The Fear of God, by Eugene Rose

Eugene Rose  Lay Sermon  Aug. 1964

St. Seraphim of Sarov, in his “Spiritual Instructions” speaks of the “fear of God” and how it is the first absolute necessity for anyone who wishes to lead a true Christian life.  It is profitable to be reminded of this since it is all too easy for Christians to take for granted God’s love and mercy and forget with what care were are commanded to serve Him.  The words of the Psalmist, said St. Seraphim, must be engraved on the mind of every Orthodox Christian: “Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling”, as well as the strong warning of the prophet: “Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently”.

Enemies of the Church of Christ have quoted such passages to accuse Christians of believing in a ‘religion of fear.”  But they, having renounced God, are incapable of understanding this Godly fear of ours.  It is a fear based upon the nature of God we worship.  The Apostle exhorts us “to serve God acceptable with reverence and Godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire.”  St. Seraphim of Sarov also spoke often of God as a fire; and if the impure and unbelieving can only be burned by this fire, Christians who approach God with reverence and faith become filled with an indescribable warmth and joy and love.  If then we fear God, it is because we know His greatness and our own smallness, how that we are cold and empty, truly nothing, without Him; and our fear is the care we take to serve Him Who is our only happiness, so that He will not depart from us in our unworthiness and carelessness, but will always dwell near us. 

He who is filled with this fear has no other fear, not even of the devil himself.  “Do not fear the devil,” said St. Seraphim.  “He who fears God will overcome the devil; for him the devil is powerless.”  True fear of God means absolute trust in Him and love for Him, and one who possesses these is prepared for every good work; nothing is impossible to him. Every fervent Christian knows from experience the truth of the words: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” [Proverbs 9:10].

Concerning Hope

[From the Spiritual Instructions of St. Seraphim]

All who have firm hope in God are raised up to Him and enlightened by the radiance of the eternal light” wrote St. Seraphim of Sarov in his “Spiritual Instructions”. 

If a man has no care whatever for himself because of love for God and virtuous deeds, knowing that God will take care of him, such hope is true and wise. But if a man takes care for his own affairs and turns with prayer to God only when unavoidable misfortunes overtake him and he sees no way of averting them by his own power, only then beginning to hope in God’s aid, - such hope is vain and false. True hope seeks the Kingdom of God alone and is convinced that everything earthly that is necessary for this transitory life will unfailingly be given.

The heart cannot have peace until it acquires this hope. It gives peace to the heart and brings joy into it. Concerning this hope the most holy lips of the Saviour have said: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” That is, have hope in Me, and you will have relief from labour and fear.

In the Gospel of Luke it is said of Simeon: “And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Spirit, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.” And he did not lose his hope, but awaited the desired Saviour of the world and, joyfully taking Him into his arms, said: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart into Thy kingdom, which I have desired, for I have obtained my hope – Christ the Lord.

Weeping Icons of Theotokos, by Eugene Rose

Eugene Rose  Lay Sermon  Nov. 1966

Weeping Icons of the Mother of God

Of all the many ways in which the All-Holy Mother of God reveals Her mercies to men, there is one that stands out both as being undeniable (for it is a completely objective phenomenon) and as touching the heart in a most immediate way.  This is the phenomenon of weeping icons, in which images of the Mother of God produce tears that are exact replicas, on the scale of the icon, of human tears – originating in a corner of the eye and coursing the side of the face, sometimes as distinct miniature teardrops, sometimes as a flood of tears that moistens the whole face. 

America too, so late to receive Holy Orthodoxy, is now the witness of this miraculous phenomenon.  Three weeping icons appeared quite suddenly, one after the other, within two months in the spring of 1960 among Greek families in Long Island, New York.   The striking nature of this sign has drawn considerable attention to these icons, especially among Orthodox believers, but also among those outside the Church. 

It is not, perhaps, well-known that this phenomenon of weeping icons is not new, for there are records of such miraculous icons in Russian Church history as early as the 12th century.  Here we will give an account of one from the 19th century, together with an interpretation of its meaning by a bishop who lived at that time.  [From The Orthodox Word, Nov.-Dec. 1965].

This icon was located in the church of the Theological Academy at the Sokolsky Monastery in Romania.  After the Liturgy in the seminary church on February 1, 1854, it was noticed that the icon was weeping.  The rector of the seminary, Bishop Philaret Skriban, was among the witnesses of this miracle.  He took the icon out of its frame, looked at it carefully, wiped the traces of the tears off with a piece cloth and replaced the icon.   He then asked all to leave and he locked the church.  When the rector, together with the teachers and seminarians, came to the church for Vespers several hours later, all were struck by the same miraculous flow of tears from the eyes of the Mother of God.  The rector immediately served a moleben and read an Akathistos before the icon. 

Soon all of Romania knew of the miracle and began streaming to the monastery to venerate the icon.  News of it spread throughout Russia also.  The miraculous flow of tears occurred sometimes daily, and sometimes with an interval of two, three of four days.  Many were thus to see the very miracle of the icon weeping, and those who did not could see at least the traces left by the tears.  Even skeptics became convinced of the miracle.  A certain colonel was sent to the commanding officer of the Austrian occupation force (during the Crimean war) to investigate the rumoured miracle, and to his astonishment he witnessed the actual flow of tears. 

An important testimony of the miracle was offered by Bishop Melchisedek of Romansk, one of its first witnesses. Thirty-five years after the event he spoke of how he had long pondered the question of the meaning of the tears of the Mother of God.  He came to the conclusion that such weeping icons had existed also in ancient times and that such an event always foretold a severe trial for the Church of Christ and for the nation.  History justified this conclusion in the case of the Romanian weeping icon.  During the Crimean war the Principality of Moldavia was occupied by Austrian troops and subjected to severe trials.  The Sokolsky Monastery in particular had a sad future: this formerly great religious center of Romania, serving for a hundred years as a seedbed of spiritual culture, was suppressed, the seminary moved elsewhere and the monks dispersed. 

The meaning of the weeping icons of America today is not yet evident; at least one of them is still weeping after five years.   What is certain is that these tears of the Mother of God speak directly to the heart of every Orthodox believer, calling all to repentance, amendment of life and return to Orthodox faith and tradition in their fullness.

Transfiguration, by Eugene Rose 1966

Eugene Rose  Lay Sermon  Aug. 1966

The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Thou was transfigured upon the mount, O Christ our God, 

showing they glory to Thy Disciples as far as they could bear it; 

may Thy everlasting Light illumine also us sinners

by the prayers of the Mother of God.  

O Giver of Light, Glory to Thee

[Troparion of the Feast, Tone 4]

Forty days before He was delivered to an ignominious death for our sins, our Lord revealed to three of His disciples the glory of His Divinity. “And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart; and was transfigured before them: and His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light” (Matt. 17:1-2). This was the event to which our Lord was referring when He said: “There will be some standing here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom” (Matt. 16:28). By this means the faith of the disciples was strengthened and prepared for the trial of our Lord’s approaching passion and death; and they were enabled to see in it not mere human suffering, but the entirely voluntary passion of the Son of God.

The disciples saw also Moses and Elias taking with our Lord, and thereby they understood that He was not Himself Elias or another of the prophets, as some thought, but someone much greater: He Who could call upon the Law and the Prophets to be His witnesses, since He was the fulfillment of both.  The three parables of the feast concern the appearance of God to Moses and Elias on Mount Sinai, and it is indeed appropriate that the greatest God-seers of the Old Testament should be present at the glorification of the Lord in His New Testament, seeing for the first time His humanity, even as the disciples were seeing for the first time His Divinity.

The Transfiguration, counted by the Church as one of the twelve great feasts, had an important place in the Church calendar already in the 4th century, as the homilies and sermons of such great Fathers as St. John Chrysostome, St. Ephraim of Syria, and St. Cyril of Alexandria attest; its origins go back to the first Christian centuries. In the 4th century also, St. Helena erected a church on Mount Tabor, the traditional site of the Transfiguration, dedicated to the feast. Although the event celebrated in the feast occurred in the month of February, 40 days before the Crucifixion, the feast was early transferred to August, because its full glory and joy could not be fittingly celebrated amid the sorrow and repentance of the Great Lent. The sixth day of August was chosen as being 40 days before the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (September 14th), when Christ’s Passion is again remembered.

Orthodox theology sees in the Transfiguration a prefiguration of our Lord’s Resurrection and His Second Coming, and more than this – since every event of the Church calendar has an application to the individual spiritual life – of the transformed state in which Christians shall appear at the end of the world, and in some measure even before then. In the foreshadowing of future glory which is celebrated in this feast, the Holy Church comforts its children by showing them that after the temporary sorrows and deprivations with which this earthly life is filled, the glory of eternal blessedness will shine forth; and in it even the body of the righteous will participate.

It is a pious Orthodox custom to offer fruits to be blessed at this feast; and this offering of thanksgiving to God contains a spiritual sign, too. Just as fruits ripen and are transformed under the action of the summer sun, so is man called to a spiritual transfiguration through the light of God’s word by means of the Sacraments. Some saints (for example, St. Seraphim of Sarov), under the action of this life-giving grace, have shone bodily before men even in life with this same uncreated Light of God’s glory; and that is another sign to us of the heights to which we, as Christians, are called and the state that awaits us – to be transformed in the image of Him Who was transfigured on Mount Tabor.

Transfiguration, by Eugene Rose 1985

Eugene Rose  Lay Sermon  Aug. 1965

by St. Ephraem the Syrian.

"And after six days Jesus taketh unto Him Peter, James, and John, his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart, and He was transfigured before them: and His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as snow.

The men whom Christ had said would not taste death until they should see the form and the foreshadowing of His Coming are these three Apostles, whom having taken with Him He brought to a mountain, and showed them in what manner He was to come on the last day: in the glory of His Divinity, and in the body of His Humanity.

He led them up to the mountain that He might also reveal to them Who this Son is, and Whose Son is He. For when He asked them: “Whom do men say that the Son of man is?” they said to Him: “Some Elias, some other Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” And so He led them up into a high mountain, and showed them that He was not Elias, but the God of Elias; nor was He Jeremiah, but He that had sanctified Jeremiah in his mother’s womb; nor one of the prophets, but the Lord of the prophets, and He that had sent them.

And He showed them also that He was the creator of heaven and earth, and the Lord of the living and the dead; for He spoke to the heavens, and they sent down Elias; He made a sign to the earth, and raised Moses to life again.

He took the Apostles up into a high mountain apart, that He might also show them the glory of His Divinity, and that He might declare Himself the Redeemer of Israel, as He had been foretold by the Prophets, and so that they would not be scandalized in Him in the passion He had taken upon Himself and which for our sakes He was about to suffer in His human nature. For they knew Him as the son of Mary, and as a man sharing their daily life in the world. On the mountain He revealed to them that He was the Son of God, and Himself God.

He took them therefore up to the mountain that He might show them His Kingdom before they witnessed His suffering and death, and His glory became His ignominy; so that when He was made a prisoner and condemned by the Jews, they might understand that He was not crucified by them because of His own powerlessness, but because it had pleased Him of His goodness to suffer, for the salvation of the world.

He brought them up to the mountain that He might also show them, before His Resurrection, the glory of His Divinity, so that when He had risen from the dead they might then know that He had not received this glory as the reward of His labor, but that He had it from all eternity, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The disciples upon the mountain beheld two suns: one, to which they were accustomed, shining in the sky; and Another, to which they were unaccustomed, which shone for them alone - the face of Jesus before them. And His garments appeared to them white as light: for the glory of His Divinity poured forth from His whole body, and all His members radiated light.

And there appeared to them Moses and Elias talking with Him:

And this was the manner of their speech with Him: they gave thanks to Him that their own words had been fulfilled, and together with them the words of all the Prophets. They adored Him for the salvation He had wrought in the world for mankind, and because He had in truth fulfilled the mystery which they had themselves foretold. The Prophets therefore were filled with joy, and the Apostles likewise, in their ascent of the mountain. The Prophets rejoiced because they had seen His Humanity, which they had not known. And the Apostles rejoiced because they had seen the glory of His Divinity, which they had not known.

Christian Love, by Eugene Rose

Eugene Rose  Lay Sermon  Sept 1963

Christian Love

Of no subject did our Lord and His Apostles speak more often than of love; love is the very foundation of the Christian life.  “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (I Jn 4:16).  It is the greatest commandment of our Lord, and the chief sign of his followers.  “A new commandment I give unto you: that you love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.  By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another” (Jn 13:34-35).

Today, when the spirit of Antichrist prevails in the world, men again speak of love; many who call themselves Christians cooperate with unbelievers and pagans thinking to build a “new age” of “brotherly love” and “peace on earth.”  But these are a worldly “love” and “peace” that are no more than a deceptive imitation and mockery of true Christian love and peace.  “Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth?  I tell you, nay; but rather division” (Lk 12:51).  The lot of the Christian in this life is one of constant warfare with the world and its temptations; and even love, if it be not the love of Jesus Christ, can be such a temptation.  “He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Mt 10:37).

Christian love seems difficult to the world, primarily because its reward is not in this life, but in the life to come.  Those who preach worldly “peace” and “love” do not believe in the future life, or else they believe in it half-heartedly, regarding it as something vague and distant.  For the Orthodox Christian, on the other hand, the whole meaning of love resides in its fulfillment in eternal life.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16).  The worldly man, if he loves his fellow man, does so out of pity for his weakness and mortality, and from concern to make his short life pleasant while it lasts; such love has no power over death, and it ends with death.  The Christian, however, loves his fellow man because he sees in him one created in the image of God and called to perfection and eternal life in God; such love is not human but divine, seeing in men not mere earthly mortality, but heavenly immortality.

Our Lord has warned us: “Ye shall be hated of all men for My name’s sake” (Matt. 10:22), and in time of persecution Christians may well be tempted to doubt, to fear, and even to hate in return.  But Christian love, which is not bound by death, is powerful enough to overcome these temptations.  Our Lord has commanded us: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you” (Mt 5:44).  In these commandments the standards of the world are reversed and overthrown, and the way is opened to the Kingdom of Heaven, which is to be an eternal Feast of Love.

“God is Fire,” by Eugene Rose

Eugene Rose  Lay Sermon  Nov. 1963

“God is fire”: 

in these words the Chosen One of God, St. Seraphim of Sarov, reminds us not only of the splendor of the Divine Glory, but also of our own opportunity and hope; for no one can approach God who does not himself become fire.  This is no mere figure of speech, but a spiritual truth demonstrated in the lives of many saints.  Christian hermits who would otherwise have frozen to death in winter frosts were kept warm by inward spiritual fire; and even the layman Motovilov, by the special grace of God, was permitted to experience this warmth in the presence of St. Seraphim and to see the Saint as though in the center of a dazzling sun. 

Such fire, as St. Seraphim tells us, is the tangible manifestation of the grace of the Holy Spirit; it was given to the Apostles at Pentecost and is given anew to every Orthodox Christian in Baptism.  In our spiritual blindness and coldness we neither see nor feel this fire, save perhaps in rare moments of fervent prayer and communion with God, and even then in small measure; but no one can approach God except through this fire.  When our first parents were expelled from Paradise, God set a fiery sword to guard the Tree of Life; and even today, in the prayers before Holy Communion, we pray that the fruit of the new Tree of Life, the Most Holy Body and Precious Blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, will not burn us in our unworthiness.  St. Seraphim said, “Our God is a fire which consumes everything unclean, and no one who is defiled in body or spirit can enter into communion with Him.”  So it is that the damned in Hell would experience nothing but pain even in the very presence of God; they are unclean, and the Divine Fire can only burn and torment them.  Yet the very fire that burns the unworthy can also consume impurities and make worthy those who, though unworthy, still love God and desire to be His sons.  We pray before Holy Communion, “May Thy most precious Body and Blood, my Savior, be to me as fire and light, consuming the fuel of sin and burning the thorns of my passions, enlightening the whole of me to adore Thy Divinity.” 

St. Seraphim compared the Christian believer to a lighted candle that kindles other candles without diminishing its own light, thus helping to distribute the heavenly riches of divine grace.  So must the Christian believer be, burning with love of God and zeal to serve Him, and filled with the fiery Presence of His Holy Spirit.  If he is such a flaming candle in this life, he shall be something even much greater in the next life; “then,” our Lord tells us, “shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father” (Mt 13:43).  In our present unworthiness we can hardly conceive of such a state; for “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him” (I Cor 2:9).  Such a state is the goal and meaning of the Christian life; it is what every Orthodox Christian lives for. 

Self-Liquidation of Christianity, by Eugene Rose

from The Orthodox Word #9 

July/August 1966

ORTHODOXY AND MODERN THOUGHT

THE SELF-LIQUIDATION OF CHRISTIANITY

 The" Death of God" as a Sign of the Times

The striking phrase, "God is dead," is the poetical expression of modern unbelief.  Much is expressed in this phrase that is not to be found in the more prosaic expressions of modern atheism and agnosticism.  A vivid contrast is established between a previous age when men believed in God and based their life and institutions upon Him, and a new age for whose inhabitants, supposedly, this once all-illuminating sun has been blotted out, and life and society must be given a new orientation.

The phrase, itself apparently coined by Nietzsche almost a century ago, was for long used to express the views of a comparatively few enemies of Christianity, chiefly "existentialists"; but recently it has caused controversy by being accepted in radical Protestant circles, and now it has become a concern of common journalism and the mass media.  Clearly a responsive chord has been struck in Western society at large; the public interest in the "death of God" has made this phenomenon one of the signs of the times.

To understand what this sign means, one must know its historical context.  By its very nature it is a negation - a reaction against the other-worldly Christian world view which emphasizes asceticism and the "unseen warfare" against the devil and the world in order to obtain eternal joy through communion with God in the Kingdom of Heaven.  The founders of the new philosophy declared the Christian God "dead" and proclaimed man a god in His place.  This view is merely the latest stage of the modern battle against Christianity which has resulted today in the virtually universal triumph of unbelief.

The contemporary controversy, however, centers about a new and unusual phenomenon: it is now "Christians" who are the unbelievers.  Yet in a sense this too is the logical culmination of an historical process that began in the West with the schism of the Church of Rome.  Separated for over nine centuries from the Church of Christ, Western Christendom has possessed only a steadily-evaporating residue of the genuine Christianity preserved by Holy Orthodoxy.  Today the process is nearly complete, and large numbers of Catholics and Protestants are hardly to be distinguished from unbelievers; and if they still call themselves "Christians," it can only be because for them Christianity itself has been turned into its opposite: worldly unbelief.  One may observe in this what one Orthodox thinker has called "the self-liquidation of Christianity": Christianity undermined from within by its own representatives who demand that it conform itself entirely to the world.

A strange parallel to this new "theology" has become common of late in the "liturgical" life of the West.  Widespread publicity was given earlier this year to a "rock-and-roll" service in the Old South Church in Boston, in which teenagers were allowed to dance in the aisles of the church to the accompaniment of raucous popular music.  In Catholic churches "jazz masses" become more and more frequent.  The ostensible intention of those responsible for these phenomena is the same as that of the new radical "theologians": to make religion more "real" to contemporary men.  They thereby admit what is obvious to Orthodox observers: that religious life is largely dead in Western Christendom; but they unwittingly reveal even more: unable to distinguish between church and dancehall, between Christ and the world, they reveal that God is dead in their own hearts and only worldly excitement is capable of evoking a response in themselves and their "post-Christian" flocks.

To what does all this, finally, point?  Our Lord, when prophesying of the advent of Antichrist, spoke of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place St.Matt.24:15; and St. Paul speaks of the very enemy of God sitting in God's temple and being worshipped in place of God IIThes.2:4 -- and this will occur, according to St. John Chrysostom, "in every church."  Does not this "Christian atheism," do not these blasphemous "worship services," does not the acceptance of even the most unseemly and vulgar manifestations in what men still consider holy places, already prepare the way for this end and give one even a foretaste of it?

For Western Christendom God is indeed dead, and its leaders only prepare for the advent of the enemy of God, Antichrist.  But Orthodox Christians know the living God and dwell within the saving enclosure of His True Church.  It is here, in faithful and fervent following of the unchanging Orthodox path -- and not in the dazzling "ecumenical" union with the new infidels that is pursued by Orthodox modernists - that our salvation is to be found.

Eugene Rose.

∞ ‡ ∞ 

In this article above, Eugene [Fr. Seraphim] was applying the things he was learning from his trusted Church father, Archbishop Averky.   If you read Archbishop Averky's article [linked below], you will see what I mean.  Archbishop Averky, in his writing, refers to yet an earlier Church father, Metropolitan Anthony, and his article titled, "How does Orthodoxy differ from the Western Denominations?"  or, it could be worded:  How does Orthodoxy differ from heterodoxy?

This understanding is important.  Because, if you understand how Orthodoxy differs from heterodoxy, then you understand how Royal Path Orthodoxy differs from World orthodoxy.  And you understand ecumenism.   World orthodoxy is headed towards heterodoxy, and has already become heterodox to some degree.

http://archbishopaverky.blogspot.com/2011/06/should-church-be-in-step-with-times.html

The difference between Orthodoxy and heterodoxy boils down to this:  Orthodoxy labors for the heavenly church, heterodoxy labors for an earthly church.  The heterodox might give lip-service to the heavenly Church, but in action they care for numbers in membership and political correctness.

How Does Orthodoxy Differ from Western Denominations, Archbishop Anthony
http://remnantrocor.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-does-orthodoxy-differ-from-western.html