Exmo2EO retweeted
The Man Who Swept the Church
Father Andrei arrived in the village with a brilliant thesis and sermons built like cathedrals. Nobody lived in them.
He never noticed Nea Vasile, the bent old man who swept the church and sang half a beat behind the choir. Once, when Vasile spilled the censer coals, Andrei said with a thin smile: "Perhaps we can leave the liturgical tasks to people who understand them."
"Forgive me, Father," the old man said, and went back to his broom.
Meanwhile, plain envelopes began appearing in the collection box. Each held money and a name in block capitals: FOR THE WIDOW MARIA, FOR HER FIREWOOD. Andrei publicly thanked "a man of standing," glancing at the mayor. The mayor lowered his eyes and corrected no one.
Then Andrei and his wife lost their baby in the fifth month.
The man who could explain prayer in three languages could not pray. At three in the morning he walked to the church. One candle burned. Vasile was kneeling, reading names from a worn notebook:
"Remember Maria and her cold house. Remember Father Andrei and his wife Ioana. And receive the little one who did not see the light into Your arms, where it is warm."
Andrei fell against the old man's shoulder and wept.
"I had a boy once," Vasile said. "He drowned at seven. I am a small man. I cannot do big things. So I do small things for everyone, and I say their names to God, because maybe nobody else does."
Six weeks later, Vasile died in his chair. In his drawer were eleven notebooks holding forty years of names, his pension receipts, and a stack of white envelopes.
On the page dated the week Andrei arrived:
FATHER ANDREI. VERY CLEVER. LORD, GIVE HIM A HEART AS BIG AS HIS HEAD.
On the last page:
TELL THE PRIEST NOT TO SAY MY NAME. THE MONEY WAS GOD'S. I ONLY CARRIED IT.
At the funeral, the church overflowed. Andrei had written nothing.
"For three years I preached to you about God," he said. "For forty years, this man spoke to God about you. I was his priest. He was my father. I did not know it until he was gone."
Then he bowed to the ground before an old man with a broom.
"God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." (James 4:6)
Pride always looks down, so it never sees who stands above it.
Andrei still sweeps that church every dawn. Then he opens a notebook of his own. The first name reads:
VASILE. WHO CARRIED IT.
Who was the hidden Vasile in your life?
Exmo2EO retweeted
“There is a temptation to reduce Orthodoxy, especially among young male converts, to a rational system of doctrines and dogmas, canons and rituals. We get all excited about the new things we are learning, and about how far superior they are to the Catholic and Protestant systems of Christian thought, or to secular and non-Christian philosophy. But because we are not mature in the Faith, we are off balance.
All these things, doctrines, dogmas, canons and so forth, are there in order to support one primary purpose: the transformation of our souls in theosis, in short, salvation. Just because you have the right doctrine, pure dogmas and strict observance of the canons does not mean that you are deified. In fact, the great spiritual fathers all say that knowledge puffs up, inflates our ego, and inflames our passions. These things will not save you. They are the context for the spiritual struggle but are not its content.
If we judge others, condemn others, criticize others and generally exalt ourselves, we are simply the new Pharisees. You can have perfect obedience to all the rules, and if you do not love your neighbor, they condemn you. You can fast perfectly, and if you judge and criticize your neighbor, you condemn yourself.
If you judge and criticize the Roman Catholics or the Protestants and their faith, and decide they are all going to hell, you have condemned yourself. It is not for us to judge anyone else’s faith or salvation. We need to worry about ourselves, and our own salvation. We must not only mercilessly persecute hypocrisy within ourselves, but any kind of arrogance, selfishness, self-centeredness, and egotism. Otherwise, we make the truth into a lie, because we take what is good and holy, and use it to not only destroy others, but inflate our own egos. If you don’t have love, St Paul says, you are a sounding gong or clanging cymbal.
The Fathers tell us, over and over, that until we have achieved a substantial degree of purification from the passions, we must not touch theology. In the early Church, the three year period of catechesis was primarily devoted to moral teaching from the Old Testament. You have to live Orthodox to understand the Faith.”
- Metropolitan Jonah Paffhausen
Exmo2EO retweeted
I testify that the Church that Jesus Christ established in 33 A.D. has been continuously led by Him for nearly 2,000 years, and therefore has never had any need of being “reformed” or “restored.” It is most commonly known today by its popular nickname, the “Orthodox” Church.
I testify that Jesus Christ has kept His promises to the Church, that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”(Matt. 16:18), and that He will be with us “always, even until the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20).
I testify that the Church is the Kingdom of God (Mark 1:15), with Christ as its King (Rev. 17:14), and that the Angel Gabriel’s prophesy to Mary—“of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:33)—has been fulfilled.
I testify that Mormonism was invented by a man who never even knew that the Orthodox Church existed, and whose conception of the Christian world was limited to Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. I testify that he believed a restoration was needed because he was aware of only those two corrupt branches Christianity, and was unaware that the trunk of that tree—the “Orthodox” Church—still existed.
I testify that 99% of Mormons are totally or almost totally ignorant about the existence, doctrines, and practices of the “Orthodox” Church.
Mormonism was founded in a culture dominated by Protestants and Roman Catholics, who have long dominated the Americas and Western Europe. In my experience, it is extremely rare to meet a Mormon who knows much of anything about the “Orthodox” Church.
I testify that the Church that Jesus Christ established in 33 A.D. was faithfully preserved in the Middle East and spread throughout Eastern Europe, with the Holy Sees at Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and beyond.
I testify that if you travel to the lands where Christianity was first established—Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Greece, and Turkey—and visit the oldest churches there, you will discover that those churches are all “Orthodox” churches. They are not Protestant or Roman Catholic.
I testify that the “Orthodox” Church is the Church that Joseph Smith was looking for, but that was not yet present where he lived, living amongst the descendants of Protestants and Roman Catholics in upstate New York in the early 1800s. I testify that the “Orthodox” Church is the Church that LDS folks *think* they already belong to, but that they do not yet belong to.
Please come and join us any and every Sunday. ☦️
Exmo2EO retweeted
Early Christian writings that LDS leaders will never tell its members exist:
orthodoxchurchfathers.com/fa…
Exmo2EO retweeted
Following a bit of the Protestant polemics against Orthodoxy recently, and I realize just how difficult it is to communicate the mind of the Church across these lines.
A simple example is seeing people confused about whether someone who is not baptised and participating in Orthodox communion can be "saved". Protestant are noticing that there are different answers in their estimation, and so are confused about them. The confusion comes from the belief that being "saved" or not is about "where you go after you die", when for the Orthodox "saved" means being made whole, being healed, being restored to the original purpose God had for us.
For this reason, when Protestants see declarations of how communion in the body of Christ is the only way to salvation, they immediately think this is a declaration that all the non-Orthodox are going to hell after they die. When Protestants then hear the very same person who just told them that salvation is in full participation to the body of Christ go on to intimate we have nothing to say about the eschatological finality of any specific soul, it is like a short circuit that many Protestants cannot compute. This is what I could see when @OrthodoxEthos and @Acts17David were discussing and it is what I have seen in @gavinortlund's videos.
In a similar vein, when a Protestant says he has the "assurance of his own personal salvation", this is confusing to the Orthodox. Orthodox also obviously have assurance of salvation, that assurance is Christ. He shows us what it means to be made whole and makes us participate in that wholeness. But how can I say that I am "saved" if I see that I am still a wretch, still prideful and arrogant and sinful? So the Orthodox, knowing they are are still sinning, though also knowing Christ has made them grow in the virtues will say something like: "I know that I am being saved." That is I can see that I am being healed, being made whole, being reformed to the resemblence of God. But again, this completely confuses the Protestant who just wants to know what will happen when you die. What side of the fence will you end up on?
I am not sure how to get accross these lines, and I feel that unless we can, we will perpetually be talking past each other.