Bishop Jerome's visit to the Southern Region

We will be hosting Bishop Jerome's visit to the Southern Region at our church in Pelion, SC, on November 10th (Saturday) and 11th (Sunday). During the Bishop's visit, God willing, we will have a couple men being ordained on both Saturday and Sunday with several visiting clergy from other States in the Southern Region concelebrating with us. Please join us to celebrate these ordinations and meet our Bishop from New York. On Saturday we will also be receiving a couple families into the Orthodox Christian faith via Baptism and Chrismation. We are also please to announce there will be a professional 4-part choir led by Fr. Thomas from New York.

An Appeal from Metropolitan Hilarion to all of the Faithful of the Eastern American Diocese in Connection with Hurricane Sandy

October 27, 2012
An Appeal from Metropolitan Hilarion to all of the Faithful of the Eastern American Diocese in connection with Hurricane Sandy 

Reverend fathers, dear in the Lord brothers and sisters,

As hurricane Sandy approaches the East Coast of the USA, many of the parishes in our diocese lay in its direct course. I call upon all of the faithful of the Eastern American Diocese to unite in prayer for the deliverance of our land from natural disasters. As Orthodox Christians we have nothing to fear, but must always remember the words of Apostle Paul – “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God,” (Philippians 4:6).

On Sunday, October 28^th, all rectors of the Eastern American Diocese are instructed to read special petitions at the Great Litany, and read the following prayer during the Liturgy after the Augmented Litany. If your parish suffers harm during the hurricane, please notify the diocesan administration at eadiocese@gmail.com. By the prayers of our Most Holy Lady Theotokos, may the All-Merciful Lord God preserve and have mercy on us all.

+HILARION
Metropolitan of Eastern America & NY
First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad

A Prayer at the Threat from Malevolent Winds and Sea Storms

O Master, Lord our God, Who by Thy Consubstantial and Unoriginate Word, and Thy Life-Giving Spirit Who is equal in honor, hast brought all things out of nothingness into being; Who hast established the sand as bounds to the sea, and weighed the mountains and the valleys in a balance; Who hast measured the skies and holdest the water in the palm of Thy hand; Who hast given to this visible world of the senses its laws and rules, its harmony and order; Who hast appointed changes to the weather and variations in the orbit of the sun; Who, through the mingling of the elements, holdest all things together by Thine inexpressible power, and keepest them free from harm and intact: Do Thou Thyself, O All-Good King, extending to us Thine innate and customary love and goodness, visit the work of Thy hands. Do not deprive us of Thy mercies and Thy compassion, and do not destroy Thine inheritance, for Thou hast ineffably created us in Thine own image. Thou hast given Thine only-begotten Son as a ransom for us, and through the mystical communion of Thy Spirit hast made us share in Thine own divinity; forgive, we pray, the multitude of our sins in the far greater multitude of Thy mercies. O Thou Who washed away the sins of humanity through the Cross and the Blood of Thy Son, restore the world of nature, which has been grievously disturbed into an unnatural state because of the unruliness and disorderliness of our lawless and corrupt behavior, and bring it back to its natural harmony and order: make the great ocean return to its usual calmness, and bring to end the tempest and the disturbance of the elements that threaten us. Order the winds to blow once more with gentleness and moderation: rebuke the raging of the sea and the unnatural violence of the gales; let the Spirit of the storm be stilled and the tempest return to tranquility, that those who cross the sea in boats and work on the many waters may again see Thy deeds and wonders. Set them in order, O Master, Lover of mankind, through Thine unapproachable love for mankind, Thou Who didst deign to allow Thine only-begotten Son and our Lord Jesus Christ, through Thy good will and the cooperation of Thy Holy Spirit, to become man and sail together with His holy disciples and apostles, and rebuke the stormy winds, and command the waves of the sea to be still. Do Thou Thyself now also bestill every hostile wind, tame the billows, assuage the tempests, and raise up exact and acceptable seasons and winds, being everywhere a Ruler and Helper to Thy servants, directing them to the harbor of salvation: for they call upon Thy name alone, they know none other god besides Thee, and they look always to Thy help, through the intercessions of the most blessed Lady Theotokos, of the God-seeing Angels and all the Saints, and through the good pleasure and love of Thine only-begotten Son with whom Thou art blessed, together with Thy Most-Holy and Good and Life-Creating Spirit, now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.

Petitions on the Great Litany:

That He will not destroy us with His angry threatening on account of our sins and transgressions, but will remember His mercies and compassions from the ages, and have mercy on us, let us pray to the Lord.

That He will remember His covenant which He made with Noah, and will not despoil the land and His needy people with grievous wetness, dark, malevolent skies and gloomy fog, but will mercifully spare His inheritance and will command the sun to shine on the earth with fruit-bearing rays and abundant warmth, let us pray to the Lord.

That He will command the clouds to cease from destroying rain, that the darkness be smitten, and that the sun shine with brightness, let us pray to the Lord.

That He will spare the people and animals and all of this land, and not despoil it with the downpour of destructive rain, let us pray to the Lord.

A Higher Love...

The Virgin Theotokos & Christ-Child

As Christians, brothers and sisters; are we not called to love unconditionally?  Are we not called to subdue those passions of anger, enmity, hatred and envy that well up inside of our hearts the moment that we are hurt by another?  When we see tragedies taking place due to the actions of another, does it not bruise our hearts to kindle an indignant rage of sorts?

I can tell you that if you are a living, breathing human being, you are not immune to the onset of hatred anymore than any other human.  None can lay claim to absolute perfect stoicism nor can we claim perfect love sustained throughout our lifetime in the face of adversity.  We will inevitably at some point give into that urge and allow ourselves to wallow in the perceived comfort of our own self-pity or anger.

I know this personally because I am a fellow human and have those same urges.  Sometimes, I give into them.  The fact that I wear clericals and have answered a call to serve God's people does not preclude me from being human.  Hatred, anger, fear, enmity are endemic in the human race from the onset of the infamous apple incident in the Garden of Eden.

So. what are we to do?  Christ has admonished us to love one another as He has loved us.  We have been told not to return evil for evil.  We are to "turn the other cheek".  Lastly, we are given the hardest charge of all... We are to love our enemies.  These are hard teachings!  We are to go against the seemingly natural progression of human behavior and instead, embrace a higher calling to love instead of hate.  In other words, we are being called to a "discipline" of sorts.  We are to embrace that which is taught as right and moral in God's eyes and deny that which seems instinctual.

On the other side of the issue, we have those who say that we should apply this ethos to all things and to love without any sort of pre-qualifying factors.  They would say that we should love and accept all humans and extend that love to include relationships and situations because this is what Christ commanded us to do.  There should be no limit to that love and acceptance, even if one is in the throes of inherently sinful activity.

Well, the question then begs to be asked, If the love that we are called to express for our enemies is that of a discipline that calls for subduing instinctual passions, then what should we say of the nature of all human love?  Should not all love be disciplined in such a way as to lift one up closer to God and His intended purpose?  Should it not require of the heart to be true and directed toward each other's person as Christ's love was directed towards each of us as persons? Remember that we are called to love our enemies but we are not called to love that which they do.  Husbands and wives are called to love each other but not necessarily all that each does.  God loves us as we are because we are wonderfully made in His image but he does detest our sinful natures and the words, deeds, and thoughts that lead up to them.  Truly it can be said that we are to look at He who first loved us as an example to imitate and to espouse toward one another.  One cannot love God and then hate his neighbor.

If you believe in the veracity of this last statement then you understand that the love we show to one another is a fruit of the Faith of Christ being within our hearts.  We cannot separate those two conditions from each other because we are to either love completely or we are are irretrievably broken.  Love bears all things.  It leads to forgiveness, peace, reconciliation, and the ability to be free from the harmful spiritual and psychological damage done to us by an enemy.  It leads to a deeper understanding of the love of the Father who sent His Son, who in turn showed the profundity of His own love for us by dying upon the Cross.  It is our lack of this disciplined love that leads to broken relationships, broken lives, and a skewed sense of right and wrong.  Indeed, one look at our own history of war and violence and you'll find that it is not differing ideologies that cause the main issues.  It is the lack of true love for one another that was demonstrated and proscribed by Christ that is the root of many of the evils of human history.

Our task going forward, then... Is to realize this truth and strive towards that which Christ exemplified in word and in deed.  We will invariably fall down again and again, but we should remember that it is God who loves us as persons and for our failings... He provides grace that we may repent and try again.  Should we not also love in like manner each other?

Is Western Rite Truly Orthodox???

One look at the internet and you'll find various sites from Eastern Orthodox pundits; clergy and layperson alike, that will tell you a variety of opinions about Western Rite Orthodoxy.  Some of the opinions are very welcoming and expectant of great things regarding the potential of Western Rite Orthodox parishes to influence Western Christianity towards the fullness of the Faith, while others seem intent on dismissing the Western rite as groups of disaffected Anglicans and other Protestants simply applying a varnish of Orthodox appearance over a variety of Anglican/Episcopal or Roman Catholic liturgies.  I want to take this opportunity to speak a word of counsel to you regarding this controversy.

"Never, never, never let anyone tell you that in order to be Orthodox, you must also be eastern.  The West was Orthodox for a thousand years, and her venerable liturgy is far older than any of her heresies." ~St. John Maximovitch

It really is distressing to me that there are so many of these people who are from the Eastern Orthodox Churches who will simply dismiss Western Rite without the benefit of really knowing that much about it.  They assume that we are heretical because they view much that comes from the West with suspicion.  Some suspicion is good as it helps one avoid untruth, but unfounded suspicion is dangerous to the soul.  During World War II, some well-meaning but misguided Americans in rural towns met at bonfires and burned all of the books and publications they could find that were printed in German.  Exactly how many German copies of the Holy Bible that were actually burned, we have no idea. 

Misunderstanding breeds distrust, which in turn breeds contempt.  While some groups of Western Christians have at times tried to form their own congregations and have invariably implied that they are "orthodox" while having no ties to the Ancient Church, there are many more today that are truly part of the ancient, undivided Orthodox Church.  The Antiochian and the ROCOR affiliated parishes are making headway into an American Christian landscape that is littered with denominations that have succumbed to biblical, moral and social relativism.  The long-dormant fruits of false ecumenism are now being realized and are causing many to wander into the arms of the Orthodox Church.

But Eastern Orthodoxy is a far jump for many former protestants.  I can attest to the sublime beauty and sacredness of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.  I have experienced it and have loved it in my heart as a sacred "work of the people".  I can also see with a certain agreement that there are many who have the same desire to worship God in a way that is as profound and as sacred as that which the Eastern Liturgy proffers, but are minded towards an expression not unlike that of the Orthodox Christians in the West before the 1054 AD schism.  The Liturgy which we use at St. Nicholas of Myra is The Liturgy of St. Gregory, Our Father Amongst the Saints.  It is not a recent innovation, nor is it a modern liturgy that has been sanitized of errant protestant invention.  It is a pre-schism liturgy that has been restored and rendered in the English vernacular.  It is not as beautifully intricate as the liturgies of the East but it is simply beautiful.  The Western Church before the schism had an eye and an ear towards pragmatism and beautiful simplicity that can still be seen in the Western Orthodox liturgies of the Gregorian and the Sarum Missals.  We cannot simply discount the Western Church's contribution to the Orthodox Faith prior to the schism. 

The East cannot simply cover all of Western Orthodoxy with a blanket statement of suspicious dismissal and then say there is no Orthodoxy except Eastern Orthodoxy!   There is nothing lacking in our belief nor our liturgy.  In ROCOR and in the Antiochian jurisdictions that are in full communion with all of the other jurisdictions of Eastern Orthodoxy; here lies the question... if our own Eastern Prelates have sanctioned and blessed our liturgy and confirmed that we are of one Apostolic Faith... then why are there those in the East that would say differently?  What purpose would it serve to cause division where none actually exists?  This is a thought that I would offer to my Eastern brothers and sisters in the greatest of love.  We are amongst you who are of one Faith, one confession, and of one Church.  We have embraced the "Fullness of the Faith" back from a time that there was no need to insert the word Orthodox before the word Church.  When the Church was whole and undivided.  Remember that there was a time when Eastern Christians and Western Christians worshiped together; using the western liturgies in the west and the eastern liturgies in the east.  We were one Church before and we are becoming again.  Regard us with love as your brothers and sisters and co-laborers in the fields of the Lord's harvest.

With Much Love in Christ,

Fr. Benedict+

Rector, St. Nicholas of Myra Russian Orthodox Church
A Western Rite Parish of ROCOR
www.snmoc.org