The Pharisaical Abbot: A Didactic Story From the Life of Saint Hilarion Troitsky

The true saints always struggle to keep the genuine humility of the publican. They never believe in their own holiness and gifts. And of course, even though it may be obvious they have certain gifts of God in their lives, they never advertise them. Rather they hide them, and often ask God to have them removed for fear of falling into the passion of vainglory.

Purification, Illumination and Glorification Are EVERYTHING in Orthodoxy (2 of 3)

...continued from part one.

By Protopresbyter Fr. John Romanides

Definition of Illumination

What is illumination? Essentially, illumination is not illumination of the rational faculty. Of course there is illumination of the rational faculty: one prays, goes to church, fasts. One orientates the rational faculty towards doing the right thing: liberating slaves, helping the poor, going voluntarily to give blood, all those sorts of things.

To the Fathers, illumination is not the enlightenment of the rational faculty, but of the heart. There is the purification of the heart, then the illumination of the heart, which is not a rational enlightenment but a spiritual enlightenment - this is illumination. This is the cure. The illness is when the nous is darkened and the cure is when the nous is illumined.

Purification, Illumination and Glorification Are EVERYTHING in Orthodoxy (1 of 3)

By Protopresbyter Fr. John Romanides

The basis of Orthodoxy is the same as the methodology used in the positive sciences, and this fact needs to be properly evaluated and accurately identified. It should become a focus of interest for Orthodox Christians, as it deserves to be.

Why do we have our liturgical tradition? The liturgical tradition is an expression of none other than the tradition of purification, illumination and glorification. Take all the services: Vespers, Matins, the Divine Liturgy, the services of Baptism and Chrismation, the service for blessing of the Chrism performed by the bishops on Holy Thursday, monastic profession, marriage - all are about purification, illumination and glorification.

The People of Old and the People of Today

St. Paisios the Athonite (+ 1994) was asked:

Elder, were people better in the olden days?

It's not that they were better, it's only that the people of the olden days had simplicity and good thoughts. Today people see everything with cunning, because they measure everything only with the mind. The European spirit has done us much wrong. This is what has crippled people.

Healthy and Pathological Spiritual States

By Heracles Panagiotides, Ph.D

University of Seattle, Department of Neurological Surgery

PIETISM

Virtues have their opposites, but they also have their pseudo-virtue counterparts. Whereas faith or belief on the one hand is one of the most fundamental religious attributes, on the other hand, it is one of the most misunderstood concepts. Faith to most people is equated with a cognitive conviction that is based on acceptance of ideas that are communicated by others. The basis of acceptance is often either an emotional or a cognitive argument. It is an affirmative response to someone's saying "take my word for it". The cognitive mechanism behind this type of persuasion is a topic in itself, so I will not expand on it at this time. There is, however, another epistemological source of persuasion that is based on empirical knowledge.

This last element separates faith that comes from experience and belief that is the product of emotional or rationalistic persuasion. Subsequently, I will be referring to persuasion that is the result of a rationalistic or emotional argument as belief, whereas for empirically based conviction I will be using the term faith. This distinction is important because it represents the two different types of conviction that one finds in religion. In both cases the cognitive understanding might exist, but, while faith is the result of experience, belief comes through emotion or rational sounding arguments. Along this line of thinking, one often observes the phenomenon, where experience can produce knowledge that is beyond understanding and language. This would be the definition of a mystical experience. Another important yet difficult point is that of defining the authenticity and validity of empirical knowledge. This is a rather difficult task that also deserves a special treatment.

Saint James the Ascetic, Who Was a Rapist and Murderer

St. James the Ascetic (Feast Day - January 28)

God sees His creatures, such as man, not from what can be observed, but from the heart. And by His choices, He gives a loud slap to our respectability and pietism. If such a man as Saint James lived today, journalists would completely destroy him. Yet this man was recognized by God, and God revealed him to be one of our saints.

The Spiritual Person is not Moral, but Loving

By Archimandrite Paul Papadopoulos

Many times we hear priests talking about spiritual advancement, saying: "Let us try to become spiritual people." But what does spiritual advancement mean? Have we misinterpreted it in our minds?

When the Church Fathers speak of spirituality they are not talking about morality. The Church, my brethren, offers us spiritual, not moral perfection. Certainly the spiritual person is moral, but moral does not mean spiritual. We can achieve moral goodness by ourselves, but it is not the goal, and it should not be an end in itself, nor is morality sufficient to attract the grace of God. For example, no matter how pure you are, or chaste, or blameless your life is, even if you live a life of virginity, and no matter how just, and if everyone considers you a very moral person, yet if you do not have humility you have achieved nothing, for God "gives grace to the humble".

Anti-Orthodox Pietism

By Archimandrite Kyrillos Kostopoulos

Pietism (pietismus) is a phenomenon of Protestant religious life, which first appeared in the 17th century in the circles of Lutheranism that sought to renew the spiritual life within Protestantism with the intention of stimulating religious sentiment. In Greece pietism appeared in the broader context of the "Europeanization" of the country.

"Religious People Are Dangerous ... God Protect Us From Them"

By His Eminence Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol

Love does not fit into the molds of logic. Love is more than logic. So is the love of God. The love of God is beyond the reason of people. For this reason we cannot judge with reasonable criteria people who love God. For this reason the saints moved according to a logic of their own. They had another logic, not the logic of people. Because their logic was the logic of love. And the Church does not teach us to be good people, no, since this is natural, but if we do not become good people what do we become? This is kindergarten stuff. The Church teaches us to love Christ, that is, to love the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.