A Significant Doctoral Dissertation on “The Interpretive Framework of the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor”

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

On June 25, 2013, I attended, in the Conference Hall of the Theological School of Thessaloniki, the defense of the dissertation of Mr. Georgios Siskos, which was submitted to the Department of Pastoral and Social Theology, on the topic “The Interpretive Framework of the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor,” following a request by the doctoral candidate.

The truth is that I myself also showed interest in this dissertation, because I had discussed it with its author during the course of its preparation and had discerned its exceptional importance for the Church, theology, and our time.

The seven-member committee consisted of Professors Despo Lialiou, Demetrios Tselengidis, Konstantinos Christou, His Eminence Metropolitan Elpidophoros of Prousa, Vasilios Tsigos, Symeon Paschalidis, and Fr. Christos Filiotis-Vlachavas. During the defense of the dissertation, statements and questions were posed by the professors, and the candidate under evaluation responded thoroughly, as an excellent connoisseur of the subject — both from the perspective of the teaching of Saint Maximus in relation to Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian Christology, and from the perspective of contemporary theological bibliography on this topic.

The Meeting of Saint Maximos the Greek with Tsar Ivan the Terrible

The great Greek enlightener of the Russians, Saint Maximus the Greek (1470–1556) [21 January], spent the final five years of his life at the Lavra of the Holy Trinity, founded by Saint Sergius of Radonezh (1314–1392) [25 September].

There Tsar Ivan the Terrible (1530–1584) visited him, as he was traveling with Tsarina Anastasia and the young Tsarevich Dmitri on a pilgrimage to Saint Cyril in Belozersk.

Saint Maximus tried — ultimately without success, despite great persistence and at the risk of his life — to persuade the religiously obsessive ruler, instead of making pointless pilgrimages, to help poor women and unprotected orphans, victims of the war for the liberation of Kazan from the Turks.

He received him in his cell with the following conciliatory words, for the sake of discernment:

“I thank Almighty God, Tsar Ivan, who deemed me worthy to see you with my own eyes before the time comes for them to close. May divine protection accompany you, great king of Orthodoxy! And if it pleases you, receive also my humble blessing.”

Saint Maximus the Confessor in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

 

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

The commemoration of our Venerable Father Maximus the Confessor, the “all-blessed and all-great,” constitutes for our Church an eternal proclamation — both of his blood that was shed for the sake of the faith and of his God-inspired teachings. That is to say, our Church does not regard the celebrated Saint as something belonging merely to the past, even a glorified one — perhaps analogous to various anniversaries of national holidays — but as a living and enduring present. For his blood (as indeed that of the other martyrs and teachers of the Church) nourished the Church, and his teachings preserved unadulterated the revelation of Christ and the preaching of the Holy Apostles and the later Fathers. Indeed, these two — his blood and his teachings — were inseparably bound together: his blood was the confirmation of his orthodox doctrines.

This is not merely our own opinion concerning Saint Maximus. It is the common faith of our Church, expressed through the mouth of another great Father and hymnographer, Saint John of Damascus. In his Canon for the Saint, for example, the Holy Hymnographer notes among other things: “Even to this day and unto all the ages, O all-blessed and all-great Maximus, your blood, like that of Abel, cries aloud in the Church of Christ, proclaiming with a piercing voice your divinely-inspired dogmas.”

Prologue in Sermons: January 21

How One Should Speak with Simple, Illiterate People about the Salvation of the Soul

January 21

(From the Instruction of Saint Basil on Virtue.)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

There are many simple, illiterate people who are not acquainted either with the Scriptures or with the power contained in them. How, brethren, should you — the educated — relate to such people, and how should you instruct them? You may say: “This is not our concern; this pertains to you, the spiritual shepherds.” No, that is not true. “For teachers alone are not sufficient for the instruction of everyone individually, but God desires that each person instruct and edify another,” says the blessed Theophylact. And the Apostle Paul teaches: “Therefore comfort one another and edify one another” (1 Thess. 5:11). And Chrysostom adds: “Even if we correct everything in ourselves, yet do not benefit our neighbor, we shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

What then, you will say, should we do? This is what: when you speak with a simple person about the salvation of the soul, speak with him as simply as possible, and all will be well. “But what should we say to him?” you will object again. Say whatever the Lord places upon your heart.

The Miracle of Saint Euthymios the Great in Pronia of Nafplio

A historical retrospective, a few years before the Second World War, was recalled for us by the former high school principal of Nafplio, Vasilios Charamis, who remembers hearing it recounted by the older generations.

By Evangelos Bougiotis

It was in the years 1928–1930 when, at daybreak in Nafplio, a powerful storm broke out with heavy rain and hail. It was so intense that disaster soon followed. Tons of water swept along everything in their path. The district of Pronia suffered the greatest damage at that time: the roads — which were dirt roads then — were carved into enormous gullies, almost all the houses were flooded, and the residents, in order to save themselves, climbed onto the roofs of their homes.

When dawn came, the inhabitants saw that the calendar showed January 20, the feast of Saint Euthymios. The vow they made to Saint Euthymios was that they might be saved from destruction. And this indeed came to pass. The residents of Pronia, as one body, had an icon of the Saint made, which they placed in the Church of the Holy Trinity at the heart of Pronia, and since then they honor him every year with the blessing of bread (artoklasia) and the Divine Liturgy.

Venerable Euthymios the Great in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

Our Venerable Father Euthymios the Great lived in the time of the reign of Gratian, in Melitene, the metropolis of Armenia, and he was born of noble parents, Paul and Dionysia, like the great John the Forerunner — that is, from a barren and childless womb. For this reason he received the name Euthymios (‘Joyful’), according to the promise of God, when a voice was heard from heaven telling his parents to rejoice, as they were praying that God would grant them a child. After the death of his father, he was led by his mother to Eutroios, the great Bishop of Melitene, who enrolled him among the ranks of the clergy. Because he showed great progress in sacred learning and surpassed all his peers in asceticism and achievements in virtue, he was compelled to receive ordination to the priesthood and to accept responsibility for the holy hermitages and monasteries.

In the twenty-ninth year of his life, he arrived in Jerusalem and went to live with the Venerable Theoktistos in one of the caves of a mountain, where he freed many from grievous illnesses. It is said that he too, in the name of the Lord, fed four hundred people from very few small loaves, who were on their way to the monastery to meet him. Not only was he himself born by the power of God, loosening the barrenness of his mother, but he also made other barren women fruitful and able to bear children through his prayers. And like the great Prophet Elijah, he opened the gates of heaven and healed the land that was suffering from the barrenness of drought. The inner radiance of the Saint was revealed by the pillar of fire which those present saw descend from heaven when he was celebrating the bloodless sacrifice, remaining with him until the time of the sacrifice was completed. A sure sign of the complete purity of his heart and his chastity is the fact that the Saint perceived spiritually the disposition of those who approached to partake of Holy Communion — who among them came with a pure conscience and who with a defiled one. This blessed man, when he reached the age of ninety-seven, departed to the Lord during the reign of Leo the Great.

Saint Euthymios was comely in appearance, simple in manner, fair in complexion, well-proportioned and modest in stature, with white hair and a beard reaching to his thighs. It is also said of him that when a monk was about to depart this life — one who was thought by many to be sober-minded and self-controlled, but in fact was not, being instead licentious — the blessed Euthymios saw an angel wrench the man’s soul away with a trident and heard a voice revealing the monk’s hidden shame.

The first thing highlighted by the hymnography of Venerable Euthymios the Great — composed by two great hymnographers, Saint John of Damascus and Saint Theophanes — is his comparison with the Prophets Jeremiah, Samuel, and Saint John the Forerunner. This is because they too, like the Saint, were fruits of prayer and were sanctified from their mothers’ wombs. This signifies that God wished in this way to reveal the special grace they all possessed and their saving presence for many people through the guidance they provided toward finding God. As one of his hymns notes:

“Though yourself the fruit of barrenness, you appeared truly fruitful, for from your spiritual seed the desert that was once impassable has been filled with monks.”

“From the womb God sanctified you, venerable Father, like Jeremiah of old and Samuel, O God-bearer.”

“As of old a divine angel announced from a barren womb the birth of the Forerunner, so too did he proclaim your birth.”

The hymns of the Church focus especially on Saint John the Forerunner, whose life Venerable Euthymios sought to imitate. His imitation lay, on the one hand, in his sanctified way of life, to such an extent that he is called an “imprint,” an image of the Forerunner — “You became his living image, Euthymios, a baptizer nurtured in the mountains, without possessions, without a dwelling, shining with every gift.” On the other hand, he himself became a different kind of Baptist, regenerating people through his Orthodox teaching in the spiritual baptism of the Church, the baptism of adoption: “You refashioned them as sons of God through the baptism of adoption; for having imitated the life of the divine Forerunner, you were revealed as a Baptist, Euthymios.”

If one wished to characterize the life of Saint Euthymios in a single phrase, it would be what the Holy Hymnographer states: “Father Euthymios, your life is unsurpassed; your faith is truly Orthodox.” Orthodox faith, a life sanctified to the highest degree, orthodoxy and orthopraxy — this is the rule of life for every believer, or rather, for every person who has resolved to worship God in a perfect manner. “Your angelic life became a rule of virtue and a most exact pattern for those who choose to worship God in perfection.” It is therefore not by chance that Saint Theophanes the Hymnographer compares him, among others, to the Prophet Moses: just as Moses, by the God-given rod, split the Red Sea so that the Israelites might pass through to the promised land, so too the Saint, becoming an imitator of his virtue, rent the sea of the passions and passed unhindered into the promised land, the Kingdom of God.

The Hymnographers help us further by showing which virtues Venerable Euthymios practiced, by which he overcame the passions and, by the grace of God, gained His Kingdom. First of all, he longed for the Kingdom of God; then he clothed himself with humility, followed self-control, and pursued righteousness. Thus he was able to detach himself from the allure of this present life, for he shifted the center of his life to what abides and is eternal, out of love for the Lord. There is no other path for any human being. As long as we suppose that life is found in this present world, there is no possibility of truly living the life that is life indeed — the Lord and His grace.

“You despised the things of this life, Father Euthymios, because you longed for the heavenly citizenship; you abhorred wealth, having clothed yourself with humility; you hated pleasure and embraced self-control; you cast away injustice and pursued righteousness.”

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.

 

Holy Emperor Leo I Makellis the Thracian

 

By Demetrios Tsiroglou, 
Author – Iconographer

On the occasion of the recently past day of commemoration (20 January) and of this day of coronation (7 February) of the most pious Thracian emperor Leo I Makellis, I take the opportunity, through the present article, to refer to this great Thracian and sainted emperor of Byzantium, as proclaimed by the Orthodox Church. Strangely enough, the wider public is largely unaware of this remarkable man.

He was born in Thrace in 400 or 401 AD and succeeded the likewise Thracian emperor Marcian in 457 AD. His elevation to the imperial throne was foretold by the Theotokos herself through a miracle to Leo, who until then was unknown and insignificant. At her appearance she also revealed the sanctified water of the Life-Giving Spring, better known today as Baloukli, at which Leo, once he had become emperor, would later build the homonymous holy church. She also foretold the healing by him of a blind man, thus making the miracle threefold. At first he served as curator (steward of a household) to a general and was later enrolled in the Byzantine army, being promoted to the rank of tribune,[1] with responsibility for commanding the legion of the Mattiarii.

Prologue in Sermons: January 20

Without Love for God and for One's Neighbors One Cannot Be Saved

January 20

(From the Paterikon: the question of three monks to their spiritual father concerning those who labor without mercy and without love.)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

The Lord said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37–39). These words clearly show that love for God and love for one’s neighbor are inseparable from one another, and that the former is very deficient without the latter. Yet many think that even without love for their neighbors they will be saved, and that it is enough for them to prove their love for God by fasting, prayers, and other ascetic labors that concern only themselves. Such people are mistaken: whoever does not have love for his neighbor does not have love for God either, and thus he can never be saved.

Today, More Than Ever, Saint Mark of Ephesus Is Relevant

 

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

The great teacher and invincible defender of the Orthodox Eastern Church, Mark, was born and raised in the Queen of Cities. He was nurtured by devout parents and educated both in secular and ecclesiastical learning, to such an extent that he was renowned for his accomplishments in both. After progressing through the ranks of the clergy, he was ultimately elevated to the dignity of archpriest and appointed to the high position of Metropolitan of Ephesus. At the persistent urging of Emperor John Palaiologos, he was sent to the Latin Synod in Florence, supposedly for the union of the Churches separated for many years. There, he astonished the representatives of the Western Church with the divinely-wise depth of his words, for he alone refused to sign the blasphemous decree of that Pseudo-synod. For this reason, the Holy Church of Christ has always honored this great man as benefactor, teacher, and unique champion and invincible defender of the apostolic confession.

The Synodal decision of 1743, under Patriarch Seraphim, declares:

“The Holy Eastern Church of Christ among us recognizes, honors, and accepts this sacred Mark of Ephesus the Eugenikos as a holy, God-bearing, and pious man, zealous in devotion, as the most valiant defender and protector of our holy dogmas and of the correct reasoning of piety, and as a follower and peer of the earlier sacred theologians and adorners of the Church.”