International Orthodox Christian Articles

Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
(Orthodox Church in America)

(Discussions for Young Adults)
OUTLINE

ONE: LOVE WITHOUT COMMITMENT IS A LIE

TWO: THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE

THREE: LOVE: AN EVER EXPANDING CIRCLE

FOUR: STRESS POINTS IN MARRIAGE
ONE
LOVE WITHOUT COMMITMENT
IS A LIE

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and do not have love, I am as the sound of brass and a noisy cymbal...Love is longsuffering and kind; love does not envy; love does not boast of itself nor is it puffed up. Love does not behave itself in an unseemly manner, nor seek to have its own way; it is not easily provoked and does not think evil. Love does not rejoice in iniquity, but in truth; it bears all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never fails... When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became an adult, I put away childish things ...Now, there abides faith, hope and love: but the greatest of these is love" (1Cor.13).

Of all the faculties, senses, capabilities, attributes and virtues of the human race, it is committed love that bestows upon us our humanity and relates us to the Divine. Love is the dynamic force which gives meaning to our lives in this world, and hope for eternity. While the nature of genuine love may seem elusive and indefinable, it is clearly a force which takes us outside ourselves and unites and bonds us to a greater reality in a positive and creative manner.
It is a tragedy that the word "love" is so often used as a metaphor for "gratification," "self-fulfilment," or for using another person to fulfil our sexual passions.
In fact, love gives meaning and purpose to life by spiritually bonding us together with another person (as in marriage), with other people (as in a parish or other extended family), and with God, in a way that gives depth, meaning, permanence, commitment and a positive, creative dimension, to all that we share in life and, indeed, to life itself. Love, for an Orthodox Christian, is above all the dynamic force of salvation, of ascension toward God. Marriage is, first and foremost, a path of salvation.
There is no such thing as love without a firm commitment. Not realizing the full meaning and implications of love is one of the main reasons young people engage in pre-marital sexual relations, and also the single most important reason that so many marriages fail.
The commitment of love is expressed in the sincere desire, arising from the depths of heart and soul, to forsake every consideration of self, and subject every other attachment for the sake of the one we love. In true love, ambition for self glory and advancement is transformed into a desire to please and care for the one we love. Individual interests are replaced by mutual interests, "my" life is dissolved into "our" life. We commit ourselves to a spiritual bond which is a type and likeness of Christ and the Church, a likeness of self-sacrifice which brings with it the joy of hope and expectation, and of salvation and everlasting life. Marriage is a type and likeness of redemption itself.
Many times, people think that they "fall in love", but this is almost never true. A couple may like each other very much — even intensely __ and feel a strong sexual attraction to each other, and these powerful feelings are interpreted as a strong love. Unfortunately for the girl or woman in such a situation, if they fall into pre-marital sexual relations, they will find that the man's "love" was often no more than his drive for conquest, and that there was no bases for a genuine commitment.
It is, therefore, important that children and young people always be taught the absolute bond between love and complete commitment. Love is a "growth situation." No one actually "falls in love." People may like each other deeply and be strongly attached to each other, but love comes only from a long-term experience. Commitment to one another is the prime expression of love and it gives strength to a relationship so that it can have time to grow and develop into a full and complete love. Without a fulfilled commitment, sexual relations are merely using another person for the most selfish of reasons.
Love pertains not only to the things we find positive and attractive in a person, but also to the negative aspects of their personality and the things we discover about them over the years that we find unattractive. This is why actual love is not instantaneous. It is a process of growth and maturity.
None of us are "complete packages." We are all constantly changing, hopefully growing and developing. No two people grow and develop at the same rate and to the same degree. Unfortunately, some of us actually stop growing mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and begin to stagnate and then degenerate. Very often the elusive, almost undefinable gradual breakdown in a marriage is precisely this difference in the growth and development of the partners. It does not matter whether both partners are working outside the home or the wife is working in the home, one of the two will almost certainly mature more quickly and more completely, and the spiritual, emotional and intellectual growth rate may very easily be different. This difference in development can cause the subtle arising of a gulf or division between a couple, and often, neither party realizes the source of the gradual feeling of "drifting apart." If they do realize it, it can be difficult to discuss in a positive manner. Men often feel threatened by a wife's growth and women who work in the home often feel oppressed and "cheated" of the opportunity to grow.
Actually, in a relationship with true love and commitment, a couple should grow and develop not merely with each other, but because of each other. It is important to realize the possibility of this problem arising and discuss it at the very beginning of a marriage. Indeed, it should be an integral part of the pre-marital counselling. Personal and individual growth, maturing and development is something that should be planned for and, from the very beginning of an Orthodox marriage, it should be resolved that this process is going to be founded on genuine spiritual growth. It should be clearly understood that mutual spiritual growth and development is a fundamental reason for an Orthodox marriage in the first place. If this is clearly established, and the possibility of differing rates of intellectual and emotional maturing is understood from the beginning, it will be infinitely easier to cope with such a problem if it should arise. Any family, whether it consists only of husband and wife or includes a number of children, must constantly struggle to grow, develop and mature spiritually, emotionally and intellectually together, as a unit. This is difficult to accomplish and, from an Orthodox perspective, it requires much prayer and a clearly Christ-centred family life.
It is evident that this growth and development is something which must be carefully planned for in pre-marriage discussions and during the early years of a marriage. From an Orthodox Christian perspective, it is an essential part of the reason for a couple to want to marry each other and it is a fundamental aspect of the very nature of marriage.
If there is a firm commitment to each other between two people, then there can be a mutual growth and development in love, no matter what other divergent directions the two people's development may take. Their common ground for growth and development, indeed, the pivot point of their lives, should be their spiritual advancement. With this shared in common, their commitment will be firm and certain and their growth in love will be permanent and continuous. If the common ground of Orthodox Christian spiritual growth and development is established and accepted as the basis of a couple's life, then divergent paths of growth in other areas will not create difficulties in a marriage. The commitment of love requires that we keep our priorities clear.
Man was not created to exist in egoistic isolation, and man and woman are not two totally separate beings, for neither can, on their own, fulfil God's command to be fruitful and multiply. Rather, they are two halves of one whole, called upon to dwell together in a sanctified unity, drawing together in an increasing love, so that in such a state of oneness, they may rise from carnal to spiritual love and so aspire toward the Creator, having discovered through their own ascent in love the hint of that higher and more perfect love which seeks freedom from the bonds of fleshly passions.
Marriage provides us with an opportunity and a means to grow and develop in the spiritual and emotional realm, but this growth and development can only take place on a firm foundation of genuine commitment to each other, and a mutual, sincere commitment to God. The bond of unity and ever-growing love between husband and wife is designed to give humanity a basic experience and awareness of a growth in love toward unity with God, made possible by Jesus Christ. Marriage, according to the Apostle, is a type of Christ and the Church. It is intended to instruct us, not by means of abstract concepts or in books or words, but in an actual living experience, about Christ and the Church, and our whole relationship with God.
Love is intended to be, first and foremost, a path of salvation, a path of ascension toward God. The commitment of love is an important aspect of this, for it defeats our ego and self-love, which are hindrances to our salvation and our relationship with God.
Marriage is not a legal or magical ritual for "making sexual relations moral." It is perfectly possible for sexual relations within a marriage to be immoral. If one party has entered into the marriage under false pretences and is living in it without genuine love then, for that person the relationship is not moral, but merely a matter of utility or self-gratification. Love itself is the factor which makes the union moral. It is wrong to consider that the crowning ceremony is a magical means of changing something immoral into something moral. For, though a marriage is sanctified by the Church, it is the condition and transformation of the heart which perfects and transfigures and saves.
All these things should be discussed in detail, and prayerfully, not only with a couple who have decided to be married, but with teenagers, and in a more simple form this should be gently woven into the children's church-school classes. The depth of commitment in marriage must be stressed, and the priest should make it clear that the commitment in marriage is not only a commitment of two people to each other, but a commitment to God which involves the salvation of the soul. Marriage is, above all, a union of two people for the sake of mutually working out the salvation of their souls. Marriage is a means of ascent toward the heavenly kingdom.

TWO
THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE

1

"Shall I tell you how marriage is also a mystery of the Church? Christ came into the Church, and She was made of Him and He united with Her in spiritual intercourse...So marriage is a type of the presence of Christ." (St John Chrysostom, Homily on Ephesians).

In the beginning, God created man and woman and called on them to unite as one, to live in unity and harmony, putting every other relationship aside. They were to be so spiritually united that they would be "as one flesh." (Gn.2: 24) In paradise this unity was real. After the fall, however, divisions of all kinds took place in our human nature and the bond between husband and wife was corrupted. Because of this corruption, divorce was permitted (Nm.30:10-14) because mankind's heart had become hardened (Mt.19:7-8). There was a certain amount of protection for a woman, particularly with relation to her dowry but, apart from some social restrictions, divorce was simply a matter of the man telling the woman that the marriage was over. Marriage had lost its divine purpose and become only an agreement to live together, to "co-habit." Technically, it was reduced to a social and sexual function.
With the coming of Christ, something dramatic took place which changed the way marriage is understood. Christ not only restored the original meaning of marriage, but gave it the fulness of its meaning. Christ not only restored, in Himself, the original condition of man, but in His humanity the destiny which Adam failed to attain is completed. As the "new Adam," He restores all things to their original intent and purpose. God's plan for mankind is re-born in Christ. The blessed condition of humanity in paradise was lost. Christ has reopened the gates of paradise and, in the Holy Church, planted anew the garden of Grace.
The Kingdom of God has now been manifested on earth, and henceforth everything that takes place in the Christian life must be viewed in the context of the Heavenly Kingdom. Perhaps mankind has not yet returned to Eden, but paradise, in a spiritual form, has returned to mankind, and all who believe and accept the Kingdom must strive to draw away from the standards and concepts of the fallen world and come into accord with the standards and concepts of the Kingdom of God. Spiritually, with the help of Christ and the Holy Spirit, man must rebuild paradise in his heart, or rather struggle to allow the Holy Spirit to manifest it there. For the Kingdom must live within us now if we hope to abide in it for eternity.
Thus, for the Orthodox Christian, every step, every aspect of life is a Holy Mystery __ a mystery of the Kingdom, and thus a part of the Mystery of Redemption. In the manifestation of the Heavenly Kingdom by Jesus Christ, marriage returns to its original intent, to the purpose for which it was created in paradise. It is once more a revelation of redemption, a type and likeness of Christ and the Church.
The being of mankind itself reveals the Church and its relationship to Christ our God __ obscured though that revelation may have become. For the human race, working together with Satan, has enslaved itself with senseless passions and negative stereotypes. Western man has excelled in this, to such a degree that the true basis and purpose of human sexuality as a revelation has become completely obscured.
By sexuality we do not mean "making love" (sex). Sexuality is the whole fabric of an individual's being as either male or female. When human sexuality becomes imprisoned in stereotypes and moralistic bonds, then it is held back from rising to its true purpose and that purpose itself is obscured in blind negatives. Human sexuality is at once deep and powerful, and yet as fine and delicate and beautiful as a fragile spring blossom. It is fascinatingly simple and pure, while at the same time, one of the most complex, baffling and vulnerable aspects of our inter-human relations. These contradictory qualities are the conflict between the passions of the fallen nature, and the purpose of the creation of human sexuality.
Man was created for communion with God. He can find his complete fulfilment only in a life of communion, praise and giving glory to the Creator, living in a unison of love with God, by love drawing nearer to Him, toward sharing in His immortality, in His Deity. We know that man was not created for death, that it was not God's intention for him to die, but rather to live through unity with the Creator. Yet God, Who knows all things from eternity unto eternity, foreknew humanity's fall from this state of unity and thus, the advent of death. On account of this, He created Eve and provided every creature and living thing with a means of procreation. Man and woman were created in such a way that even in the fallen state they would have a means of a certain fulfilment in a type and revelation about Christ and the Church. The Apostle Paul, speaking to the Ephesians about the Mystery of marriage (which is also, in fact, the mystery of human sexuality), says: "This mystery is great, for I speak of Christ and the Church," and St John Chrysostom tells us:
"Shall I tell you how marriage is also a mystery of the Church? Christ came into the Church, and She was made of Him and He united with Her in spiritual intercourse... So marriage is a type of the presence of Christ."
Humans were not created to exist in egoistic isolation, but to dwell together in a sanctified unity, drawing together in an increasing love so that in such a state of oneness, they may rise in spiritual love and so aspire toward the Creator, having discovered through their own ascent in love the hint of that higher and more perfect love which seeks freedom from the bonds of fleshly passions. The bond of unity and growing love between husband and wife is designed to give man the first basic experience and awareness of his growth in love, toward unity with God, made possible by Christ Jesus.
Human sexuality is intended to reflect and thus to instruct us, not in totally abstract concepts or in books or words, but in actual living experience, concerning Christ and the Church and our whole relationship with God. In this revelation, the husband typifies Christ and the wife typifies the Church.

2

Marriage is a very great mystery of divine Grace. As a type of Christ and the Holy Church, Orthodox matrimony is also a profound revelation about the nature of our redemption. It reveals to us the fallen nature and teaches what Christ has done to redeem human nature through His Holy Church. Since the mystery of redemption has nothing to do with fulfilling or satisfying justice or with purging some imaginary "Original Sin," but rather with the rescue and healing of the human nature, enslaved by sin and the bondage of death, marriage is an ideal reflection of our redemption.
Christ came to earth to redeem human nature from the bondage of the Evil One and to regenerate us through the mystery of co-suffering love, a love so great, so totally unselfish, that the Immortal One Himself laid down His life for our sake. As Apostle Paul says: "Christ loved the Church and gave His life for Her" (Eph.5:25).
The creation of man and woman as opposites, as two separate parts of one whole, was a provision God made, foreknowing man's fall. As such, it is a revelation about the separateness or division in the fallen human nature caused by sin, as St Basil the Great says:
"For there would be no divisions, no strife, no war among men, if sin had not made cleavages in human nature....And this is foremost in the Saviour's incarnate ekonomy: to gather human nature to itself and to Himself and, having abolished this evil cleavage, to restore the original unity, as the best physician binds up a body that has been broken in many pieces...."
Thus, marriage is a sanctified union of two people with different aspects of the human nature. This union joins the struggle of two individuals into a stronger, mutual effort for salvation. By growing in co-suffering, unselfish love for each other and their family, they conquer the fragmentation of human nature into isolated and self-centred individualism. This is stated clearly in the Prayer of Betrothal:
"O Lord, eternal God, Who has brought into unity and oneness the things which before had been separate, Who blessed Isaak and Rebekah declaring them to be inheritors of Thy promise, bless these Thy servants ...."
These same ideas are evident in the prayers throughout the service of the Holy Mystery of Matrimony, particularly in the most notable part of the service, the crowning. Traditionally, the bride and groom are crowned three times with "stefana," wreaths of laurel and blossoms which, from ancient times, has symbolized victory. At the time of the crowning ceremony, the husband and wife are led three times around the analogion with the Gospel on it. As they process, three hymns are chanted which explain both the three-fold crowning and the profound meaning of marriage:
"Rejoice, O Isaiah! For a virgin was truly with child and bore a Son, Emmanuel, Who is both God and Man: Dayspring is His name, and magnifying Him, we call the Virgin blessed."
The bride and groom are crowned with a crown of rejoicing. For Christ, as the Prophet foretold, has come into the world to reunite and redeem human nature, uniting it to Himself and regenerating it in His Holy Church. They are crowned with joy as types of Christ and His Holy Church, symbolizing and typifying that very redemption itself, as they are united into one flesh by the Holy Spirit.
For the second crowning, as the couple processes around the analogion, the people chant:
"O holy martyrs who have fought the good fight and have received your crowns: entreat the Lord to have mercy on our souls."
The couple is crowned also with the martyr's crown. As Christ loved His Church and died for Her (Eph.5:25), so also now the husband and wife are called upon to sacrifice their ego and self-love, to cease being "I" and become "we." They will sacrifice themselves for each other and, later, for their children, willingly "martyring" themselves, overcoming their own individual ego and will for the sake of one another, out of love of each other. By this very act, they experience and grow in co-suffering love in imitation of Christ. In this, the human nature is healed and redeemed, if they will "run with patience the race which is set before them" (Hb. 12:1).
The third crowning, and circuit of the analogion and Gospel, is signified by the hymn:
"Glory to Thee, O Christ God, Boast of the apostles and Joy of martyrs who proclaimed the Consubstantial Trinity."
The victory crown of salvation is bestowed upon the couple, for marriage is a union of two people into one flesh so that they can mutually work out their salvation by means of love, hope, joy, self-sacrificing and spiritual struggle. They have become both martyrs and apostles of Christ, striving to live His Gospel and teach it to their children, shepherding their families as the apostles and bishops shepherd the Church. Moreover, bride and groom have become something of a type of oneness of love of the Holy Trinity, since "the two shall be one flesh" (Gn.2:24; Mt.19:5), "so that they are no longer two, but one flesh" (Mt.19:6).
The original form of the Orthodox Christian marriage service was simple, direct and clear. The couple attended the Divine Liturgy and received Holy Communion together. They were then blessed by the bishop with a short prayer in which he asked God to unite the couple. The actual moment of the completion of the marriage was (and is) the joint reception of Holy Communion. This is straightforward and perfectly logical, since marriage is a type and likeness of Christ and the Church. The Liturgy is the divine wedding feast of Christ and the Church, and Holy Communion is that moment in which the faithful __ the Church __ are supremely united to Christ. Holy Communion is a central point in our redemption. Marriage, as a direct type of the unity of Christ and the Church, is thus an event in the realm of redemption.
For Orthodox Christians, marriage is not simply a mutual agreement to live together in love and raise children in a legally sanctioned bond. It is a form of ministry, sealed by the Holy Spirit, in which the couple become living types of Christ and the Church, fulfilling the ministry of salvation toward each other, toward their children and toward the whole Orthodox community.

3

"How shall we describe the joy of a marriage which is prepared and arranged by the Church. It is given strength by the Eucharist, and the seal of blessing is set upon it; angels are present as witnesses and the Father bestows His consent upon it." (Tertullian)

When a couple have had their marriage crowned by the Church, their union is one specially sanctified "both on earth and in heaven" (Mt.16:19), and their marriage is not theirs alone, but is a matter of the whole Church, the whole body of Christ. This is why there is no possibility of a "private marriage," which excludes any of the faithful from attendance. Marriage is a liturgical service which takes place in the presence of the whole "people of God." For the Orthodox Christian, the faithful __ the people of God __ are his or her immediate family, for they have a common father __ God __ and a common mother __ the Church. A private, "by invitation only" wedding is not Orthodox, and is contrary to the very essence of Orthodox marriage. A priest has no reason to serve such a marriage, and if a couple seek to insist on such an arrangement, he should refuse on the grounds that they are not seeking to enter into an Orthodox Christian marriage. The Holy Mysteries are not a matter of the priest making magical pronouncements over people. The Mysteries are "liturgical," and this means "a gathering of the faithful," not "a ritual." An Orthodox wedding is a matter of the whole congregation (coming together) of the faithful in which the priest, as the ordained representative of the congregation, presides. The prayers are the prayers of the whole congregation, the "people of God," being led by their ordained presbyter. A wedding served only by the priest without the coming together of the congregation to jointly bestow the prayers and benedictions of the Church, is not proper and not Orthodox. A priest has no right to serve any Holy Mystery or Liturgical service of the Church at which a portion of the faithful are excluded.
What we have said here should also make it clear that Sunday is the proper day for marriage, that the couple should have their marriage crowned at the Liturgy and, if they are both Orthodox, receive Communion together. It is quite perverse to marry a couple on Saturday, without the Divine Liturgy and Communion. This not only leaves the marriage un-sealed by the mutual reception of Holy Communion, but also puts them in the position of spending their first night together instead of preparing for Communion on the eve of the Lord's Day Liturgy, thus from the beginning, violating the essential meaning of marriage.
Marriage, as with all Holy Mysteries and liturgical services, is a matter of the coming together (synaxis) of the people of God—the congregation for mutual prayers and intercession. Marriage especially, should be served in conjunction with the Liturgy and the receiving of the Eucharist. The practice of replacing Holy Communion with the "common cup" can only indicate that one of the couple is not Orthodox and therefore cannot receive Communion. This is a subject for another discussion.

THREE
LOVE: AN EVER EXPANDING CIRCLE

Marriage unites two people in a growing bond of love and makes them "one." But marriage involves more than the two people being united. The relationship between each individual and their family and friends is going to change __ sometimes dramatically. In some instances, old friendships will slowly disappear. Family relationships will not disappear, however, and each partner in a marriage will acquire a new or "extended family."
From an Orthodox point of view, parents and family are very important. An Orthodox couple who are planning to marry should work out their relationship with each other's parents and family before their marriage takes place. Much pain and difficulty can be avoided if there is a loving, harmonious relationship among the extended family, on both sides. The basis for this love and harmony is the love between husband and wife. A person is expected to "leave mother and father and cling" to one another. In reality, however, when a couple marry, each of them usually marries into a new family of in-laws. The manner in which each spouse relates to the new "expanded family" can have a dramatic effect on the condition of the marriage. It should not always be this way, but it usually is, and this should be taken into account in the early stages of planning for a marriage. There are two special reasons for this in modern society.
First of all, we do not have the cultural and social support which existed in previous times, and which controlled and helped shape our clan and tribal relationships. The old, clear and inviolable standards of relationships __ even the beautiful and enduring Serbian "Kumstvo" __ have all but vanished in the modern hi-tech and highly mobile society.
The second problem is complex; we find that marriages in which a young couple live at home and go directly from their family setting into marriage, are especially vulnerable. This was not the case when the former cultural and social frameworks were strong, but it is now. We now find that when two people have lived on their own for a while and "discovered themselves" before they enter into marriage, the marriage tends to be stronger. There are clear reasons for this, but it is an unfortunate situation. From a spiritual point of view, it is better if a person does not live alone, subjected to extra temptations. It is better to live with one's family, and leave home only when one marries but, in our society, this is only an ideal. When it does happen, each partner is obviously more closely bound to his or her family, and too often the other partner is not merely marrying the spouse, he or she is "marrying the spouses family."
It is important for the priest to discuss this with a couple who plan to marry. It is important for a couple to realize that their love is going to have to extend outward to their new relatives. Their love must expand beyond themselves and encompass the "new family" they are marrying into.
Each partner should weigh his or her relationship with and feelings toward the extended family and realize the full implications it holds for their marriage. This matter must be examined and discussed frankly as part of the priest's preparatory discussions with the couple.
In marriage, love must be an ever expanding circle. Our children naturally expand its boundaries, but each partner must expect and understand the full implication of "sharing their love" with each other's family. They should also understand the proper boundaries to this sharing of love, and firmly resolve that their love for each other and the marriage are their first considerations. The couple should carefully resolve, ahead of time, questions about the limits of their parents influence and involvement in their married life. They must put each other first and their marriage above every consideration, while resolving to love and respect each other's parents and relatives.
The priest, counselling a couple who desire to be married, should never neglect to discuss this important matter of relationships with the "extended family." Continued parental dependency in one or both marriage partners is a frequent source of conflict and stress. It occurs predominantly by (but not exclusively among) individuals who have not lived away from home before their marriage.
Over dependency on parents and/or parental over protectiveness can be a real destroyer of marriages if it is not recognized and dealt with effectively. Gentleness, compassion and understanding are necessary in these cases, but firmness and a primary loyalty to the spouse are equally necessary.
Other related problems are discussed in the section, "Stress Points in Marriage."

FOUR
STRESS POINTS IN MARRIAGE

There are many stress points in marriage, and we cannot discuss all of them here. There is, however, one important and pivotal problem which must be looked at.
One major stress point which can be quite serious, and which often requires special love and work to come through, is the differing rate of growth and maturity which is often experienced by each partner in a marriage.
In this present context, let us repeat something that was said earlier. None of us is a "complete package." We are all constantly changing, hopefully growing and developing. No two people grow and develop at the same rate and to the same degree. Unfortunately, some of us actually stop growing mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and begin to stagnate and then degenerate. Often the elusive, almost un-definable gradual breakdown in a marriage is precisely this difference in the growth and development of the partners in marriage. It does not matter whether both partners are working outside the home or the wife is working in the home, one of the two will almost certainly mature more quickly and more completely, and the spiritual, emotional and intellectual growth rate may very easily be different. This difference in development can cause a subtle development of a gulf or division between a couple and, very often, neither party realizes the source of the gradual feeling of "drifting apart." If they do realize it, it can be difficult to discuss in a positive manner. Men often feel threatened by a wife's growth and women who work in the home often feel oppressed and "cheated" of the opportunity to grow.
Actually, in a relationship with true love and commitment, a couple should grow and develop not merely with each other, but because of each other. It is important to realize the possibility of this problem arising and discuss it at the very beginning of a marriage; indeed, it should be an integral part of the pre-marital counselling. Personal and individual growth, maturing and development is something that should be planned for, and from the very beginning of an Orthodox marriage, it should be resolved that this process is going to be founded on genuine spiritual growth. It should be clearly understood that mutual spiritual growth and development is a fundamental reason for an Orthodox marriage in the first place. If this is clearly established, and the possibility of differing rates of intellectual and emotional maturing is understood from the beginning, it will be infinitely easier to cope with such a problem if it should arise. Any family, whether it consists only of husband and wife, or includes a number of children, must constantly struggle to grow, develop and mature spiritually, emotionally and intellectually together, as a unit. This is difficult to accomplish and, from an Orthodox perspective, it requires much prayer and a clearly Christ-centred family life.

It is evident that this is something which must be carefully planned for in pre-marriage discussions and during the early years of a marriage. From an Orthodox Christian perspective, it is an essential part of the reason for a couple to want to marry each other, and it is a fundamental aspect of the very nature of marriage.

Source:
http://www.orthodoxcanada.org/

Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
(Orthodox Church in America)

Preface

I. The Fundamental Revelation of
Human Gender and Marriage

II. The Covenant as a Marital Relationship

III. The Revelation Unfolded Through
The Great Women Prophets

IV. The Implications of Gender Roles As
Prophecy for the Liturgical Priesthood

V. The Mystery and Meaning of Love and Marriage
PREFACE

Shall I tell you how marriage is also a mystery of the Church? Christ came into the Church, and She was made of Him and He united with Her in spiritual intercourse...So marriage is a type of the presence of Christ. (St John Chrysostom).
A
s the holy Prophet Esdras stood gazing upon the ruins of Jerusalem, lamenting over the fallen Zion, he heard the sound of weeping behind him. Turning, he saw an old woman bent in grief and inexpressible sorrow. Seeking to comfort her he asked, "What is the cause of your great sorrow, woman?" He expected her to cry out that, she too lamented for fallen Zion, but instead she responded, "Sir, I had one only son, the joy and consolation of his father and me. He took a bride for himself, but on his wedding day, as he entered his bridal chamber, he fell down and was killed. And this is the cause of my grief." Esdras was angered: "Woman, do you not see that Jerusalem has been laid waste; her children are slain or carried away in bondage, and you weep only for the loss of one son..."
So saying, he turned to face the ruins of the Holy City. When he turned back, he saw no-one; the old woman had vanished. As he marvelled at this an angel spoke to him and said, "do you not realize that the old woman was Zion?"
At the dawn of the New Testament era, the unnamed prophet and bishop of Hermas left us the details of a similar vision. A barren old woman appears to him. She is identified as "the Church of the Old Covenant," barren, but hoping on the promise.
In these two revelations we have an insight into the unique role of the great Old Testament women prophets, and into the concept that the creation of humanity as male and female has something to do with revelation. The dividing of humanity into two genders has a prophetic intent. This realization that gender is connected to prophecy and revelation has been lost largely because man, in his arrogance, began to relate the respective roles of men and women to relative value. When "role" was identified with "value" humanity was degraded, women were reduced to serfdom and the whole mystery and meaning of human gender and marriage was lost.

I
THE FUNDAMENTAL REVELATION
OF HUMAN GENDER AND MARRIAGE
I
t cannot be that God created male and female simply in order to complicate our lives, visit us with consuming passions or distract us from contemplating paradise. Rather the mystery of human gender must bear in itself some prophecy concerning the meaning of our lives, some revelation of the relationship between God and man, and the nature of our redemption.
Man and woman were not created to exist in egoistic isolation, and man and woman are not two totally separate beings, for neither can, on their own, fulfil God's command to be fruitful and multiply. Rather, they are two halves of one whole, called upon to dwell together in a sanctified unity, drawing together in an increasing love, so that in such a state of oneness, they may rise from carnal to spiritual love and so aspire toward the Creator, having discovered through their own ascent in love, the hint of that higher and more perfect love which seeks freedom from the bonds of fleshly passions.

Marriage provides us with an opportunity and a means to grow and develop in the spiritual and emotional realm, but this growth and development can only take place on a firm foundation of genuine commitment to each other, and a mutual, sincere commitment to God. The bond of unity and ever-growing love between husband and wife is designed to give humanity a basic experience and awareness of a growth in love toward unity with God, made possible by Jesus Christ. Marriage, according to the Apostle, is a type of Christ and the Church. It is intended to instruct us, not by means of abstract concepts or in books or words, but in an actual living experience, about Christ and the Church, and our whole relationship with God. Inasmuch as we see that neither man alone nor woman alone bears a complete prophecy, for the man cannot bear fruit alone, nor can the woman, it is clear that the revelation of our salvation includes both Christ (who is revealed through the male prophets) and the Church (which is revealed through the female prophets), and that Christ saves us through the Church.

There are two important aspects of the revelations that take place through human gender. The first is given through the nature of prophecy in the Old Testament, and in particular, the context of the revelation that was given through the men prophets and that which was given through the women prophets. The second aspect of this revelation is the understanding that the covenant between God and His people is not a legal agreement, but a marital relationship. It is important to understand both these aspects of God's use of gender as prophecy in order to understand a correct, Orthodox Christian view of the respective roles of men and of women, and to have a clear understanding of the meaning of marriage.

II
THE COVENANT AS
A MARITAL RELATIONSHIP

Neither the Old Covenant nor the New Testament were "legal agreements," rather they were spousal relationships. This was the great error into which the Old Israel fell, and which the prophets warned them about. Israel did not recognize and receive the Christ because He came to her as a heavenly bridegroom seeking his bride. Israel, conceiving the covenant as a "legal contract," anticipated a stern earthly ruler, come to enforce a violated treaty and establish his will by military and political means. It is for this same reason that Western Christianity fell into an idolatrous concept of atonement.

It is important for us to realize this fact: the Old Covenant was and the New Testament is, a spousal relationship. Only with this realization can we understand the nature of human gender as prophecy and revelation. A brief survey of the book of the Prophet Hosea will summarize the message of all the holy prophets and suffice to open this understanding to us.

Before we examine the prophecy of Hosea, let us look briefly at the way the expression "whoredom" is used in several places in the Old Testament, because the word is significant in Hosea's revelation.

"Do not prostitute your daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the nation fall into whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness." (Lev.19:29)
In this verse, God clearly ties together the status of women with the condition of His covenant nation. He shows us that women reveal and are a type of the holy nation, His Church. We will find throughout the Old Testament references to the unfaithful Israel as a betrayer of her spouse, a whore, a fornicator and a prostitute — an unfaithful bride. Thus in Ezekiel, we see Israel as a bride who has taken her husbands wedding gifts and fallen into whoredom with them:
"Thou hast taken my fair jewels, my gold and silver which I gave to thee, and created images of men [idols] for yourself and committed whoredom with them." (Ez.16: 17)
And again:
"Thou hast also become a whore with the Assyrians...Yes, you became a harlot with them...and have multiplied thy fornication from Canaan to Chaldea...How weak your heart is, saith the Lord God, since you do these things which are the work of an arrogant whore of a woman...as a wife who commits adultery, who takes strangers instead of her husband." (Ez.16:28-32)
There are more than thirty such references among the Old Testament prophets, in all of which God ties the revelation about His covenant with Israel to the nature of a spousal relationship, in which the nature of Israel is revealed through women and the vocation of the wife.

Now let us turn to the Prophet Hosea. What was the relationship between God and Israel as our Lord began to speak through this holy prophet?
Hosea the prophet reveals to us not only God's intended relationship with Israel, but also the very meaning of the covenant. It seems to me that in the Book of Hosea, we also have a complete revelation of the meaning of redemption and of that “atonement ” which Jesus Christ was to effect for us, as opposed to the idolatrous idea of juridicalism proffered by Scholastics and Augustinians.

God laments, through the holy prophets, that Israel has “gone a whoring” with idols and demonic “gods.” Israel has failed to understand that the Covenant which God made with them was not a legal agreement but a spousal relationship. The people of Israel may have understood in their minds that they had a covenant with God, but the reality of it never penetrated the heart of the nation. God was continually calling His people back from their adultery with “other gods,” and they were continually failing to understand and to be faithful. To my mind, these circumstances are most clearly revealed to us in Hosea's prophetic ministry. At the time of this holy prophet, Israel has not only fallen into idolatry, but they have gone so far away from their relationship with God that they conceived in their minds the idea that God had a “wife,” an earth goddess named Easter. They did this after the fashion of the pagan religions, but in essence, it was a confession that they, the nation of Israel, were no longer the spouse of God.

They were in an adulterous relationship with the idols of the surrounding peoples and, having "left their first love," wished Him off on someone else. God will demonstrate that He is faithful to Israel even if she is not faithful to Him. He loves the nation as a diligent husband loves his wife, and he desired nothing more earnestly than to deliver His spouse from separation and bondage. Since, in this revelation to Israel, Hosea is to be a representative of God Himself, the Lord instructs the prophet to take for himself a wife from among the pagan temple prostitutes. “Go and take a wife of the prostitutes and of the children of prostitution, for the land has committed great whoredom, departing from their Lord” (Hos.1:2). So Hosea took as a wife the temple prostitute, Gomer. When their first child was born, God commanded Hosea to name her Lorehamah, a name which signifies “no longer under mercy,” for Israel had removed herself from the shelter of God's mercy. When the second child was born, God caused him to be named Lohammi, meaning, “no longer my people.” By this, God warned the people that, not only had they removed themselves from the shelter of His mercy, but they had cut themselves off from Him. Nevertheless, God promises reconciliation at the same time. He says, “And it shall come to pass that, whereas it was said to them, `You are not my people,' it will be said to them, `You are the children of the Living God'.” (Hos.1:10).
Hosea's wife Gomer, though unfaithful and a harlot, now becomes a prophetess. She is a revelation about the condition of the Church, the holy nation. Though the nation has betrayed its betrothal to God and turned its back on Him, yet He promises, “I will betroth thee to Me forever; yea, I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness, and in judgment and in lovingkindness and in mercy.”

When Gomer betrays her husband Hosea and returns into bondage to her whoredom, God commands the wronged husband, “Go, and continue to love a woman who is yet an adulteress, in likeness of the love of Yahweh toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love flagons of wine. So I redeemed her for fifteen silver coins and a measure and a half of barley...” (Hos.3:1-3).

Here we see that God has used both gender and the state of marriage in order to reveal to us the relationship between Him and His Church. We shall see this same imagery in the New Testament when Apostle Paul refers to the Church as Christ's bride “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.”

It is clear that, though she was unfaithful and betrayed the spousal covenant with Hosea, Gomer was to be redeemed and restored for no other reason than because of love. This is a prophecy of the redemption of fallen mankind through the co-suffering love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We are redeemed to God and called into the covenant relationship of the New Testament with Him for no other reason than that He loves us. As the old Israel failed to grasp the meaning of the covenant as a spousal relationship, and so perished in dead legalism and the formalities of an external faith, so we are called upon to comprehend the covenant. Adultery is the only falling for which Christ permits a divorce precisely because spiritual adultery separates us from God and rejects redemption for us.

It occurs to me that Apostle Paul places the final exclamation point at the end of the Book of the Prophet Hosea when He says, “Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her” ( Eph.5:25). The crown of thorns which was driven into the head of the suffering Saviour was nothing else but the wedding crown with which Christ was crowned to His bride, the Church, and for this very reason, we sing, on Holy Pascha, that Christ "comes forth from the tomb like a bridegroom in procession."
When God used the marriage of Hosea and Gomer as a revelation about the relationship between Himself and Israel in that day, He also revealed to us in a profound manner how marriage is a prophetic state which reveals the nature of the covenant and of the relationship between God and His Church. Apostle Paul reiterates that this is also the nature of the New Covenant, for:
"I have espoused you to one Husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." (2Cor.11:2).
John the Baptist also, seeking to bring Israel to an awareness of this relationship, says of Christ, "He who has the bride is the bridegroom..." (Jn.3:29). Moreover, in the Book of Revelation, this type is continued and made even more clear in the verses about the Second Coming:
"Let us be glad and rejoice and give honour to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His spouse has made herself ready. (19:7)
However a testament or covenant is established, it is clear that God intended it to be understood as a spousal relationship, not a juridical legal agreement, and that human gender and marriage are revelations about this relationship.
Clearly, the man is a revelation of Christ and the woman is a revelation about the Church. This occurs not only in the case of the unfaithful wife, but also in the case of those who were faithful and devout. Human gender and the spousal relationship are prophetic, and were given to us by God in the very beginning as a form of revelation. This is the essence of the mystery of human gender and of the roles of men and women in life and in the Church.
This is also the essence of our redemption. Christ did not come to earth on a juridical expedition to "satisfy God's justice." He came, like Prophet Hosea, to redeem His bride from bondage and whoredom. He came to redeem back to the Father's house that which had been alienated from it, being "sold under sin" (Rm.7:14). He did this for no other reason than that He loves us and desires us to enter into His Holy Church and be saved. The image of a faithful and loving husband and wife living together chastely, is an image and revelation about our redemption.

III
THE REVELATION OF THE
GREAT WOMEN PROPHETS

In the resurrection, they are neither married nor given in marriage (Mt.22:30). There is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal.3:28)
W
hen we think of the Old Testament prophets we are inclined to think only of the male prophets. We often lose the context of the great women of the Old Testament as prophets also. The tragedy in this is that it deprives us of the fulness of understanding of the Old Testament and of the nature of the Church itself. As we have seen above, marriage is a type and likeness of the Church, and Apostle Paul instructs us that in this likeness, the male is a type of Christ while the female is a type of the Church (see Eph.5:21f). This means that, as Christ was revealed through the male prophets in the Old Testament, the Church was revealed through the female prophets, beginning with Eve. It is not without reason that Christ says that the gender relation between men and women will not exist in the resurrection, and Paul instructs us that in the Kingdom, there is no longer the distinction of "male" and "female." If human gender is given for prophecy, then when all prophecy has been fulfilled, there is no longer a need for prophets nor for the means of prophecy. When Christ and the Church have been visibly united, when all is clear and manifest, then the prophetic role of human gender will have been fulfilled and will pass away.
It is important for us to comprehend this, not only so that we will have a more complete understanding of the Old Testament and of the Church, but so that we can more easily correct the sin of relating the roles of men and women to relative value, placing a higher value on one than on the other, and the error of extrapolating the spiritual and liturgical role of each, removing it from the family and the liturgy and expanding it into industry and politics.

Somehow, the role of the men prophets of the Old Testament is more clearly understood. In order to balance our understanding, it is necessary to examine how the great women prophets revealed to us the nature of the Church, and in so doing, completed the prophecies about our redemption.

The Church existed before all ages, first in the eternal will of God. With the creation of the angels, the Church existed spiritually in the presence of God. When God created the paradise of Eden and placed Adam and Eve in it, He manifested His Church on earth. Adam and Eve were themselves a prophetic revelation about Christ and His Church, for the creation of man, as the holy fathers have said, was itself a prophecy about the incarnation of God the Word. God, Who knows all things from eternity to eternity, foreknowing the fall, revealed in the very creation of man and woman the nature of our future redemption. As St John Chrysostom says:
"As woman was formed out of the side of Adam as he slept, so the Church was fashioned out of the side of Christ as He died." "For Christ was lifted up on the cross, and one of the soldiers pierced his side, and blood and water came forth; and of that blood and water, the whole Church was formed." The saint continues saying that we are re-born through the water of Baptism and nourished through the Blood of Holy Communion.
In these words of this holy father, we already perceive the fundamental roles of male and female in revelation and prophecy.

With the fall of mankind, the "gates of paradise" were closed and, since Adam and Eve constituted the Church on earth, the Church also fell with them. It would continue, until its redemption, a shadowy existence. Now barren and no longer bearing the fruit of that blessed unity with God known in Eden, the Church continued on, bearing the hope of the promised restoration. God never stopped loving His Church, as the Apostle says, "Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for Her" (Eph.5:25). When all mankind had completely fallen away from that hope, God called Abraham and Sarah into the fallen Church and, through them, renewed the promise, so that in Abraham the prophecy of the Messiah, and in Sarah, the prophecy of His Church, might once more be made known. As Adam and Eve had been the apostles of God's presence, so now Abraham and Sarah became the apostles of His promise.

Still, the Church had grown old and remained barren and without the fruit of life. Thus she was revealed by Esdras and by the Bishop of Hermas in the passages cited above. It is for this reason that the great women prophets of old were aged and barren women, unfruitful until they were touched by the grace of God and called to a special spiritual revelation in the bearing of children in their old age. Thus, the holy prophet Sarah had grown old and barren (like the Church), but hoping against hope in the promise of God, she waited with patience, trusting that what He had promised, He would surely fulfil. In the fulness of time, God chose to reveal not only His love and truth, but even the mystery of the Trinity. As Sarah and her husband waited out the heat of the day beneath the spreading branches of the great oak at Mambre in the land of promise, at midday, the Word Himself appeared to them with two angels. Abraham, recognising his Lord, rushed to worship Him and offer hospitality to his awesome visitors. So great was the revelation and promise about to be fulfilled in Sarah that the incarnation of God itself was shadowed in the type of the Holy Trinity which had appeared. For, truly, the mystery of the Trinity would be made manifest only when the incarnation of the Word restored the true holy nation and redeemed the Church from bondage, claiming her for His bride. It is for this reason that Christ, as God the Word, appeared personally at Mambre to initiate the founding of the Holy Nation by reaffirming the promise, as it were, "in person."
In prophecy of this great redemption, Sarah was visited with the grace of God and became the mother of the holy nation, the foreimage of that "new nation called after" the name of Jesus Christ. Thus Sarah was the restoration of the revelation given through Eve in the beginning, the first in the great chain of women prophets through whom the Church was revealed. Christ, the founder of the Holy Nation, the redeemed and sanctified Church, is foretold in the son whom Sarah bore.
In the days of the prophet and judge of the nation Eli, his sons, the priests of God's tabernacle, had fallen into the sin of indifference and lost their faith and fear of God. Then, God chose his servant and handmaid Hannah to reveal yet more about the Church and the Messiah.

In like manner as Sarah, the holy prophet Hannah was old and barren (like the Church). Praying constantly to God, with vows and fasting, she received a promise from Him. He would touch here aged womb with healing grace that she might bear a child to His glory. In the fulness of time, she gave birth to Samuel, that prophet who would replace the corrupted priests in the house of Eli. By God's grace, Hannah became the mother of the new priesthood in Samuel, foretelling the redemption of the Church by the eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ, who replaced the corrupted priests of Israel and restored the Church with the perfect and everlasting sacrifice.
Finally, as the "fulness of time" drew near, God chose two more faithful handmaids to serve for the revelation of His Church. Like Sarah and Hannah, the holy prophet Elizabeth was barren into her old age, beseeching God to grant her a child. God called her to give birth to the forerunner of the redeemer, John the Baptist. Through Elizabeth, the Church cried out with the voice of the Forerunner. He announced the day of God's Kingdom and proclaimed the Messiah to the barren and fallen Church and brought it to the very eve of its restoration. A little earlier, Anna, the wife of Joakim, being also barren and unfruitful in her old age, had prayed with vows and fasting for a child. She was called to be the mother of the Theotokos, the one chosen out of all ages and generations to be the mother of God in the saving incarnation.

And here, a great and dramatic change takes place. Suddenly, this unique manner of prophecy about the Church passes from barren older women to a very young virgin. Why? Because the "Old Testament" phase of the Church is passing away. The Church had become old and barren, no longer bearing the fruit of unity with God, as in Eden. Now, however, the prophetic role passes to a young virgin, who gives birth to her special child solely by the grace of the Holy Spirit, without the participation of a man. The barren Anna, the Church of the Old Testament, gives birth to the Ever-Virgin One, and Mary becomes the holy prophet through whom the New Testament Church, the redeemed and restored Church is revealed. The Church is renewed, redeemed, made fruitful once more. The Church has become a new creation, thus the revelation is no more through an elderly, barren woman, but through a young maiden, and in a completely new and unique manner. The Church is no longer the barren old woman of the Old Testament, but the "Pure virgin bride of Christ," revealed in the pure virgin Theotokos. This transformation from shame and dishonour, for so the Jews considered childlessness to be, to grace filled purity and exaltation, brought about the twilight of the Old Testament and the end to the exile of the Church; it ushered in the everlasting dawn of the New Covenant and welcomed the new day of restoration and glory — the eighth day of creation, the day of redemption. The fallen human nature would be recapitulated (Eph.1:10) in Christ, the Church would be re-created from His life-bearing side and the descent of the Holy Spirit. Paradise would be restored.

What of the specific revelation of the Old Testament women prophets? Christ is the new "founder of the holy nation." The "holy nation" is seen to be not the ethnic Israel, but the Church itself, as Apostle Paul so clearly reminds us. This is what Sarah was foretelling in her miraculous childbearing. Her child, the firstborn of the "holy nation" was the work of God's grace and not of human will and design. Nevertheless, it was a foreimage and prophecy and so destined to pass away with its fulfilment. As with Hannah, the child borne by Mary will replace the corrupted high priesthood (Hb.6:2-7:28), and restore and fulfil the priesthood. With Anna and Elizabeth, this line of revelation was brought to an end, for "type" and prophecy stand only until their fulfilment.

What of the other women of the Old Testament? We will not discuss them in detail here, for we have established the facts that are necessary. Let us only recall them by reading the eighth ode of the Akathist Hymn for the Theotokos, Joy of Canada:

IRMOS EIGHT

When our forebears lost paradise and brought the Church to barrenness, God proclaimed His promises prophetically through the holy women and filled it with hope. Thou, O Theotokos, art the seal of the promises, the fulfilment of the hope of the fallen Church, wherefore we cry out to Him Who came forth from thee: Alleluia.

IKOS EIGHT

In thee, O Theotokos, are the promises made manifest and all prophecy is fulfilled in Him Whom thou didst bear. The expectation of the ages has come to pass and the hope of the holy women prophets is made complete. Wherefore we cry to thee:

Rejoice, with Eve, for the serpent is bruised,
Rejoice, with Sarah, for the Holy Nation is
redeemed,
Rejoice, with the righteous daughters, for the
inheritance is secured,
Rejoice, with Esther, for the spiritual Haman
is slain,
Rejoice, with Ruth, for the gentiles are delivered,
Rejoice, with Hannah, for the priesthood is
perfected,
Rejoice, with Elizabeth, for her son's prophecy is
fulfilled,
Rejoice, with Anna, for the barrenness of the
Church is healed,
Rejoice, Joy of Canada.

IV
THE IMPLICATIONS FOR THE
LITURGICAL PRIESTHOOD OF
GENDER ROLES AS PROPHECY
W
e specify the "liturgical priesthood" because all baptised Orthodox believers are part of the "royal priesthood" (1Pet.2:9). All are members of the "royal priesthood" because only the priesthood can partake of the things of the altar, and all are called to receive the mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ — the "things of the altar" — in Holy Communion. Nevertheless, only men are called to the liturgical or "ordained" priesthood.

To understand the reason why women are not enrolled in the priesthood, we must first of all put away one treacherous presupposition: that it has to do with relative value. It does have to do with roles, but here again, there is a destructive presupposition. Many people have, for centuries, equated roles with value, and they have extended the roles of men and women in the liturgical life of the Church (which deals with prophecy and revelation) to society, politics and industry __ which have nothing to do with the faith or the salvation of humanity.
The roles we are speaking of have nothing to do with caste, personal value or human worthiness. The roles of men and women in the Church are prophetic and deal with prophecy and revelation. Thus, throughout Scriptural history, women have held the prophetic role of revealing the Church: the nature and mission of the Church on earth (which is why in heaven, there is neither male nor female: because the Church on earth will have fulfilled her mission, and the revelation and prophecy about her will no longer be needed; likewise, the visible presence of Christ will bring to an end the prophetic role of the male). The prophecy about Christ has been proclaimed through the male prophets, with one exception: Eve. The promise to Eve that her offspring would wound Satan's head was a clear prophecy, not about the Church but about Christ. That offspring was Christ, Who came forth from the Virgin as a fulfilment of this prophecy given through Eve. This is why we call Mary "the second Eve."
The role of priest in the Church belongs only to Christ. He is the priesthood of the Church. He is also the spouse and husband of the Church. Christ's visible priesthood in the Church is fulfilled through the ordained priests, more precisely, through the bishops of the Church (who delegate this to parish presbyters since the bishop cannot be everywhere).

Thus, the prophetic role of men is in revelation about Christ, and the prophetic role of women is in revelation about the Church. There is no relative value in these roles, since the mystery of redemption is the mystery of Christ and the Church. It should be clear, however, that while women fulfil a ministry in the Church (first of all, the prophetic ministry) they do not enter into the priesthood, which is a revelation about Christ, not about the Church. A woman in the priesthood would have to be presenting a revelation about the husband of the Church, the spouse of the "spotless, pure bride of Christ." Do you not see how perverted and corrupt such a "revelation and prophecy" would be?
This same prophetic role extends, incidentally, to the family, quite naturally, as the very intent of marriage is to be, as Scripture clearly declares, a revelation about the relationship between Christ and the Church (Eph. Ch. 5).
For those who have lost their faith or who have usurped the authority of God, it may seem logical to change the nature of His revelation and even of the Gospel of salvation itself. It may seem reasonable to unbelievers to corrupt and pervert society, and so also reasonable to corrupt and pervert the nature of divine revelation and the order of prophecy so that the Gospel itself is devoured in human self-worship and conceit. For believing Orthodox Christians, however, the revelation of God and His prophecy stand immutable, unchangeable and without challenge. The respective roles of men and women, both in the Church and in the family, are not roles of relative value or worth, but roles of prophecy and revelation. Let everything remain in the order and grace which God has ordained for it, that the Gospel might be proclaimed, not in empty words, but in life itself, in the very experience of living life according to the plan of God.

Men are worth no more than women, women no more than men. But if we allowed the prophetic role of either or both to be corrupted, then we destroy the ultimate worth of both, and pervert the Gospel of Christ, corrupting our families and yielding to the wiles of Satan.

Source:
http://www.orthodoxcanada.org/

A long-standing land dispute between the Syrian Orthodox community in south-east Turkey and the local villagers has finally turned into a legal battle attracting international attention. The disagreement has been closely monitored by the European Union for some time, and US President Barack Obama and the State Department are monitoring the dispute.

In a remote village near Midyat, South East Turkey, a land dispute with neighboring villages is threatening the future of Mor Gabriel, one of the World’s oldest Christian monasteries, also known as the monastery of St. Gabriel, a property of the Syrian Orthodox Church (Suryani).

In August 2008, three mukhtars (low level elected officials with limited authority) in Midyat, filed a criminal complaint with a local prosecutor against the Monastery of St. Gabriel alleging it “illegally appropriated territory by building a wall.” (See US Department of State, 2008 Human Rights Report: Turkey.)
On September 4, a Cadastre court ruled against the monastery and reclaimed all but 30 percent of the monastery’s lands. Official papers from the 1950s documented the provincial administrative board’s approval of the monastery’s borders.

St. Gabriel Monastery was founded in 397. It has 3 monks and 14 nuns. It also has 12,000 ancient corpses buried in a basement crypt. On the details of this conflict, see the Wall Street Journal article at http://s.wsj.net/article/SB123638477632658147.html

While this episode is sponsored by the Turkish government who initiated the whole conflict, the question arises as is this a first step towards the Islamization of the remnants of Christians found in the region of Tur Abdin (an Aramaic term means the mountain of worshippers), or using the normal tactics through a campaign of intimidation to make the remaining Christians leave Turkey and converting the Monastery into a mosque or a museum.

For Christians, Turkey is an important country. According to the Bible, it was in the Turkish town of Antioch that the folConversion of Christian Churches into Mosqueslowers of Jesus were first called Christians. The first adherents to Christianity were Syriac speaking people of the Aramaean ancestry, including the Syrian Orthodox Church (Suryani) and the Church of the East (popularly know as the Nestorian Church or the Assyrian Church.)

Turkey is the birthplace of Apostles and Saints, including Paul of Tarsus, Timothy, St. Nicholas of Myra, and many others. St. Peter went on missionary journeys farther into the Gentile world [Turkey].

Christianity spread into the region primarily along the route from Tarsus through the Cilician Gates, Caesarea (Mazaca; modern Kayseri), became a leading center of Christianity, and several important figures in the early Church (e.g., Basil the Great, Gregory of Nysa, Gregory of Nazianzus) were from Cappadocia [Turkey]. Among the Biblical towns in modern Turkey are Laodicea (near Pamukkale), Sardis (east of Izmir), and Philadelphia (Alasehir), Thyatia (Akhisar), Ephesus, Smyrna (Izmir), and Pergamum (Bergama). The first seven Ecumenical Councils were held in present-day Turkey including the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon.

The cave of the Seven Sleepers is located in Turkey [a story written by the Syriac bishop of Edessa, John of Seruj (died 521)], see www.newadvent.org/cathen/05496a.htm , the story also appears in the Quran 18:9-26. Turkey houses the Seven Churches of Asia, where the Revelations to John were sent. Apostle John took Virgin Mary to Ephesus in Turkey.

But Turkey has long embraced Islam. Today one percent of the population is non-Muslim and their number is dwindling. Killing of Christians under the Ottoman Turks is well documented. Michael the Syrian recorded the destruction of his hometown, Melitene (Malatya) in 1057. He writes, The Turks

"began to massacre without pity" and "to torture the men that they might show them hidden things"; and many died in torment...The Turks stayed at Melitene for ten days, devastating, and pillaging. They burnt the wretched city, devastating the surrounding area...and burning the whole country." "Everywhere the Christians had been delivered to the sword or into bondage interrupting thus the cultivation of the field so that bread was lacking. The farmers and workers had been massacred or led off into slavery and famine extended its rigors to all places. Many provinces were depopulated."

In 1140s, the Turks captured Edessa, killing or enslaving virtually its entire population, estimated at forty-thousand. Michael the Syrian lamented on this event. He writes:

"Edessa remained a desert...drunk with blood, infested by the corpses of its sons and daughters! Vampires and other savage beasts ran and entered the city at night to feast on the flesh of the massacred, and it became the abode of jackals; for none entered there except those who dug to discover treasure."

More than two hundred years later, Bar Hebraeus commented by saying: "The dioceses of the West are laid waste...Antioch was in a state of lamentation and tears." He said Aleppo, Edessa, and Harran "all of which are laid waste...the seven dioceses which are round about Melitene, in none of which does a single house remain".

When the Mamluk leader, Baybars, captured Antioch in 1268, he wrote to the city's ruler, who had fled earlier:

"You would have seen the crosses in your churches smashed, the pages of false Testaments scattered, the patriarch's tombs overturned. You would have seen your Muslim enemy trampling over the place where you celebrate Mass, cutting the throats of monks, priests and deacons upon the altars, bringing sudden death to the patriarchs and slavery to the royal princes." (See Micheau, "Copts, Melkites, Nestorians and Jacobites".)

Egypt was not spared from the massive execution of the Copts in 1321. Muslim historian Al-Maqrizi recorded the mobs, which attacked the Christians: "Then they destroyed the Church of St. Mennas in the Hamra, which had from ancient times been much revered by the Christians...the people climbed the walls, opened the gates and took money, vessels and wine jars out of the church; it was a terrible occurrence. Thereupon they went from the church in the Hamra after they had destroyed it to the two churches near Seven Wells, one of which was called the Church of the Maidens, and was inhabited by a number of Christian girls, and by monks."

Al-Maqrizi witnessed the mobs and recorded that: "in the district of Al-Bahnasa there were many monasteries now destroyed...near Suyut, on both the dams there are said to have been 360 monasteries and the traveler went from Al-Badraishin to Asfun, continually in the shade of the gardens. Now this part laid waste, and deserted by the inhabitants...The houses are all destroyed and forgotten, though in former times they were so populous and their monks so numerous... what were once the thousand monks of Bu Fana were now reduced to two". (See Evett, Churches and Monasteries.)

During the thirteenth and fourteenth century, following the conversion of Mongol leaders to Islam, conditions of the Christians became intolerable. One Mongolian edict states that:

"The churches shall be uprooted and the altars overturned and the celebration of the Eucharist shall cease and the hymns of praise and the sounds of calls to prayer shall be abolished; and the chiefs of the Christians and the heads of the synagogues of the Jews and the great men among them shall be killed."

When Ibn Battuta visited Ephesus about 1330, he recorded that "the cathedral mosque, which was formerly a church greatly venerated by the Greeks, is one of the most beautiful in the world. I bought a Greek slave girl here for forty dinars." (See Vryonis, Decline of Medieval Hellenism.)

In 1480, Ottoman forces committed notorious massacres against the Christians and their clergy. In Italy, the Turks destroyed the city of Otranto, killing twelve thousand and executing leading clergymen by sawing them. In 1570, they did the same thing to the Christians of Cyprus. Some of the punishment methods used included impaling, crucifixion, and flaying.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century more massacres of Christians took place under the Ottoman Empire. The French ambassador reported in 1895 that “Asia minor (Turkey) is literally in flames…They [the Turks] are massacring all the Christians without distinction.” (See Sebastien de Courtois, Forgotten Genocide – Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2004). In 1915, the New York Times reported that “the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people.”

In 1914, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople recorded 2,549 ecclesiastical buildings, including 210 monasteries. By 1974, the locations of only 913 were still known. Four hundred sixty-four had completely disappeared, 252 were in ruins, and 197 were in fairly sound condition.

Ethnic cleansing continued through the early 1920s. The Turkish city of Smyrna was destroyed in 1922, “causing the deaths of a hundred thousand Greek and Armenia Christians in what had been the City of the Gaour.”

In 1924, the Syrian Orthodox (Suryani) population of Edessa (today Urfa) was approximately 2,500. Today no Christian exists in Edessa. The town has become the center of Turkey’s ruling Islamist party. So is Mardin, in the outer provinces of rural Islamic country, Azekh, Diyar Bakr, Midun, Basibrina, Hah, Zas, Issfis, and the rest of south-east Turkey. The Christian population left for Europe, United States, Canada, Latin America, and Australia.

Visiting Diyarbakr in 1997, William Dalrymple reported finding literally the city’s last Armenian Christian, “a very old lady called Lucine,” who had not spoken since her husband was killed. She is being taken care of by a Kurdish Muslim, who said “Her mind is dead.”

The Catholic Encyclopedia reports that, in 1907, the city of Amida (Diyarbakr) was still fourty percent Christians with numerous bishops and clergy from all ranks: “It has about 35,000 inhabitants, of whom 20,000 are Mussulmans (Arabians, Turks, Kurds, etc.), 2,300 Catholics (Chaldeans, Amenians, Syrians, Melchites, Latins), 8,500 Gregorian Armenians, 900 Protestant Armenians, 950 Jacobite Suryans (Suryani), 900 Orthodox Greeks, and 300 Jews. Diyarbakr possesses an Armenian Catholic bishop, a Syrian Catholic bishop, a Syrian Jacobite bishop, a Chaldean Catholic archbishop, and a Greek Orthodox metropolitan under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Antioch.” (See Catholic Encyclopedia “Diocese of Amida,” www.newadvent.org/cathen/01429c.htm.)

In 1933, another Muslim massacre hit the Nestorian (Assyrian) people in Iraq. The Catholicos protested by saying that: "Men, women and children were massacred wholesale most barbarously by rifle, revolver and machine gun fire...Priests were killed and their bodies mutilated. Assyrian women were violated and killed. Priests and Assyrians young men were killed instantly after refusing forced conversion to Muhammadanism...Pregnant women had their wombs cut and their babies destroyed..." (See R.S. Stafford, The Tragedy of the Assyrians, Gorgias Press, Piscataway, NJ).

Conversion of Christian Churches into Mosques
Islam has been converting Churches into Mosques, aggressively. When Muslims occupied the Middle East in the seventh century; they performed a mass confiscation of churches and turning them into mosques. Upon taking a city, they demanded that half of the churches be converted into mosques. One of the major shrines in Eastern Christianity was the church of John the Baptist in Damascus, Syria. Pope John Paul II visited the Great Mosque of Damascus (popularly known as al Masjid al-Umawi) in 2001; he was aware that he was visiting the site of the Great Church of St. John.

Of the forty-two churches Christians had in Damascus, Muslims confiscated twenty-eight; they left fourteen churches for the Christians who constituted the majority of the population. This phenomenon should be stressed in light of claims by modern-day writers anxious to present Muslims as infallibly tolerant of the religious practices of their subjects.

Muslim Turks annexed the great church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, which became the principal mosque of the Ottoman Empire.

The Church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), (Turkish: Ayasofya); Latin: Sancta Sophia or Santa Sopientia), constructed between 532 and 537 on the orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinianus. It was a former patriarchal basilica, later a mosque. It was the seat of the Patriarchal church of Constantinople and the Grand Church of the Eastern Orthodox Church of the Byzantine Empire.

The Hagia Sophia was officially turned into a museum in 1935 by Ataturk and is now open to visitors of all faiths. Turkish authorities refuse to return the Church to the Christians of Turkey.

The great Jacobite Church of Amida (modern-day Diyarbakr) became the courtyard of
The Great Mosque of Diyarbakr.

The tomb of a Jacobite Patriarch at Nineveh was confiscated and turned into the mosque of Jonah (Nabi Yunis). (See The Decline of Medieval Hellenism, 197. For Amida, see The Chronicle of Edessa at www.tertullian.org/fathers/chronicle_of-Edessa.htm.

The Ottoman Empire never stopped confiscating churches and converting them into mosques. When they occupied Budapest, all the churches but one became mosques. In Cyprus, the Gothic Cathedral of Famagusta became the Turkish mosque of Lala Mustafa Pasha.

A relatively significant surge in churches converted into mosques followed the 1974 Turkish Invasion of Cyprus. Many of the Orthodox churches in Northern Cyprus were confiscated, and many are still in the process of becoming mosques.

Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque, originally known as the Saint Nicolas Cathedral and later as Ayasofya Mosque of Magusa, the largest medieval building in Gamagusta. Built between 1298 and c.1400 it was consecrated as a Christian cathedral in 1328. The cathedral was confiscated by the Ottoman Turks and converted into a mosque.

The Armenian Cathedral of Edessa, which was lost during the 1915 massacres of Armenians, Syrians, Nestorians, and Chaldeans, became a mosque, with a mihrab punched into the south wall to indicate the direction of Mecca. (See From The Holy Mountain by Dalrymple). There no churches in Edessa in use today.

In Egypt, the columns of an older Christian Church can be seen in the structure of the ninth-century Ibn Tulun Mosque, which is considered one of the world’s largest mosques.

One of the most attractive churches in Istanbul was the Eski Imaret Mosque; a former Eastern Orthodox Monastery converted into a mosque by the Ottoman Turks after the conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453. The Turkish name is "the mosque of the old soup kitchen. The complex comprises of a church and monastery.
After the Armenian Genocide of 1915, the Kurds who were active participants in the massacres, confiscated churches in what they call know Kurdistan; it includes a large portion of Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. All the churches were confiscated and became mosques.

In many instances mosques were established on the places of Jewish or Christian sanctuaries associated with Biblical personalities. The second Caliph ‘Umar laid the foundation of al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, the most sacred site in Judaism; Dome of the Rock, another Muslim mosque, was also built on the Jewish Temple Mount.

The Temple Mount (Heb., Har Habayit; Arabic, Haram El Sharif (or the Noble Santuary). According to Jewish traditions, Temple Mount location was the site where Abraham offered his son Isaac in sacrifice. It was built by King Solomon in the tenth century BC. The Temple was destroyed in 586 BC by the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. Following the Babylonian Exile, the Jews returned to Jerusalem and started building the second Temple on the same site, with the aid of the Persian King Cyrus. In the last quarter of the first century BC, the Temple was refashioned into an edifice of great splendor.

In 70 AD, The Temple was destroyed by the Romans; the Jews left Jerusalem for Diaspora and the Temple was deliberately left in ruins until the rise of Islam and the conquest of Jerusalem in 638 under the leadership of ‘Umar Bin al-Khattab, the second Caliph who ordered the clearing of the site and the building of a "house of prayer".

In 688, the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock. Few years later, a large mosque was built at the southern end of the Haram, which came to be called al-Aksa after the Quranic name attributed to the entire area.

The al-Aksa was last rebuilt in 1035 and has since undergone several restorations; more recently 1938-42; and again in 1969. Muslim interpreters of the Quran believe that verse 17:1 alludes to the al-Aksa Mosque. The verse reads the following: " Glory to God who did take his servant from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose precincts we did bless, in order that we might show him some of our signs: for He is the one who heareth and seeth all things." Islamic interpreters of the Quran refer to this verse as "Issra' & Mi'raj", which means that the Prophet visited this Masjid (mosque) on a night and from there he ascended to heaven where he met Jesus, Moses, and the rest of the prophets.

The Descend of Dark Age on Turkish Christianity
The Syrian Orthodox (Suryani) community uses ancient Aramaic in its liturgy. Historically, this community lived in the villages of Tur Abdin and its surroundings before the rise of Islam. In 1920 the population of the Syrian Orthodox church had contracted to seventy thousand; their estimate number in 1995 was 10,000. Today the number is less than 2,000. The head of the community is referred to as metropolitan (Timotheos Samuel Aktash); he resides at the Monastery of St. Gabriel near Midyat. The Syrian Orthodox community along with the Nestorian Church community (the Assyrian Church, or the Church of the East) lived in that region for over 3,000 years, long before the Muslim conquest of the seventh century. They were among the earliest converts to Christianity and speak Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

The Constitution of Turkey and laws provide for freedom of religion; however, the government imposes significant restriction on the Christian minorities. A government agency, the General Directorate for Foundations (GDF), regulates activities of non-Muslim religious groups and their affiliated churches, monasteries, synagogues, and related religious property including Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Jewish, Syrian Christian (Suryani), Chaldean, Bulgarian Orthodox, Georgian, Protestant and Maronite foundations.

“Numerous religious groups have lost property to the government and continued to fight ongoing government efforts to expropriate properties. Many such properties were lost because the law allows the GDF to assume direct administration of properties that fall into disuse when the size of the local non-Muslim community drops significantly. The government expropriated other properties that were held in the name of individual community members who emigrated or died without heirs. The GDF also took control of non-Muslim foundations after the size of the non-Muslim community in a particular district dropped below the level required to elect foundation board members.” (See U.S. Department of State, 2008 Human Right Report on Turkey: www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/eur/119109.htm

Turkey’s attempt to shrink the property of the Monastery of St. Gabriel is a preliminary step to take control of the Monastery and to intimidate the remaining Christian community in the region to leave the country.

Turkey is the only country on earth, whose population is ninety-nine percent Muslims. There is no other country in the world who has structured its policies aimed at the extinction of Christians like Turkey did. Yet, in the eyes of Western politicians, Turkey is considered a secular state: But is Turkey a secular state?

• On March 1, 2003, Turkey’s parliament voted not to allow the U.S. to use Incerlik Air Force base and Turkish territory to open a second front against Saddam Hussein. U.S. offered Turkey 26 billion dollars to allow use of its territory to open a second front. Turkey’s prime minister then asked for $6 billion more to change the parliament’s vote! A U.S. Treasury Department negotiator called it “extortion in the name of alliance.” The U.S. refused.

• Turkey is an Islamic and anti-Christian nation. In 1914-1918, The Ottoman Turks committed genocides against Armenians, Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Nestorians (Assyrians), Chaldean and other Christians, killing 1.5 million Christians and refuses to recognize the Armenian Genocide and other Christian Genocides.

• In September 1955, Turkey initiated a massive program against the Greek Christians in Istanbul which resulted in most of them leaving Turkey.

• Prime Minister Erdogan has taken actions culminating in his anti-Israel and anti-Semitic actions at the Davos World Economic Forum held this year in Switzerland.

• Turkey started a war against Cyprus ended in the occupation of the country during the 1970 invasion and the settlement of 180,000 illegal Turks in Cyprus.

• Turkey refuses to grant autonomy to Kurdish minority (between 15 and 20 million).

• Turkey confiscated several thousand properties illegally from the Eastern Orthodox Church and closed the Halki Theological School in 1971.

• In 2008, the ruling party AKP with the help of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) succeeded in removing from the constitution the quarter-century-old law banning the headscarf in Turkish universities. The Turkish Supreme Court later struck the removal of the ban. The headscarf ban has been in existence since the early 1980s as part of the new military-backed constitution. In 2005, President Gul’s wife, who was refused admission in Ankara University because she wears a headscarf. She challenged the ban before the European Court of Human Rights but failed to get a ruling in her favor. Two daughters of Prime Minister Erdogan, who are currently studying in the US, were suspended from teaching posts in Turkey because they were wearing headscarves.

The Last Stand in Turkey
Turkey is embarking on a policy of making itself a Christian-free nation. Christian population has tried various strategies to maintain their existence in Turkey, but none shows great hopes of success. Members of the Syrian Orthodox church in Europe built homes in the region of Tur Abdin for the purpose of re-establishing their congregation. The Leadership in Deir Mor Gabriel is seeking a relief from the Court to stop the process of confiscating portion of the property belonging to the monastery.

Recently, the Syriac Universal Alliance (SUA), “an umbrella organization of all the national Federations of the Aram[a]ean (Syriac) people” sent open letter of appeal to the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyib Erdogan, requesting his mediation to “prevent the injustice and relevant [court] cases dismissed to the benefit of the Aram[a]ean people”. The SUA wants to “ensure this case does not end up in the European Court of Justice.”

This effort by the Syrian Orthodox church community to regain the property of St. Gabriel is probably the last stand of the community to live in peace in that region. Like other Middle Eastern Christians, they have tried every possible way to survive and flourish, and their efforts have largely failed.

The most catastrophic episode in recent years has been that of Iraq’s Christians, who, in 1970, represented six percent of the Iraqi population. That number is shrinking now to below one percent. Christians of Iraq made up of twenty percent of Iraq’s teachers and many of its doctors and engineers.

All over the Middle East, Christians are dwindling in number. There are few countries where Christians are vulnerable, such as Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan. Any change towards radical Islamization, may have dreadful effects on the minorities. In Egypt, Islamic Brotherhood is gaining political and social power that might drive the remaining ten to thirteen million Copts to choose between mass migration and conversion.

The birth of Christianity in the Middle East, and their monasteries and churches will, nevertheless, continue in Europe, The United States, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, and Canada. The Syrian Orthodox Church has been expanding in those countries; new European monasteries in the same Middle Eastern traditions have been erected: St. Ephrem in the Netherlands; More Augin rises in Switzerland, The magnificent churches of Sweden; The Great Church of Virgin Mary in Paramus, New Jersey and the Cathedral of St. Marks in Teaneck, New Jersey and the rest of the churches spreading all over the United States from Michigan, to Massachusetts, Florida, New York, Rhode Island, Illinois, California, Oregon, Georgia, Arizona, and Canada.

Gabriel Sawma is Professor of Middle East Constitutional Law and Islamic Shari'a. He is an expert on Islamic marriage contracts and Islamic divorce. Editor of an International Law website: www.gabrielsawma.blogspot.com. Author of "The Qur'an: Misinterpreted, Mistranslated and Misread. The Aramaic Language of the Qur'an." www.syriacaramaicquran.com. Author of an upcoming book on Islamic Divorce in US Courts. Email: gabrielsawma@yahoo.com;
Links: www.gabrielsawma.blogspot.com

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On this day, of the year 307 A.D., the great among the martyrs St. George, was martyred. He was born in Cappadocia; his father's name was Anastasius, and his mother's name was Theobaste. When he was twenty years old, his father died, and he went to Emperor Diocletian to take over his father's position. He found that the Emperor had apostatized the faith and ordered the worship of idols. George was sorrowful, and he gave all his wealth to the poor and needy and set free his slaves.

When he saw the edict of the Emperor against the Christians, he became raged and tore it. They took him before the Emperor, and he cried in their middest saying: "For how long you shall pour your anger against the innocent Christians, and force those who know the true faith to adopt the faith that you are in doubt of because it is fraudulent? So, either you believe on this true faith, or at least do not disturb with foolishness those who are steadfast in it." The Emperor asked Mephnanius, one of his ministers, to pacify and persuade him. He asked him: "Who taught you to be daring like this." The Saint answered: "It is the truth," then started to explain it to him. The Emperor interrupted, reminding the Saint with the ranks that he bestowed on him, and promised him with more if he denied his Christ. The Saint refused with pride all these vain propositions. The Emperor tortured him severely, but the Lord strengthened him and healed all his wounds.

When the Emperor was weary of torturing him, he brought a magician, whose name was Athanasius, who gave the Saint a cup full of poison to drink. St. George made the sign of the cross over the cup then drank it. When no harm came upon him, the magician believed in the Lord Christ, and received the crown of martyrdom. The Emperor became raged and ordered to squeeze him until he delivered up his soul, and they cast his body out side the city.

The Lord Christ raised him up, and the Saint returned to the city. When the people saw him, three thousand and seven hundred souls believed. The Emperor ordered to cut off their heads and they received the crown of martyrdom.

When St. George stood before Emperor Diocletian, along with seventy kings that were sitting around him, they asked the Saint: "We wish you to make these chairs that we are sitting on to put forth leaves, and bear fruit." The Saint prayed to the Lord Christ, the Lord accepted his supplication and the chairs put forth leaves and bore fruit.

They took him once to a cemetery and asked him to raise the dead therein. He prayed to the Lord Christ. The Lord raised them and after they talked to them, they returned to their graves and died.

A poor woman, brought her son, who was blind, deaf and dumb, he prayed to the Lord Christ then made the sign of the cross over him, and he was healed right away.

Diocletian, during all that, went on torturing St. George, until he was weary and bored of that. He started to be pleasant to the Saint and promised to give him his daughter in marriage if he would offer the incense to his gods. The Saint pretended that he accepted his offer, and the Emperor rejoiced and brought him into the royal palace. While St. George was praying the Psalms, the Empress heard him and asked him to explain to her what he had said. He began to interpret to her all the events from the creation of the world to the Incarnation of the Lord Christ, and his words entered her heart and she believed in the Lord Christ, to Whom is the Glory.

The Emperor ordered to call upon all the men of the city to gather, in order to see Saint George offering the incense to the Emperor's gods. When multitude gathered by the idols, Gawargios (George) stood and cried at the idols in the Name of the Lord Christ the Savior of the world. The earth opened its mouth and swallowed all the idols. The Emperor and all those who were with him were ashamed and he returned to his palace full of fury and wrath. The Empress told him: "Didn't I tell you not to oppose the Galileans, for their God is strong and mighty?" The Emperor was exceedingly wrath with her, for he knew that St. George had brought her also to his faith. The Emperor with rage ordered to comb her body with a steel comb, then cut off her head, and she received the crown of martyrdom. Finally, Diocletian decided to put an end to the humiliation that befell him, so he ordered to cut off the head of St. George, and he received the crown of martyrdom. A Christian took the body, wrapped it in expensive shrouds, and took it to the city of Lydda, his home town, and they built a great church on his name there.

His intercession be with us and Glory be to our God forever. Amen

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In the everlasting perpetuity of Lucifer’s glory when timelessness was the uncrowned monarch of Eternity, all legions of angels who are men used to worship, praise and glorify the God of hosts. All the angels who are male worship a God who is male in essence. The rebelled Lucifer’s legion was evicted from their solace, and Adam was created to fill in the vacancies that created by the fall of the disgraced legion of angels. Adam also a man who was male in essence was created first as a random guinea-pig experiment for testing whether he would be able to survive alone among the legion of dark angels of anonymity prior to the fall. In such a juncture later, God felt that it was not good for man to be alone in the midst of a horde of dark pests, the reason for creating Eve also, the flesh of his flesh and the bone of his bone. Eve was again the first random guinea-pig woman whom God created among the celestials. Eve might have been a ploy for thwarting the Devil’s cunning plan of disguising as a goddess and enticing Adam to violate the first commandment of God. If the Devil could appear as a serpent that seduced Eve to her perdition, a goddess of Devil’s model could tempt Adam also to sin, Gen.6: 1.
Thus an Omniscient God pinched a rib from Adam, not dissected the body in two halves that could create billions and trillions of human beings from a random sample of one body of the first human and replenish the earth that could allot enough angels from earth for filling the vacancies of Heavenly mansions; here comes the proof for God’s boundless ability of confronting any scenario against anyone. The handcrafted man is a miracle of miracles that testify that He could replenish the earth because the combination theory of mating with any complementing person and reproducing its own kind, human beings, in geometric progression. The crafty agent of hell didn’t imagine that God could accept the terms and conditions of creating Adam and making Eden and its diabolical tree and defeat the enemy in an ignominious way. Assuming that the forbidden tree was a joint venture of both the angels of darkness and light, we can find the indefinable and immense power of God in defeating His adversary by accepting the partnership company in the beginning and “having cancelled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross”, Col.2: 14. The forbidden tree was thus proved as a bond with its legal demand that stood against God and the Devil in the sordid life of ‘time’. However, Adam’s one body that God created should eventually come into unison as a single body at the demise of the ‘time’ ultimately, despite His hands separated the first man temporarily and creating Eve for vanquishing His enemy permanently.
God, Male or Female

"I do not believe that God is male in the conventional sense. I believe that God is neither or both. The Hindus believe in Ardha Nareeswara. The Hare Krishna temple shows the evolution from the Fish to Radha Krishna. Why is Sofia depicted as a Woman? Is she not part of the Triune God? I cannot think of the Transcendent as a Macho Chauvinist Man. Why does Genesis 1.27-28 say that God created Man as Male & Female? So God created Man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them'"
Orthodox mysticism is an explosive mix, when we look at a distance. Mythical narrations have their own inherent incoherence and incongruity. Gen.1: 27 is an introduction and the creation of Adam and Eve in detail is given in ch.2, Adam first and Eve later for a special purpose of killing Adam’s monotony. "It is not good for that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him, Gen.2:18, could be the reason for J.Milton to write, "He for God and she for God in him". Because there is only manhood in Heaven, Adam was created as a man, then Eve as the only mother of all the children on earth, in the event of them violating the commandment of God. Eve was contained in Adam prior to the creation of her. However, in afterlife, the Heavenly manhood of both man and woman will remain as separate entities, reflecting the earthly complementing roles of oneness which make as `one body' affirmative given by Jesus and apostles. The one body nuptial role on earth and other complementing functions of raising children are manifestations of mature manhood in the afterlife which is a reality of Adam being alone concept in perfect Heavenly harmony that existed prior to the creation of Eve.

Image and likeness of God
"Perhaps someone would explain why there is both masculine and feminine in God the Father and whether Jesus denied this. Can we limit God to a gender?"
No gender gymnastics or gender balance in Heaven. If God created man and woman in His image, God has a form that is proven as a man’s image because there is only “`mature manhood in Heaven', to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”, Eph. 4: 13. Eve lived in Adam prior to her creation, just as Levi was in the loin of Abraham at the time when Melchizedek met him. As Eve was separated from Adam with a likely future intention of replenishing the earth, they were created separately, Adam first as a man, woman later for maternal roles. Though woman was separated from Adam, their wedlock oneness and reproducing baby sons and daughters in the same image and likeness continue to work the sameness that existed before the creation of Eve. Man and woman may be clothed with mature manhood again in celestial spheres like Adam before his fall, despite the feminine form seemingly remain there with no sexual propensity. But Jesus only testifies the presence of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God, not the presence of Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel, Lk.13: 28. As angels are men, Eze.1: 5, 10, man and woman also get that Heavenly sonship that was at the creation of Adam, for which our imperfect mortal bodies `groan inwardly as wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies', Rom.8: 23; 9: 4; Mt.5: 45. Getting mature manhood is a redeeming process that culminates in the upper planes. “Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honour”, Ps.8: 5. “Since all have sinned and lost the glory of God….”, Rom.3: 23, the lost glory and honour will have to be earned by our strivings and penitence that are incorporated in parenting highest quality breed of noble, spiritual human beings who regain the lost Heavenly manhood by continual endurance.
God: Spirit or Body
Some religions and our own religious veterans teach that God is Spirit, not having any form or image. Man's inner body is a spark of the Spirit of God; does it mean that man has no outward form or image? Not only man has an inner body, but also he has a physical body with shape and size. Man is a trinity of body, soul or inner man that has a body image and spirit, so also the Triune God is having form and image. If the spirit of man disappears from him, he becomes a dead body that decays in this plane. Similarly, God is Spirit who has an image and likeness, the frame that Adam was created before the fall. Hence we read about the Holy Spirit in the Nicene creed as ‘the Life-giving Lord of all’. `Deham, dehi, atmavu'. Man is seemingly a nuclear translation of the Trinitarian God who is in the image of man, Ge.1: 27. "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another ; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit", 2.Cor. 3: 18; Jn.4: 24. Regaining the lost glory of God in man is the meaning of mature manhood or sonship. “His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen…", Jn.5: 38. This confirms that God has a form. This form is in the image or form of a man who passed walking in front of Moses. God also walked in Eden, could be interpreted by some theologians as a hyperbolic conjecture.

"And above the firmament over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness as it were of human form…appearance of his loins…..", Eze.1: 26-28. "All the Heavenly creatures had the form of men”, Eze.1: 5, 10. What form did the son of Amos see Him in the Temple? Do you need more proofs, if you believe in bible? That human form is reveled as man or Father, not mother from the very beginning of human history because Jesus came down in the form of His Father. “…which is yours in Jesus, , who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men”, Phi.2: 5-11. “God and I are the same”, Jn.10: 30.

The Heavenly Father
Look how many times the phrase `Father in Heaven' is repeated by Jesus the Son who has equality in the Triune God. The pronoun `He', `not she', is also another suggestion for your pondering. The Son of the Father, Jesus, is a man, not a woman. The clear proof is that He became Incarnate in a woman without an earthly father. Therefore it proves that the Heavenly Father is Jesus' Father, Lk.1: 35. `Begotten, not made; being of the same substance with the Father'. The third personae of the Triune God, the Spirit of God, is man, not woman, but a feminine solace of consoling, loving and caring aspect is reveled in the New Age because Jesus' selfless sacrifice is a sign of woman's nature of love, affection and care; men also are ought to be clothed with love, care, compassion and duty. I repeat: there is no womanhood or femininity in Heaven, there is only mature manhood and sonship there.

Jesus emptied His Heavenly equality and lived in the mortal frame for carrying the yoke of sufferings for our sins. This is what man and woman are expected to do. If you are called as woman, it is her duty to fear, obey and serve in faith and modesty, so as to be a model for their children and man to honour and work for the safety and protection of the `weaker vessel' and her children. If man and woman are claiming for the artificial equality freedom of utopia, it is not possible for one to interchange the complementing roles and functions each other every second day because we are tied up with natural and instinctive laws which cannot be severed in this plane. Only in the Lord (Heaven), there is no difference between man and woman, Greek and Jew…., as all are clothed with the garment of incorruption that has no sexual impulse. All in Heaven are Heavenly men in essence; no place there for any Heavenly womanhood.
Marriage union
In every Marriage sacrament we read Ephe.5. The celebrant dictates and the couple obeys the Pauline creed, “Wives, be subject to your husband, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church., his body, and is himself its Saviour. As church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands”, Epe.5: 21-24. Or explain, has God changed His law? “…In pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you? Gen.3: 16; 1.Tim.2: 15, “Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty”. If the Christ is the Saviour of the church, husband is the saviour of his wife, even in physical terms for her biological developments. Thus the oneness that existed before the creation of Eve continues also in physical terms through nuptial union that begets children in the same image and likeness. “…man shall leave his father and mother and joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder…Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so”, Mt.19: 5-9. Apart from maternal instincts and their varying role functions, man and woman are one in the physical plane also; they both transforms to the Heavenly manhood after leaving from this sphere of life.
One body transformation
While the conjugal union that is the source of reproducing the progeny in our own image and likeness, the most important one body spiritual accomplishment takes place by becoming a part of the Divine flock is through the receiving of the Blood and Body of Christ. Jesus is the bread that came from Heaven, Jn.6. “Give us our daily bread” refers to the mystical body of Christ, in Syriac ‘lahamo’ that means the Heavenly bread as well as the food for the body. The Body of Christ is a tonic for the spirit and also the body. In Lord’s Prayer, we say it ‘appam’, not food like tapioca, yam or sausage roll. This liturgical bread that electrifies and welding together the flock of Jesus is a common food for the believers who is conjoined as a single unit or one body. Since His own holy body was instituted and given to the 12 apostles was by the live hands of Jesus, conveying the fact that the apostolic succession comes only from those apostolic covenant and tradition that was set up in St.Mark’s mansion during the last supper. This priestly heritage was passed it on by the chosen twelve to the succeeding generations. This oneness of the flock on earth is a precursor of the sameness of one body Heavenly concept of the spiritual body.
Oneness in the Lord
“So there shall be one flock, one shepherd”, Jn.10: 16. “…and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church,… that in everything that he might be pre-eminent, Col.1: 15-…For in whom the whole fullness of deity dwell bodily, and you have come to fullness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority”, 2: 9-10. We are all one in the church; we will share the same oneness in the everlasting life. “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body”, col.3: 15. Thus the manifestations and the workings of the Heavenly oneness begin by being a part of the church that serves the food for the inner being, and the physical signs of the bodily oneness start by nuptial union in the family, the tiny duplicate of the church. As Christ, the head of the church, is a man, the person serving the mysteries must be a priestly man. Since the maleness is the Celestial reality, woman who is only called for replenishing the earth should not be a part of the decision-making body in the church that already is a symbol of spiritual femaleness.
Just as the Triune God is one and of the same essence, but of three personae, we also may enjoy the same privilege of adorning with the same commonality, despite there are big and small in the Kingdom of God.

By:

Prof By E.S.John, Australia
)Contributing Editor - OBL)

This article was originally published in Russian on this site on Holy Saturday 2008, the day before Pascha [Easter].

Last year [2007] in the Russian-language Internet, a whole campaign was conducted to discredit the miracle of the Holy Fire. On the eve of Pascha, a certain young man, a member of the Atheist Society of Moscow, published a suitably atheistic article, an “exposé " of the Holy Fire; comments on this exposé by persons of like mind with him inundated at that time nearly all Orthodox forums. On the eve of the present Pascha [2008], other anti-Orthodox forces plus various schismatic sites have again raised the same pile of criticisms supposedly compromising belief in the Holy Fire, using as an occasion some arbitrary and unjustifiable interpretations of quotes from Jerusalem Patriarch Theophilus during his recent [2008] meeting with journalists from Russia.
The fundamental idea of these “exposés” is that purportedly there are Orthodox who themselves deny the genuineness of this miracle but at the same time continue to “dupe simple, ingenuous people.” What arguments are offered to support this idea of duping and conscious deceit?
1. Professor N.D. Uspensky of the Leningrad Theological Academy (1900-1987).
Professor Uspensky did indeed consistently deny the genuineness of the descent of the Holy Fire, and dedicated to this denial a special report entitled “On the History of the Rite of the Holy Fire which is conducted on Holy Saturday in Jerusalem”, which he read aloud at a gathering in the assembly-hall at the Leningrad Theological Academy on 9 October 1949.
The fundamental position of Prof. Uspensky was not based on any irrefutable facts proving that deception from century to century has supposedly been carried out by all the Jerusalem patriarchs, but the idea that an annually repeating miracle at one and the same time is opposed to Christian teaching. He writes:
“It would be audacious to expect a fire from on high [to descend] on a particular day, hour and minute; it would be unworthy of the Christian calling to seek from year to year a sign at the Sepulchre of Christ, to Whose Divinity the Apostles and a multitude of martyrs attested with their blood; finally, it seems blasphemous to demand a supernatural fire [simply] for lighting our lampadas from Him Who for the greatest of sacraments, the Eucharist, made use of the natural fruits of the earth--bread and wine; however, among Eastern Christians—the Orthodox, Armenian-Gregorians, Jacobites and Copts—belief in the supernatural and miraculous origin of the ‘Holy Fire’ is extremely widespread.”


The healing of the paralytic. Diuonisios fresco. Photo: www.dionisy.com
We repeat, it is this impression [that it is unworthy, audacious, even blasphemous for us to expect such a miracle] that underlies Professor Uspensky’s disbelief in the authenticity of the miracle of the Holy Fire. According to the professor, Christians should, at best, express the deepest doubt at the idea of such a miracle. However, regarding what the professor at the Leningrad Theological Academy calls “audacity”, “blasphemy”, and “unworthy of the Christian calling”, is this witness in the Gospel of John:
“Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue ‘Bethesda’, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt [lame], withered [paralyzed], waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water; whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had” (John 5:2-4).
As we see, depicted in this Gospel is a genuine, regularly-recurring miracle, occurring in one and the same place—just as in the case of the Holy Fire. Thus we are forced to recognize that what is “unworthy of the Christian calling” is not belief in a regularly-recurring miracle but the professor’s personal opinion that supposedly “Christian consciousness does not permit the miraculous appearance of fire on a particular day, hour and minute; for such a situation would reduce the Christian faith to the level of the so-called natural religions.”
The arguments offered by the professor against the Holy Fire simply do not stand up to critical reasoning. Thus for example, he points out the variety in the descriptions by pilgrims in various centuries of the manner of the descent of the Holy Fire--meanwhile, all the pilgrims attest to its being miraculous--and presents these variations in the descent as “contradictions”.
However, it is well-known that in different years, the manner or descent of the Holy Fire varies: it is well-documented that once it even descended outside the Church; likewise vary the miraculous manifestations that accompany the descent. Thus it is not surprising that the pilgrims described what they saw; and what they saw were different variations in the descent of the Holy Fire. Moreover, differences can also be attributed to the fact that each of the pilgrims used his (or her) own analogies and comparisons to describe what he or she saw. To affirm on the basis of these variations that no miracle took place at all is like affirming, on the basis of variations in the testimony of witnesses in a murder case, that no murder really took place.
Then Prof. Uspensky presents the ancient description of the church service in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Holy Saturday which is contained in the Holy Sepulcher’s Typicon for the year 1122. In it we read:
“The Patriarch then falls down before the holy altar and prays with tears for the sins of the people done in ignorance, raising his hands on high, doing this three times; those around him do the same thing. The people without ceasing call out, “Lord, have mercy.” Then the Patriarch and those around him enter the Holy Sepulcher, prostrate three times and pray and implore (God) for themselves and for the people. Then he lights [a candle] from the holy light and gives it to the archdeacon, and the archdeacon to the people. Then the Patriarch, archdeacon and the others with him exit [the Holy Sepulcher].[1]
It should be noted that “holy light” is a specific term used by the Greeks in antiquity (it is used in the 10th century by Nikita the Cleric as being in common use) and even now down to the present day to indicate that specific miracle which is referred to in Russian literature as the “Grace-filled fire” and in English literature as the “Holy Fire”.
But Prof. Uspensky opines that “the [merely] natural character of the rite of the Holy Fire in the ‘Typicon’ of the Holy Sepulcher is obvious,” and that “the term ‘holy light’ is to be understood as a kindled lampada.” One is forced to admit the obstinacy of the professor in trying to use in his own support even the evidence and testimonies which obviously contradict him. Why would the Holy Sepulcher Typicon’s author use the term “holy light” for an ordinary lampada? And why would the patriarch and all those with him fall down three times before an ordinary lampada? This argument of the professor could lead astray only atheists, because every church-going Orthodox person knows that lit lampadas (oil lamps) are not something unusual—there are many of them in every church, and the process for lighting them is the same as for the candles which are lit from them; the Orthodox do not give a distinctive sacral meaning to lampadas, do not call them “holy light” and do not fall down before them before lighting a candle from them (as described in the Holy Sepulcher Typicon).
The quotations cited by Professor Uspensky from the rite of the vespers service according to the Latal’sky and Kal’sky manuscripts also do not in any way support his assumptions.
His other arguments are so strained and insubstantial that they are closer to fantasies than something worthy of serious discussion, with the exception of one source he quotes (Bishop Porphyrius), whose frequency of citation is greater even than that of Prof. Uspensky; therefore we will now consider it separately:
2. Bishop Porphyrius Uspensky of Chigirinsky (1804-1886).
The words of Bishop Porphyrius, like the main trump card, are quoted by all critics of the Holy Fire, including Prof. Uspensky. Bishop Porphyrius, when still an archimandrite, visited Palestine; and in his diary-entries are two entries “unmasking” the miracle of the Holy Fire.
First, Bishop Porphyrius quotes a certain Hierodeacon Gregory, who “upon entering the chapel of the Sepulcher at the time when, according to common belief, the Holy Fire descends, saw with horror that the fire was being lit simply from a lampada which is always [kept] burning; and so the Holy Fire is not a miracle. He himself [Hierodeacon Gregory] told me about it today.”[2]
Second is the following story, which he says he heard directly from Metropol¬itan Dionysius:
In the same year that the famous Ibrahim, Pasha of Egypt and lord of Syria and Palestine, was in Jerusalem, it was found to be that the fire received at the Lord’s Sepulcher on Holy Saturday is a ‘not-holy fire’ [lit.: not grace-filled] but is kindled in the way that all flames are kindled. How? The Pasha wanted to see for himself if the fire really does suddenly and miraculously appear on the roof of the Sepulcher of Christ or if it is lit by an ordinary sulfur match. What did he do? He announced to the Patriarch’s representative hierarchs that it would be his pleasure to sit in the chapel itself during the receiving of the fire and watch vigilantly to see how it appears; and he added that if the miracle proved to be true, he would give [to the Church] 5000 poungs (2.5 million piasters); and if it turned out to be a lie, then they would [be forced to] give him all the money collected from the deceived worshippers, and he would print about the dirty fraud in all the newspapers of Europe. The Patriarchal representatives—Archbishop Misail of Petroaravisk, Metropolitan Daniel of Nazareth and Bishop Dion¬ysius then of Philadelphia [in Asia Minor], now of Bethlehem—gathered to decide what to do. During the meet¬ing, Misail admitted that in the inner-chapel he lights the fire from a lampa¬da concealed behind the marble icon of the Resurrection of Christ located near the very Sepulcher. After this admission, it was deci¬ded to humble request Ibrahim not to meddle with religious affairs; and to the Pasha was sent the dragoman [interpreter] of the Holy Sepul¬cher Monastery, who informed the Pasha that there would be no benefit for His Radiance to get to know the sacraments and mysteries of Christian church-services and that the Russian Emperor Nicholas [I] would be greatly displeased if he started learning about these sacraments. Pasha Ibra¬him heard the dragoman out, made a giving-up-the-idea gesture with his hand, and fell silent. But from that time on, the Holy-Sepulcher clerics no longer believe in the miraculous app¬ear¬ance of the fire. Having said all this, the metropolitan added that only from God can be expected the discontinuance of (our) pious lie. As He knows and is able, he soothes the people, who believe now in the miraculous fire of Holy Saturday. And for us is forbidden even to consider such a revolutionary act [of revealing the lie]; they would tear us pieces at the very chapel of the Holy Sepulcher.”[3]
Careful examination of this story raises a series of questions and considera¬tions. First, neither Bishop Porphyrius himself nor the person he was talking to were witnesses of a fraud. Rather, Met¬ropolitan Dionysius reportedly told a Russian Hieromonk [then-Archimandrite Porphyrius]; but Metr. Dionysius was also citing not something he himself witnessed but the witn¬ess of Archbishop Misail. Thus we have not a second-hand but a third-hand report. With Arch¬bish¬¬op Misail himself, Bishop Porphyr¬ius on this subject did not communicate.
However, another Russian pilgrim did talk dir¬ectly with Archbishop Misail on that topic—Hieromonk Melety, who made a pilgr¬im¬age to the Holy Land in 1793-1794; and we see that Archbishop Misail himself spoke of the Holy Fire entirely differently, saying: “Entering the church and going to the Holy Sepulcher, we saw on the whole roof of the Sepulcher brilliant light, scattered around like small pearls, light blue, white, crimson, and other colors, which then streamed together, reddened, and became transformed in the course of time into fire; but this fire--for the period of time that it takes to say “Lord, have mercy” 40 times--does not burn; and from this fire are lit lampadas and candles.”[4]
Bishop Porphyrius and Hieromonk Melety both quote Archbishop Misail, but report directly opp¬osite things. Whom should we believe? Logi¬cally, we should give more credit to the one who spoke directly with the archbishop than to the one who heard a story from a third person who reportedly quotes Archbishop Misail. More¬¬over, this third person—Metropolitan Dion¬ysius—is likewise of greatly ambiguous char¬acter. Bishop Porphyrius himself mentions that, because of Metr. Dionysius’ instigation to massacre Catholics, the Jerusalem Patriarch “con¬ceived the desire to remove him [from his post].”[5]
Moreover, the story told by Bishop Porph¬yrius gives rise in itself to doubts. For example, it is doubtful in the extreme that Pasha Ibrahim would suddenly so easily change his mind and walk away from the chance to get a huge sum of money from the Jerusalem Patriarch, having merely heard the name of the Russian Emperor. From history it is well known that in other cases, nothing stopped Ottoman officials from extracting needed sums of money from Christian brotherhoods and societies under their jurisdiction, including in Jerusalem. This story is seems more like a legend told to a Russian pilgrim in order to flatter his national pride.
But what should we make of that story of the hierodeacon in the 19th century who supposedly spied on the activities in the inner-chapel and was convinced that “there was no kind of mir¬acle”? We have a similar story from a priest in the 20th century, Father Mitrophan, who decided to spy on the miracle--in which he doubted--; and his description is entirely different:
“I saw how the Blessed Patriarch took in his hands 33-candle bundles, raised them high above himself and began imploring God about sending down the Holy Fire. Again, very slowly, he started stretching out his arms toward heaven; he barely managed to raise them to the level of his head when suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, the four bunches of candles in his hands and a lampada were kindled, as if they had been brought near to a fiery furnace.”[6]
On what basis could we believe the story of an unknown hierodeacon more than the just-mentioned report of a person whose integrity and holiness can be attested to by our still-living contemporaries who knew him personally?
Furthermore, Bishop Porphyrius also is far from being free of suspicion of unscrupulousness, judging from his desire to affirm by these and other stories “adjusted” to fit his own individual, personal hypotheses. He is known as a person who repudiated the story of the miraculous appearance of the Mother of God on Mount Athos (“The Mother of God was never on Athos and never even thought about it”), considering that Athonite monks dreamed up the story in order to deceive pilgrims and thus increase the income of their monastery. And this same Porphyrius, an archimandrite at the time, tried to convince Holy Hierarch [Saint] Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, that the Greek new-martyrs were “self-willed, self-called” martyrs, and that Athonite monks supposedly specially prepared them for martyrdom in order to then have their relics. Holy Hierarch Philaret was vigorously opposed to such a view, and in answer, “defended the Athonites and their martyrs, citing as examples ancient passion-bearers who offered themselves for martyrdom and whom the Church then enrolled in the choir of confessors.”[7] In conversations with Holy Hierarch Philaret, Father Porphyrius sometimes “permitted himself to use sharp expressions, from which he himself would then come to feel embarrassment. Father Porphyrius relates that in one of these cases, “Vladyka [Philaret] gave me a significant glance, and I bit my tongue…and changed the conversation to another topic.”[8]
As we see, Bishop Porphyrius was a person of highly personal ideas, prejudiced against miracles in general and much biased against Greek piety, whether expressed on Mount Athos or in Jerusalem. Taking into account his views, it is not at all surprising that he collected everywhere tales and fables which would validate his prejudices.
By all appearances, he himself was deceived by these stories. Anyone who has been at holy places knows that near them are a substantial number of doubtful characters who are ready to say any kind of rubbish in order to attract attention to themselves. Nevertheless, such a phenomenon as the spreading of false tales with great aplomb is found not only at holy places; one should think that many readers here have had the displeasure of observing this phenom¬enon and perhaps of suffering from it as well.
That the stories told by Bishop Porphyrius are mere gossip follows also from the fact that in more recent times the inner-chapel of the Lord’s Sepulcher was renovated, and no kind of hiding places behind “out-swinging icons” were found.
3. Archbishop Melety Smotritsky of Polotsk (1578-1633) and Patriarch Kirill Lucaris of Constantinople (1572-1638).
Archbishop Melety is remembered with sorrow as the person who turned from Orthodoxy to Catholicism and by means of various intrigues attempted (unsuccessfully) to draw after him his whole flock. In 1627, already having converted to the Unia[9], he wrote a letter to Patriarch Cyril Lucaris of Constantinople trying to incline him towards Catholicism; and in this letter, among other things, he wrote about the Holy Fire as not genuine, quoting the words of Cyril himself. “Y[our] Ho[liness] probably remembers that once I asked you why your representative hierarch, Archbishop Melety, when writing against the new Roman calendar…completely neglects to mention that great annual miracle in Jerusalem? To that question, Y[our] Ho[liness] answered me in the presence of two of your domestic high officials…that if this miracle really was taking place in our times, then all the Turks would long before already have believed in Jesus Christ. Even more sharply spoke of this the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the very one who gets the flame, brings it out and distributes it to the people. Thus, it is sorrowful to say that, regard¬ing this miraculous flame which in the past really did appear but now because of our sins has ceased to appear, our Orthodox brothers prefer to be in accord with the heretics, such as the Eutychians, Dioscorites and Jacobites, rather than with the Catholics, who do not believe in this miracle for a very valid reason, especially in view of what the heretical Abyssynians do at the Lord’s Sepulcher during this time.[10]
One must say that the previously-mentioned Patriarch Cyril Lucaris of Constantinople is likewise sorrowfully well-known for renouncing Orthodoxy in the direction of Calvinism, which he expressed in his “Confession of Faith”, which is completely Calvinistic both in spirit and in letter. The “Confession” of Cyril Lucaris was condemned as a heresy by six Orthodox Councils in a row: the Council of Constantinople in 1638 (in which Cyril Lucaris himself was anathematized), the Council of Kiev in 1640, of Jassky in 1642, of Constantinople in 1672, of Jerusalem in 1672, and of Constantinople in 1691.[11]
If we examine the views and biographical particulars of both of these “Orthodox” hierarchs, we see that it is no surprise that they repudiated the miracle of the Holy Fire (which corroborates the truth of Orthodoxy), since one of them later converted to Catholicism, and the other de facto was a Protestant in his faith. Melety’s unspecific citing of the Jerusalem Patriarch in this connection likewise does not deserve credence, especially since he did not report what the Patriarch actually said. Moreover, considering how many times Melety converted to the Unia and then returned to Orthodoxy, accompanied by the solemn and public burning of his personal books and repudiation of his words, one is forced to recognize that the word of such a person carries very little weight, if any.
4. Gevond, a priest of the Armenian Church.
People skeptical of the Holy Fire also quote the words of a certain priest of the Armenian Church which were posted on one of the Armenian forums.
These words call forth astonishment in that it is atheists who quote them as evi¬dence that there is nothing miracu¬lous about the Holy Fire. This is sur¬pris¬¬ing in that this priest affirms that the annual miracle at the Holy Sepulcher Church in Jeru¬s¬¬alem started manifesting supposedly due to the prayers of Saint Gregory, the Enlightener of Arm¬enia (4thC), and further on writes:
We in Jer¬usalem do not call [this miracle] the ‘Grace-filled Fire’ but ‘Light’—‘Luyis’, bec¬ause for us, it is a prototype of Christ: ‘I am the Light,’ as the Lord said. Over the course of history, there have been occur¬r¬ences when in a mira¬c¬¬u¬lous manner the cand¬les lit them¬selves at the Lord’s Sepulch¬er….
And thus, this priest of the monophysite Armenian Church does not deny the miracle at all. He denies it only in regard to the role of the Orthodox Church, which supposedly “deceives its faithful into believing that the Fire desc¬ends from heaven.” According to him, this is what happens:
“At two o’clock in the afternoon, the doors are opened and the Greeks carry in there a covered (and lit) lampada and put in on the Sepulcher. After that, the Greeks begin a Procession of the Cross around the Sepulcher; for the third circle around [the Sepulcher], the Armenian archimandrite joins them, and together they move up to the doors. The first to go in is the Greek Patriarch and after him the Armenian. And both enter the Sepulcher, where both, kneeling, pray tog¬ether. After this, first the Greek lights his candles from the lit lampada, and then the Arm¬enian.”
[ “In past centuries, the Armenian bishop has at times accompanied the Greek Patriarch as far as the narthex of the tomb. Presently, both the Armenian and the Coptic bishops wait outside the tomb. Once the Holy Fire descends, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch passes torches to the Greek and Armenian Bishops through specially designed holes near the front of the Holy Sepulchre, the Copts receiving it seconds later. These hierarchs then distribute the Holy Fire to their own people.” Source: “Fire from Heaven: Holy Saturday at the Lord’s Tomb.” Mother Nectaria McLees. Road to Emmaus (journal), Vol.1, No.1. 2000, p.10. Whether the Armenian bishop enters the first part of the tomb (the narthex) or remains outside at the door is in a sense not important; in either case, he is within a few feet of the Patriarch and carefully observes everything the Patriarch does. –quote from the journal Road to Emmaus provided by translater.]
The reasons why this priest Gevond decided to write about it are given by him in his introduction:
“This ‘Fire’ has become the personal property of the Orthodox. The “Fire” is brought forth as proof of Orthodoxy; that is, specifically at the prayer of the Orthodox [Patriarch], this ‘Fire’ descends from heaven. This ‘Fire’ proves that only the calendar of the Orthodox is true, since it is only on that day that the ‘Fire’ descends.”
Thus Gevond, not being Orthodox, explains his displeasure.
Only one thing in the preceding is not understandable: If the whole “trickery” of the Greeks is that they, in the sight of all, bring into the inner-chapel a lit lampada, from which later during the time of the service they light the candles and pass them around, then why do the Armenian clerics take part in this rite at all, and why have things gone so far on occasion that Armenian clerics have tried to take away from the Greek patriarch the candles which have been kindled from the Holy Fire? Was it simply that they didn’t have a match?
5. Certain Orthodox eye-witnesses who affirm that the Holy Fire scorches and burns like an ordinary flame.
One of these sources are the words, posted on an internet forum, of Hieromonk Flavian:
“Unfortunately, it burns. In 2004 my friend literally five minutes after receiving the Holy Fire (we had not even left the church) tried to “wash himself” in the fire. His rather slight beard began to flare up. I had to cry out to him to put it out. I had a video-camera in my hands, and so that sorrowful incident was recorded….I myself also tried following the example of others: I held my hand over the flame. It’s a fire like [any other] fire. It burns!”
This is quoted in the above form by the atheists. The four dots indicate that something is left out of the quote. Here is what is left out:
“We came to the conclusion that our faith is weak. However, it is strange that people by the thousands expect miracles from this annually occurring phenomenon. It is already a miracle in itself that the Fire descends from heaven. Thanks be to God for that!”
As we see, this eyewitness-- whose words are quoted by people who have never been to Jerusalem as supposedly disproving the genuineness of the miracle—does not at all deny the fact of the miraculous descent of the Fire; moreover, he provides an explanation for why he and his friend did not experience the miraculous qualities of the Fire. The explanation is very reasonable and does not refute or cast doubt on the first-hand accounts—many captured documentarily—of thousands of people who, on the contrary, did experience that the Holy Fire in its first minutes does not burn.
On that same internet forum, one can find, for example, such stories:
[A woman writes:] “I myself was a witness of this miracle. And the fact that it is a miracle I do not doubt in the least. Those bursts of light which light up the whole Church of the Lord’s Sepulcher are like the flashes from a photographic camera, only they are much more powerful, such as man has not yet created. And the flashes of lightning I saw for myself. And it’s true that the Fire does not burn. Is it not a miracle that for so many centuries, among such huge crowds (everyone stands crowded so tightly together that it’s difficult to raise your hand) there has never been a fire? You can’t imagine how much fire is around everywhere—and there has never been an accident. I lived in Jerusalem for a fairly long time; no one there has any doubt that it is a real miracle.”
[A man writes:] “My personal impressions of the Holy Fire, the descent of which I had the good fortune to observe three times:
1. Before the descent of the Fire, everywhere in the whole church, flashes of light descend. I saw them even in those places where the pilgrims had no cameras (the side-chapel of the Finding of the Cross of the Lord).
2. The fire descended, according to her faith, to Mother Maria, then laboring for the Lord in the Monastery of the Cross. Anyone who knows this selfless laborer, restoring more than one monastery in the Holy Land, could not suspect her of lying or collusion.
3. The Fire at first indeed does not burn and beards are not singed—I saw and experienced it personally.”
[Another man writes:] “First there, then here, many people’s candles began to burn right in their hands. The people hadn’t even lifted the candles over their heads. And then people began to pass this Holy Fire to each other….Overhead are bursts and flashes of this Holy Fire, and from it fly out in different directions burning sparks which light the Christians’ candles. This I saw with my own eyes….The Holy Fire has a special quality—in the first minutes it does not burn or singe. I took that bundle of [33] candles, touched it in the form of a cross to my forehead, mouth, and cheeks—there was no kind of burning or scorching. Then the fire begins to burn like a torch, the whole bundle [of candles] throws off sparks and light, but in the first minutes it does not burn.”
Those who wish may find still more testimonies of eye-witnesses of the miracle—our contemporaries.
But of course it is not surprising that under certain circumstances the Holy Fire may burn someone. This does not in any way detract from its miraculous character. Thus, for example, the fire which by the word of the prophet Elijah came down upon the dishonorable soldiers who were sent to take him, was both miraculous in its origin and greatly burning in its action.
6. Deacon Andrei Kuraev, quoting Patriarch Theophilus III of Jerusalem.
Father Andrei Kuraev, after his return from Jerusalem where he was present at the meeting [2008] between Patriarch Theophilus and journalists from Russia, gave out [in Russian, except for the word “representation”] the following statement: “No less candid was his [the Patriarch’s] answer about the Holy Fire: ‘This ceremony is a “representation”, like all of the other ceremonies of Holy Week. Just as long ago the Paschal news from the Sepulcher shone forth and enlightened the whole world, so now we also in this ceremony carry out a representation of how the news of the Resurrection from the Sepulcher spread throughout the whole world.’ In the Patriarch’s speech was neither the word ‘miracle’ nor the word ‘descent’. About a cigarette-lighter in his pocket he probably could not have spoken in a more candid way.”
This interpretation of the Patriarch’s words is open violence on the actual content of the text. The Patriarch in no way denied the miraculous descent of the Fire but was speaking here only of its significance.
What is hidden in the word ‘representation”, which Father Andrei left as is, without translation? Mueller’s English-Russian Dictionary gives the following meanings [translated from the Russian]: “1) idea, notion, conception; presentation, portrayal, picture; 2) image, depiction, symbol; 3) (often pl) assertion, statement, affirmation; declaration; 4) a presentation or production, as of putting on a play; 5) the condition of serving as an official delegate, agent or spokesman; 6) protest.”
It is clear that Father Andrei understood the word “representation” in its fourth meaning, “a presentation or production, as of a play”; but this interpretation does not fit, because then we get the translation: “This ceremony, which is a production or putting on of a play, like all the other ceremonies of Holy Week,” which implies that supposedly the Jerusalem Patriarch considers the church-services in general of the Ortho¬dox Church to be “play-productions”.
In actual fact, it is clear that the Patriarch used the word “representa¬tion” in its more common meaning; and in this case there is nothing “subversive” in his words; his meaning was simply: “This ceremony, which is a depiction, a portrayal, like all the other ceremonies of Holy Week….We in this ceremony give an image, a depiction of how the news of the Resurrection spread from the Sepulcher-chapel throughout the whole world.” The word “ceremony”, which was also not translated but simply transcribed [letter by letter] by Father Andrei, has the basic meaning of “rite”; and among less common meanings, “etiquette” and “formality” (according to Mueller). If we want to take a stab at the Jerusalem Patriarch, why not here also play with meanings in a translation of this spirit: “No less candid was his answer about the Holy Fire: ‘This formality, which is a play-production, like all the other formalities of Holy Week…”?
Finally, that the words and interpretations of Deacon Andrei Kuraev do not correspond to reality, was reported with sorrow by Vladimir Yakunin, head of the Trustee Council of the Apostle Andrew Foundation and organizer of this very trip of the journalists to the Holy Land: “To tell the truth, I am distressed by the interpretations which are given on the Kuraev site….In the recordings of what the Patriarch said, given in the English language, we hear how he consistently uses the term “Holy Fire”. In my view, there is no basis at all for interpreting the Patriarch’s words as if he were in essence denying the holiness of the “Holy Fire”. [italics added]
By the way, if we wish to take a look at what other Jerusalem Patriarchs have said about the Holy Fire, then why not recall the words of the previous Patriarch, Irinaeus I: “Those who do not believe in the Holy Fire are worms and rubbish!”
Three problems for skeptics
It is not surprising that atheists, heretics and schismatics contrive to deny the genuineness of the Holy Fire. But it is surprising that sometimes they are joined by Orthodox who seem to think that it’s no big deal to deny the genuineness of this miracle. As if a true believer could be indifferent: either the Lord is really sending a sign, or for over a thousand years the Jerusalem Patriarchs and hierarchs, among whom are not a small number who have been glorified in the choir of the saints, have been cynically deceiving the Orthodox of the whole world, moreover on the eve of the Feast of Feasts.
Any person with a sense of honor notices the difference between these two choices.
A person educated in Orthodoxy also knows that this difference was emphasized unequivocally in the resolutions of the Local Council of Constantinople in 1084:
“To those who, rather than with pure faith, in simplicity of heart, and from their whole soul, accept as undoubted realities, the great mir¬acles done by our Saviour and God, by our Holy Lady the Mother of God who without defilement gave Him birth, and by the other saints, instead make efforts by means of world¬ly wisdom to present these miracles as imposs¬ible or misinterpret them according to their own ideas, and stubbornly persist in their opinion—anathema.”
Personally I cannot consider convincing the objections of the critics of the Holy Fire for a whole series of reasons. For example, I don’t understand how all their hypotheses— by the way, often contradicting each other—could explain the fact, for example, that in the ninth century the Moslem ruler of Jerusalem ordered that metal (copper) wicks be placed in all the lampadas; and despite this, in the sight of everyone, the fire descended and the metal wicks caught fire and began to burn. This is attested to by both Greek historians (Nikita the Cleric) and by Arab historians (Biruni). And of what use are “lighter in the pocket” explanations when candles outside the Sepulcher chapel are ignited before the very eyes of the pilgrims, or when the fire comes down from icons, etc.
But in particular three problems for skeptics arise to which I have so far not been able find a clear solution in any of the “skeptical” articles:
1. The bursts of light.
Frequently (although not every year) pilgrims observe, before the descent of the Holy Fire, bursts or flashes of pale blue light in the church, similar to those which occur during flashes of lightning. They are documented on video-film (see: http://www.holyfire.org/image/blist.mpg).
Skeptics confidently affirm that these bursts of light are nothing but camera-flashes. There is indeed a certain similarity, but photo-flashes are much, much weaker and don’t have that particular hue [shade of color].
And another snag arises for the skeptic: how to deal with the fact that ancient eye-witnesses of the miracle described the same phenomenon of supernatural light.
Take, for example, Nikita the Cleric who, visiting Jerusalem in the year 947, wrote: “The Archbishop had still not come out of the Sepulcher when one could suddenly see the whole Church of God filled with an irresistible and Divine light, so that the pious people moved now to the right side, now to the left….In the presence of such an unexpected manifestation of light, all were filled with amazement, so that even the godless Hagarenes were thunderstruck and put to shame…Now, during the present time, the Divine outpouring of light has expanded and filled the whole church.”[12]
Igumen [Abbot] Daniel, visiting the holy places in 1106-1107, testifies: “Then suddenly a holy light began to shine in the Sepulcher, and bright sparkles emanated from the Sepulcher.”[13]
The pilgrim Triphon Korobeinikov, who was in Jerusalem in 1583, affirms that in the church “fire comes…like lightning from heaven.”[14]
It is to be recalled that in the 10th, 12th, and 16th centuries, photo-flashes did not exist.
2. Documentary proof that the Holy Fire does not burn.


Photo: Micah Walter
If we look at even one video-clip available on the internet, we will see, as an example, that a pilgrim for three seconds holds his hand in the flame of a whole bundle of [33] candles; in another case, a different pilgrim holds his hand above the flame for five seconds; and in a third shot, an elderly pilgrim holds his hand in the flame for five seconds.
In any case, we know that with an ordinary flame, especially over it, it is very difficult to hold one’s hand for even one second. Anyone who doubts this can check it out right now, holding his or her hand over a lit match or burning candle, or over a lighter or any ordinary flame. So check it out. Can you do it for five seconds, or at least three? Be sure to have handy some anti-burn ointment and a big band-aid!
It is worthy of note that the young atheist (mentioned at the beginning of this article) who a year ago [2007] made available on the Internet his “exposé” of the Holy Fire, besides other things, showed a video where he passes his hand over ordinary lit candles. And although it seemed to him that this was the same as the pilgrims did, it’s quite noticeable that during the four-second clip, he pulled his hand out of the flame four times, which is not true of the video-clips of the pilgrims.
Thus, we can say that either the Holy Fire did not burn these pilgrims shown on the video-clips, or else the Lord every year on Holy Saturday grants ordinary people great self-control and strength of will when burned by fire in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Or we might say: before us is either a miraculous flame, or miraculous people who don’t feel pain from ordinary fire.
3. Other yearly Orthodox miracles.


Snakes in Keffalonia
When critics of the Holy Fire are logically consistent –stubborn?—and carry their views far enough, they often end up toppling their own criticism. Let us turn our attention to the fact that, in addition to the annual descent of the Holy Fire, there are other miracles which regularly occur in the Orthodox world and are accessible for anyone wishing to be convinced of their genuineness.
Let us take for our example the miracle with the snakes on the Greek island of Cephalonia in the village Markopulo. Earlier here was a women’s monastery which was attacked by pirates. The nuns prayed for rescue in front of the “Longobard” icon of the Mother of God. And a miracle occurred: When the pirates broke down the monastery gates, instead of nuns they saw snakes and fled in terror. Now every year, precisely on the Feast of the Dormition [Assumption] of the Mother of God, during the liturgy, snakes from all over the island crawl into the church located on the monastery grounds. For the duration of the whole service, they are among the people. People touch the snakes, pick them up, even drape them around their necks; but the snakes do not harm anyone. After the service, they crawl out of the church and do not return until the following year. All this has been caught on video. And anyone who wishes to see for themselves can go to Cephalonia on 15 August.
Known also are other regularly occurring miracles granted by the Lord for strengthening Orthodox Christians, but here it is enough to mention Cephalonia; if Orthodox and non-Orthodox skeptics deny the miracle of the Holy Fire, then what will they say about this miracle? What kind of cigarette lighter allures these snakes to come into the church? If in the case of the Holy Fire, speculation centers around the fact that the miracle happens in the tiny chapel to which only the Patriarch has access, here in Cephalonia the miracle occurs before the eyes of all the parishioners.
Apparently, religious skeptics, heretics and schismatics are especially against the Holy Fire because its existence especially scorches their souls.
***
In a short article, it is not possible to mention all the evidence and testimony about the Holy Fire and all the history and stories connected with it; therefore, whoever is interested is recommended to visit the site “Holy Fire. Holy Fire in Jerusalem is yearly miracle in Church of Holy Sepulchre”, where they also critically investigate other attempts [than those mentioned here] to call into question the genuineness of this miracle of God.
In conclusion, it would not be superfluous to quote one more direct witness of the miracle, our contemporary, Bishop Gabriel of Blagoveshensk in the Far East of Russia.
“Did you see how the Paschal Fire descends?”
“Yes, I saw it two times. Archbishop Anthony Zavgorodny was still alive then. And when on Holy Saturday the Patriarch came out with the Holy Fire, Vladyka Anthony and I did not try to light our candles from it, but quickly scurried into the chapel of the Lord’s Sepulcher; one Greek ran in, plus Vladyka and I. And we saw in the Sepulcher of the Lord a flame of a [dark] blue, heavenly color; we took it in our hands and washed ourselves with it. For a certain number of seconds it didn’t burn, but then it acquired its usual powers and we lit our candles.”
“The Fire was burning directly on that large, flat stone covering the Tomb?”
“Yes, on that stone. And all the lampadas were burning. And the whole stone was covered with fire….You have to see it! I also, if I hadn’t seen it, would have my doubts. But I saw it myself: The Fire is ablaze and we are washing ourselves. Everywhere is only rock and marble—and every¬thing is covered with fire. No soot, no nothing….The fire is simply burning— that’s all.”[15]
Yuri Maximov

NB: All sources are in Russian.
[1] Dmitrievsky A.A. Church Services of Holy [Passion] Week and Bright [Easter] Week in Holy Jerusalem, 9th-10th Centuries. Kazan’, 1894. pp.175-179.
[2] The Book of My Life. Diaries and Notes of Bishop Porphyrius Uspensky. St Petersburg, 1894. Part 1. p.671.
[3] The Book of My Life. St Petersburg, 1896. Part 3. pp.299-301.
[4] Quoted from: Avdulovsky F.M. The Holy Fire Coming Out from the Sepulcher of Our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Moscow, 1887. pp.46-47.
[5] The Book of My Life. Part 3. p231.
[6] Axilleos, Archimandrite Savva. I Saw the Holy Fire. Athensm 2002.
[7] Lebedev A.P.”Great [Things] in Small [Things]…”. Research on the History of the Russian Church and Development of Russian Church-History Scholarship. St Petersburg, 2005. p. 344.
[8] For more detail, see Gorozhanin A. In Defense of Holy Tradition from the Attack of Protestantizers//The Grace-filled Fire. No 17.
[9] The Unia; the Uniate Church: Any Eastern Christian church that acknowledges the supremacy of the pope but retains its own distinctive liturgy. American Heritage Dictionary. [–trans.]
[10] Ivinsky P. Eastern Slavic Literature in the Great Lithuanian Princedom. Vilnius, 1998. pp.111-112.
[11] Dvorkin A.L. Essays on the History of the Ecumenical Orthodox Church. Nizhny Novgorod, 2005. p.852.
[12] Papadopulo-Kerameus, A.I. The Story of Nikita the Royal Cleric: Epistle to Emperor Constantine VII the Porphirogeniture about the Holy Fire, written in the year 947. St Petersburg, 1894. pp.10-11.
[13] The Life and Journey of Daniel, Igumen of the Land of Rus’.//Book of Journeys. Notes of Russian Travelers in the 11th-15th Centuries. Moscow, 1984. p.77.
[14] Quoted from: Avdulovsky F.M. The Holy Fire….p.27.
[15] Conversation with Bishop Gabriel of Blagoveschensk. // http://www.pravoslavie.ru/guest/gavriil.htm

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His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr, Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church


His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr:

"The tradition of high officials to scurry from one church to another is a vestige of the post-soviet era."

How close to the Church our political leaders actually are, why the divine services are not conducted in Ukrainian, the opposition priests and the priests on cool foreign-made cars - these and other are the topics of our conversation with one of the most reputable world's hierarchs, the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Volodymyr (Sabodan), Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine.


"I've never seen Chernovetsky at the divine service in the church"



- Your Beatitude, all of us witnessed how on the eve of the Holy Feast of Pascha Victor Yushchenko personally distributed the Holy Fire, brought from Jerusalem, to the heads of the Ukrainian Churches. Is the head of the state occupied with his business or does he intrude into the sphere, where the laics, even the high-ranking ones, should stay aside and pray?

- The official delegation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church received the Holy Fire from the hands of the Patriarch Theophilus of the Holy City of Jerusalem. Then the shrine was delivered to the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra by the special flight in the container-lampad. There we distributed the Holy Fire to the representatives of the dioceses of our Church and to the faithful. Regarding the action of the president and representatives of other Christian confessions at St.Sophia, it reminds the Gospel story about Apostle Peter, who, following Christ, turned back and saw another apostle, following them. Then Peter asked: "Who is that?" The Lord answered him: "What is that to you? You follow Me!" And so we do - we try not to evaluate the actions of the authorities, but simply to follow Christ, keeping the Holy Orthodox faith and the Holy Orthodox Church.

- Since we started speaking about the powers that be... The mayor of Kyiv Leonide Chernovetsky has repeatedly declared that he is a true orthodox Christian and attends the divine services in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. At the same time - the patronage, if not membership, of Leonid Mykhailovych in the God's Embassy sect. Vladyka, do you approve of such confessional multi-vectoredness, as our political leaders say?

- The Church is not a reconnaissance unit, able to detect precisely, what the confession the parishioner belongs to. We always believe the word of the one who comes and witnesses of his faith, knowing that while one can cheat us, it is impossible to cheat God. Regarding the Kyiv mayor's visits to Lavra, it happens very seldom and I have never seen Leonid Mykhailovych at the divine service in Lavra on a usual Sunday. The tradition of the functionaries to visit different churches of different confessions on Pascha or Christmas, which developed after the fall of the atheist rule, is in my view a vestige of the post-soviet era. Everyone is to know what Church he belongs to and what temple he is a parishioner of. It concerns a mayor, a prime-minister or a president.


- In the media they speak about some internal church opposition (in the UOC) to an increasing degree. The heads of the Dioceses of Odessa and Donetsk openly declared their dissent with the policy of the Kyiv Metropolis. They even had arranged demarche in Moscow (on the eve of elections of the new Patriarch - Author). Your Beatitude, the opposition is a must for the deputies, but in the Church - where may it lead us? Maybe to yet another split (a plague on me for saying such things!)?

- In the Church there may be dissidence, of which Apostle Paul had already spoken. The main thing is that this dissidence should not break the God-commanded unity. And since by the present I do not see any preconditions for any divisions in our Holy Church, I think those talks about "oppositions" to be not only ungrounded, but even harmful. And if there is a discussion in the Church on some or other questions, it's a witness of our openness and restoration of conciliarity.


"The Church does not approve of participation of clergymen in the political struggle"



- Last year Fr. Dmitry Sidor, notorious because of the Rusins' movement (one of the activists for the autonomy of Transcarpathians - Author) greeted the believers by the Internet, quoting for some reason the Paschal Epistle of the Patriarch of Serbia. Vladyka, could you tell, does the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church spread to Transcarpathians or they have already changed to the Patriarchate of Serbia there? And is the Church going to admonish one of its pastors, who puts in doubt not only the church unity, but also the state integrity of Ukraine?

- The Church does not approve of participation of the clergy in political struggle. We sincerely pray that the pastoral attitude of Fr. Dmitry dominate over political. And there is nothing wrong with the fact that a priest in his address to the flock quotes the hierarch of the One in Christ Orthodox Church, of the Serbian Church. The Transcarpathians are under jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.



- In Ukraine for almost twenty years the talks about autocephaly (independence from the Moscow Patriarchate) have not abated. To your mind, what actual harm of benefit, on the contrary, can full independence of the UOC bring about?

- At present the discussions on the change of the existing canonical status (whether it is autocephaly or not) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are irrelevant, since they do not work for strengthening of the unity of our Church, but can bring about new splits. For me, the unity of our Church is more important than its canonical status. The UOC should have the status that the entire Church wants to have: both the clergy and the faithful. And there is no unity of opinion on the issue, therefore we realize that forcing of events will cause only aggravation of splits between the Orthodox people.

"Many political Leaders come to the Church only when the TV and photo-cameras are working"



- Vladyka Volodymyr, to your opinion, does the policy regarding the church problems pursued by President Yushchenko work for the unity and consent in the Church?

- I'm heartily grateful to the President for his respect of the Church and non-interference into our internal matters. I understand his desire to restore unity of the Ukrainian Church. But I'm sure that the government and the politicians, in their desire to help the Church, should not ignore the opinion of the Church itself and her rules as well. Unfortunately, in our country the authorities develop and try to realize the scenarios of reunification on their own, without having asked the Church's advice.

- Very often on the sites of our powers that be one can see the messages like "Yulia Volodymyrivna to pray at St. Jonah Monastery" or "Victor Fedorovych to pray at Kyiv Caves Monastery Tomorrow". To my mind, displaying (or replication) of one's intention to visit the God's church is a pure public relations campaign. Or am I wrong?

- The fact that the politicians are not ashamed of their religiosity is positive, since they are example for many millions of people. But I know that many of them come to church only when the TV and photo-cameras are working.

- Officially, one may conduct services in the UOC in any language (including Ukrainian), but in practice the Ukrainian language parishes are few, and most of them are in West Ukraine. Why is there no Ukrainian language parish in Kyiv, since in the missionary perspective it might be a great success?


- The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has never set a task of Ukrainization of the liturgical services. On the contrary, our parishes are guardians of tradition of using the Church Slavonic language of worship. Moreover, the majority of our parishioners advocate preservation of this tradition. And Ukrainization is often demanded by people who seldom go to church and do not know the beauty of the church singing and reading. We use Ukrainian when we perform social services on the days of state holidays or while blessing the monuments, offices or enterprises.


"Where there's cash, there is a temptation for a priest"


- In the last elections Deputy Abbot of Lavra, Vladyka Pavel stood for elections to the Kyiv City Council. But doesn't the resolution of the Council of the UOC, prohibiting the clergymen to take part in elections, concern not all the representatives of the UOC?

- The prohibition for clergy to stand for election was approved in order that clergymen should pay more attention to their flock and the church matters. However, in her canonical practice the Church sometimes allows digressions from the established church norms for the Church's benefit. At present Archbishop Pavel as Deputy Abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra often has to settle financial and ownership matters at the level of the city authorities. So if the status of the Kyiv Council deputy will help him in resolving actual problems, an exclusion from general rule can be made. However, the administrative assignments of Vladyka Pavel should not interfere with his archpastoral ministry.


- Let's face it - now the profession of priest becomes more and more profitable affair. Sometimes one can see a priest driving to the church in a car, which is not within the pocket of every businessman, to say nothing about simple parishioners. Does the UOC administration undertake anything to prevent further commercialization of the Church?

- The Church has to resolve the questions of her material welfare on her own - for the sake of her missionary, liturgical, educational and social activities. And where there is cash, there is temptation for a priest. But all the material matters of the Church should be conducted in the limits of the Christian conscience and state legislation. Compliance with all that depends individually on one or another church hierarch.

Concerning profitability of the priest's profession, it is not so plain here. The majority of our priests serve in the parishes, whose income is more than moderate. On the contrary, for them the means of material support are being raised at the diocesan and deanery levels. And again, the Church does not demand money from anyone. The donations are voluntary, and a believer can buy an icon or a candle in the church by the price corresponding to his level of income.

- Thank You very much, Vladyka Volodymyr, for having found time to talk to us.

- God's help and guardian angel for your readers!

Interview taken by Vitaly Tsvid

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