This evening on Wednesday, October 31st, because of the widespread power outage due to Hurricane Sandy, St. Gregorios Malankara Orthodox Church (also known as Cherry Lane Church) celebrated the Holy Qurbana by candlelight.
After days with no light, we are reminded that it is the TRUE LIGHT that is ever-present in our life – leading and protecting us always! Our humble prayers go out to all those who lost their homes and loved ones – May God provide them peace and shelter!
Might I add that I am truly blessed to have been a part of this service, which was absolutely remarkable! God does amazing wonders indeed!
"All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether."
Even though, Easter is a few days away. Here is a very interesting link that came across a Twitter news feed in regard to the history of Easter, What we tell our kids about the Easter Bunny.
This video was presented at the MGOCSM North America's 2011 Baltimore Leadership Camp, in which the theme was "Going Beyond Borders", based on the biblical verse Isaiah 40:31. This video highlights significant Indian Orthodox Church history from Christ, all the way to America and beyond. This video is meant to serve as an educational tool as well as to inspire and uplift Christians.
"The angel said to the women, 'Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you.'" St. Matthew 28:5-7 (NIV)
Finally, a fellow parishioner had the courage to create an Indian Orthodox Lectionary Facebook app of scripture readings for the current week, of the Great and Holy Lent.
Hopefully, this will lead to the future of Orthodox app development!
"Are you a sinner? Don't worry, there's an app for that. The Roman Catholic Church has approved a recent iTunes addition called Confession, a $1.99 app that bills itself as 'the perfect aid for every penitent.'"
Someone pointed out by saying "Where's our Orthodox App?" Good question. Hopefully Orthodukso or some other resource will pave the way for an app someday!
And in yet another Vatican head-scratching moment, the official newspaper of the Vatican reported that America's favorite family, the Simpsons, are Catholic ... read the complete article through this link. When asked why, the Pope responded 'doh!'!
This is actually an amazing video posted on YouTube regarding one of the many beautiful hymns the Malankara Orthodox and Malankara Syrian Orthodox churches sing towards the end of the Holy Eucharist, followed by the dismissal benediction from the clergy, which is all after the Hoothomo (closing prayer). Absolutely a blessing!
Since the video is sung only in the Indian native language, Malayalam; Here is the translation for the following hymn:
Jesus, Father's son, keep us always well Jesus, Mary's son, Help us always too Jesus, strengthen us- Jesus guard us all Jesus, remove the wicked from us all Jesus, absolve our sins and our evil deeds Jesus, have mercy on the judgement day
However, it also says that "The study is 'not very meaningful science,' said Martin Binks, a behavioral health psychologist and a consultant at Duke University Medical Center. 'We have real life examples of the increase in portion size — all you have to do is look at what's being sold at fast-food restaurants.'
A more contemporary test would be to analyze portion sizes in Super Bowl commercials, he suggested.
'That would be a much more meaningful snapshot of how this society's relationship to food has changed,' Binks said."
The MGOCSM North America has released the "NYLC Kymtha Prayer CD" on iTunes. To search, the keyword phrases are "mgocsm america" or "nylc." Also available on iTunes is "The Faith of Our Fathers" CD. Go to www.mgocsmamerica.com for further information on how to purchase one!
An interesting new clue to the Pittsburgh Gym Shooting emerged; the gunman, George Sodini's, blog. In it he wrote many disturbing entries which show a progressive fall into what we call insanity. This news clip summarizes the information on the blog. http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=14913110 What is insanity? Insanity can be defined in many different ways. One of these describes insanity as being a "violation of societal norms." In this case, this is what we see. The shooter is in fact the victim. In his blog a struggle can be seen with him continually failing to meet societal norms. He claims he had no friends, no girlfriends and then simply having no relationships at all. To me, it seems that Sodini was just alone and not meeting what society demanded. From an Orthodox Christian perspective he was trying too hard to conform to this world. We always find ourselves in these same type of scenarios. Where we are stuck in between two possible choices. One of these will allow us to conform to this world and be accepted by society. The other seems the less desirable path. It's the one that few take. It is the option to be different, to not conform to this world. The option to not fall prey to the demands of society. It is what lets us be transformed by the renewing of our minds. I will close with a final thought from a poem by Robert Frost, The Road not Taken. "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference"
Sometimes, taking and accepting the road less traveled by, will make a huge difference for us. In this case, you could say it was the difference between life and death. God Bless.
The Epistle of Romans is St. Paul's magnum opus While it's not the systematic theology text that some make it out to be, it is his most theological and most systematic epistle.It's in this chapter that Paul writes most specifically about the inherited nature of sin, and it is from this passage that St. Augustine gets his material for 'inherited guilt'. Romans 5:12-19 reads: "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned -- For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous".
Technically speaking, in their writings the Eastern Fathers and Orthodox theologians do not use the Latin term introduced by Augustine in his treatise "De Peccato originali", but instead translate this concept by means of two cognate terms in Greek, namely, progoniki amartia and to propatorikon amartima, which is properly translated "ancestral sin". These terms allow for a more careful nuancing of the various implications contained in the one Latin term.[1]
With regard to original sin, the difference between Orthodox Christianity and the West is:
In the Orthodox Faith, the term 'original sin' refers to the 'first' or 'ancestral' sin of Adam and Eve. As a result of this sin, humanity bears the 'consequences' of sin, which is death. Here the word 'original' may be seen as synonymous with 'first' or 'ancestral'.Hence, the 'original sin' refers to the 'first sin' or 'ancestral sin'.[2]
In the West, humanity likewise bears the 'consequences' of the 'original sin' of Adam and Eve. However, the West also understands that humanity is likewise 'guilty' of the sin of Adam and Eve. The term 'Original Sin' here refers to the condition into which humanity is born, a condition in which guilt as well as consequence is involved.
In the Orthodox Christian understanding, while humanity does bear the consequences of the original, or first, sin, humanity does not bear the personal guilt associated with this sin. Adam and Eve are guilty of their willful action; we bear the consequences, which is death.[3]
John Karmiris writes that 'the sin of the first man, together with all of its consequences and penalties, is transferred by means of natural heredity to the entire human race. Since every human being is a descendant of the first man, no one of us is free from the spot of sin, even if he should manage to live a completely sinless day'.[4]
The Orthodox Church cannot agree with Augustine, when he says that humans are under a 'harsh necessity' of committing sin in his City of God. The image of God is distorted by sin but never destroyed and because we still retain the image of God we still retain free will, although sin restricts its scope. Orthodoxy repudiates any interpretation of the fall which allows no room for freedom. However, we agree with the West that sin had set up a barrier which humanity by its own efforts could never break down. Sin blocked the path to union with God. Since we could not come to God, He came to us. With all that said I do recommend works of Augustine for Orthodox believers.
It can be said that while we have not inherited the guilt of Adam's personal sin, because his sin is also of a generic nature, and because the entire human race is possessed of an essential, ontological unity, we participate in it by virtue of our participation in the human race. St. Cyril of Alexandria says: "The imparting of 'First Sin/Ancestral Sin/ Original Sin' by means of natural heredity should be understood in terms of the unity of the entire human nature, and of the homoousiotitos of all men, who, connected by nature, constitute one mystic whole. Inasmuch as human nature is indeed unique and unbreakable, the imparting of sin from the first-born to the entire human race descended from him is rendered explicable: 'Explicitly, as from the root, the sickness proceeded to the rest of the tree, Adam being the root who had suffered corruption'".[5]
[1] Original Sin in Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford, 2005).
[2] Fr. Anthony Hughes, 'View of Sin in the Early Church: Ancestral Versus Original Sin'.
[3] Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: A Concise Exposition, trans. Hieromonk Seraphim Rose (Platina, Calif.: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1994).
[4] John Karmiris, A Synopsis of the Dogmatic Theology of the Orthodox Catholic Church, trans. from the Greek by the Reverend George Dimopoulos (Scranton, PA.: Christian Orthodox Edition, 1973), pp. 35-36.
[5] Justo L. Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought: Volume 2 - From Augustine to the eve of the Reformation.
A heart-warming article was published in the Washington Post of a 6-week, 300-mile journey that six Franciscan friars began in Virginia until they reached a friary in Washington, D.C., called the 'Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land'.
The article talks of several examples of goodness they encountered to anyone who wanted to listen, and ends with an inspirational (although non-religious) message that "Anything can happen when you live in the moment, one step at a time".
Several news agencies (including this from CNN) are reporting on the British Library bringing online the world's oldest known Christian Bible. However, the 1,600-year-old handwritten Codex Sinaiticus is different than Bibles that are commonly found at home, including books that are not part of the accepted Old and New Testament.
Rather than dismiss this as error or conspiracy, we hope all Christians take a moment to reflect and understand how and why the pre-denominational Church undertook the process of Canonization of the Bible.
The Bible did not fall from the sky, nor did writers get possessed by God to pick up quills and begin writing in trance-like states. The printing also did not begin in the middle ages of Europe. If understood, accusations that the Apostolic Churches are not Scriptural are easily dismissed as the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church indeed came together to agree on the Books.
This process spanned several centuries, and included councils (small and Great), eloquent defenses on the Faith, prayer and the blood of several martyrs ... culminating in the Church agreement on the books of the Old and New Testaments.
What's most important to understand is our early Church fathers and Saints did not undertake the canonization process in an attempt to rationalize and define who God was, but rather to defend the Truth revealed by Christ. The Church needed to definitely state who God was not in order for the Church to continue to grow and make disciples of all men (Matthew 28:19-20). Literally our lives today depended on numerous acts of the pre-denominational Church during those first hundreds of years after Christ's Resurrection.
The Hindu pontiff, Jayendra Saraswati, pointed to "conversion" as the chief reason for the growing violence on minorities. He sought an assurance from the Catholic Church to halt such activities. Catholic leaders denied engaging in any proselytizing and blamed Protestants.
Not every conversion is a “forced” conversion. The term “forced conversion” seems to run the gamut from providing food and shelter in exchange for attending a Church service (or possibly suggesting it) all the way to REAL coercion at gunpoint. If Hindus are being converted to Christianity by violence, this is wrong, according to the Christian standard.Otherwise, shouldn’t people be free to choose between religions of their own accord. There would be no religion, native or otherwise anywhere unless that were the case.
Even if India has a many thousand year history of Hinduism at some point, people freely chose to be so just as later they’d freely choose to be Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists.Even within Christianity, we Orthodox Christians see people leaving our Church steadily for the charismatic movement. How can we blame them if we ourselves are not offering them the depth and fulfillment our Faith is capable of providing? If there truly is no compulsion, then this is the most free democratic result of people being able to think freely. If a religion, Christian, Hindu, or otherwise is seeing people leave of their own free will, then it is that faith tradition’s responsibility to convince its wayward sheep to stay.
We are all so often deceived into the trap of dividing Christianity up into the “ritual” and the “necessary.” The Eucharist along with the other Sacraments are discarded as “ceremony” because of their scripted nature and repetitiveness while believing in a handful of central truths like the Resurrection and the Trinity are all that’s needed. If the intellectual exercise of belief were all that was necessary, then why did Christ even command us to be baptized? Is one born again in the waters of baptism or is he or she born again when the choice is made to be baptized? Obviously at least one “ritual” has been demanded by Christ as a “condition” for Salvation (John 3:5).
The point is that Christianity is not simply an act of knowing a certain truth, but active participation in that truth. So often this is abstracted to have a social meaning, that is to say doing good deeds, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and other certainly righteous acts. However, the Orthodox concept of Sacrament is not restricted to that, but also to real participation in Christ. We are baptized into death and resurrection with Christ as He was also baptized. We participate in the once and for all Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross in the Eucharist. We are given the gift of the Holy Spirit in Chrysmation just as Christ gave the Disciples the gift of Spirit at the Pentecost. Just knowing about these acts of Christ is far different from having them realized in our lives in the here and now- which is to say through the Sacraments.
