for the local girls. He would send them into some local brush and told them to write a note, which he would then read from a distance. He was mystically gifted by nature. His games almost ended in tragedy. According to the words of his own friend, Vladimir lived through his own death. His soul separated from his body and he traveled to a kingdom of terror. He died. But an angel appeared to him and said that he would send Vladimir back earth only if he agreed after that to go to church.

After all that Vladimir soon left the forest farm, where a church wasn’t even hundreds of kilometers distant, and moved to the Rostov–on Don. There, he started working as a yard–keeper in the Cathedral of the Nativity of Virgin. It was soon noticed that he was an exceptional faster: during Lent he would take several prosphora, crackers and a bottle of holy water. After the service he would only eat this in the Church behind a column.

The future monk lived in Rostov–on–Don for three years, and on holidays he would travel around the monasteries in search of one to stay in. At that time his decision to become a monk had already been made and he had received the blessing of the elder Kirill (Pavlov) of the Trinity–Sergius Lavra. Vladimir later went to Vladika Vladimir, the present-day metropolitan of Kiev and all Ukraine , and told him, “Vladyko, I can even clean the toilets, if only you give me a recommendation to the monastery!”. And it turned out exactly that the cathedral needed a person to clean the toilets. The future monk did that for around a year, when he received a recommendation and left the city.

He came to the Optina Hermitage from Kaluga (quite a long distance) on foot and took the veil with the name Ferapont.

Once he had the duty to keep watch at the Holy Gate of the monastery so that no inappropriately dressed woman would enter it. He had to give them scarfs and work gowns. It turned out that he did not notice the women and even didn’t realize how they were dressed. The warden was constantly criticizing and blaming him, “can’t you see that! You must carefully watch how they all are dressed!” But the monk was only repeating with repentance, “forgive me, father, I haven’t reached that perfection as to be able to look at the women! I am guilty!” Soon this duty was taken from him. 

As far as the other kinds of work are concerned, many have admired his talent: a talent to study something new. He was doing everything very carefully. In the monastery he became an excellent woodcarver. Half of the Optina bretheren are wearing his paraman crosses.

Artist Sergey Lavrov called Ferapont “Titian” for his shaped cheekbones, bright-blue eyes and "golden curls on the shoulders ". Lavrov recollected the day when Ferapont showed him his first work, a carved paraman cross. The impression it produced was very strong. Today there are, of course, elegant crosses decorated with many details. Each curl is trimmed so gracefully, that it is possible to admire it, as an independent picture. But the details hide the main subject, and the skill of the artist and his pride come to the fore. In Ferapont’s work there was modesty, severity and laconicalness—the eye at once seized the figure of the Savior.

In Optina Ferapont is described as a person who lived without touching the earth. Imperceptible, silent, he was praying day and night. He had a very strong prayer indeed!

Once a person came up to church’s warden saying that he had come to the monastery by accident, doubting the existence of the God, and at last he believed. " I saw here how one monk was praying,” he said, “I saw the face of an angel talking with Lord. Do you know that there are angels among you? " " What angels? " said the warden in surprise. The visitor then pointed to Ferapont, who was coming out of the Church at that moment.

The monks also tell that, when monk Ferapont completed the monastic prayers with a “five hundred” (500 repetitions of the Jesus prayer), not an obligatory one for an inok, he then would still pray for a long time at night. One of his fellow brothers had decided to count how many bows he made during one night. The cell was divided by a curtain, and monk Ferapont was praying in the corner, having thrown a sheepskin coat on a floor in front of the analoy. His cellmate was counting and counting the bows, and while counting has fallen asleep.

The hierodeacon who lived with Ferapont in the cell related that before the death of Ferapont, he did not sleep at all, praying all the night and found rest while bending over a chair. Moreover during all of Passion Week he did not eat a bite.

After he was murdered a letter was found in his pocket. It said that "if help is needed, I shall be glad to give a hand". It is not known yet to whom this letter was addressed.

But many believers are sure—the addressee are all those who pray for the martyr Ferapont of Optina.

Translation:  A.Ljubimova, A.Martchuk, N.Volkova, L.Zholudeva, edited by fr. Savvatij (Lewis)

Source: 

http://www.pravmir.com/article_127.html

Christ is Risen! - by St Nicolai Velimirovich

Christ is Risen! - it means that, truely, there is God.
Christ is Risen! - it means that, truely, there is a heavenly world, the true world and a death-less world.
Christ is Risen! - it means that, truely, life is stronger than death.
Christ is Risen! - it means that, truely, the evil is weaker than the good.
Christ is Risen! - it means that, truely, all the good hopes of humanity have been fulfilled.
Christ is Risen! - it means that all the problems of life have been fully undone.

Life's problems have been undone, greatest and most excruciating mysteries have been revealed, the chains of darkness and sadness have been broken, because Christ is Risen!