About Vladyka Abba Vitaly Maxemenko

This link will take you to a paper in English, which has nearly all the material in the Russian lecture below.

On Archbishop Vitaly Maximenko

Lecture in Russian

For anyone who speaks Russian this link will take you to a nice lecture about Archbishop Vitaly Maximenko given by Fr.Valery Lukianov

On Vladyka Vitaly Maximenko

Archbishop's Magazine

Archbishop Makarius's Magazine

The above is a link to an article in Archbishop Makarius's magazine in Greek his visit to Canada and the US.

Repose of Nina Seco

On Wednesday June 6/19 2013, Nina Seco reposed in the Lord. She had been tonsured into the Great Schema with the name Macrina, in honor of St. Macrina the sister of St. Basil the Great. 

Raised as an atheist by her parents, Mother Macrina embraced Orthodoxy in her youth with a fervor that few can match. She was in no small part responsible for the printing of the first comprehensive prayer book in English, containing for the first time all the essential prayers used by the Orthodox layman in the Russian practice. She supplied material for the early numbers of Orthodox Life, and helped Fr. Anthony Grabbe when he was starting St. Sergius High School in NYC. 

She was co-founder, together with Mother Matrona, of Holy Nativity Convent. Mother Matrona recalled that when she and Mother Macrina were touring the monasteries and holy places of the Orthodox homelands, Mother was always studying, trying to learn anything that would be of use in the founding and running of a convent. Though she could not stay in the monastery herself, her work and sacrifices in the early days made it possible for others to build on what she had helped start. And her reward here was to receive the tonsure and the name of the saint whom she dearly loved.

For the last thirty plus years Mother has been a help and support to the many projects undertaken by Fr. Neketas Palassis and the parish of St. Nectarius in Seattle WA. She touched so many lives for good and she will be missed by many people around the world. 

May her memory be eternal and her rest with the saints.

A Response to Attacks on Archbishop Makarios and on HOCNA

A Response to Attacks on Archbishop Makarios and on HOCNA

May 28, 2013

Archbishop Makarios of Athens is an honorable man who knows the teachings of the Holy Fathers and rightly teaches the word of God's truth. Matushka Nina, who posted this recent attack piece, does not know the teachings of the Holy Fathers -- especially on the name of God, the essence and energies of God, or other theological topics about which she is so zealous to call her former brethren and loved ones "heretics." Fr. Panagiotes, who wrote the attack piece, DOES have the capability to read the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers in the ancient Greek texts, but he teaches the exact opposite of what those Orthodox texts say.

On the "Awake, Sleeper!" series of articles, written by Metropolitan Ephraim, about which Fr. Panagiotes became obsessed: the Holy Apostle Peter says clearly that our Savior preached the Gospel of life to disobedient souls in Hades. St. Cyril of Alexandria and countless other Holy Fathers taught explicitly that some of those souls -- especially those who were not blinded by their former lusts and idolatry -- obtained God's mercy. But Fr. Panagiotes, in his inexplicable zeal to condemn his former brethren and loved ones, refuses to accept the teaching of the Orthodox Church on this matter. He calls the teaching of the Apostles, Fathers, and prayers of the Church on Christ's destruction of Hades "heresy." In so doing, he has condemned the Apostle Peter, St. Cyril, and countless saints who taught this Orthodox dogma. Fr. Panagiotes even went so far as to endorse and distribute a theological essay that called our Savior's descent into Hades an apocryphal myth! Fr. Panagiotes has lost any credibility that he may have once had on doctrinal matters. What he is very good at is slandering the people he once considered brethren and once loved. Worse, he has condemned the teachings of Christ's Church. Fr. Panagiotes is no longer a serious man. No one can take him seriously. Especially on issues of Orthodox dogma, since he knowingly refuses to accept what the consensus of the Holy Fathers says on the issue of Hades.

Fr. Panagiotes is equally wrong on the issues of the name of God and the essence and energies of God. The Synodicon of Orthodoxy teaches that the essence and energies of God are distinct but not separate. Fr. Panagiotes, in his zeal to call his former brethren "heretics," has somehow managed to teach two completely opposite heresies: First, the heresy that the essence and energies are the same; and, Second, that the essence and energies are separate. The first heresy was taught in a theological paper that Fr. Panagiotes endorsed that was entitled "What a Name-Glorifyer Is." The second heresy is found in the writings of Fr. Maximus Marretta in which he defends the false 1913 Russian statement that separates the essence and energies of God. The Russians who wrote that mistaken statement (with Sergius Stragorodsky as main author, but with Archbishop Anthony Khrapovitsky also, ignorantly, in agreement) can be forgiven because they were ignorant of what St. Gregory Palamas, the Palamite/Hesychast Synods, and the full Greek text of the Synodicon of Orthodoxy actually taught on the essence and energies of God. But Fr, Maximus, Fr. Panagiotes, and the bishops, priests, and monastics of the Kallinikos faction have access to all those writings in Greek and English -- if they care to avail themselves of those patristic texts. There is no excuse for Fr. Panagiotes and his colleagues who hate HOCNA and hate Archbishop Makarios of Athens to teach heresies about the essence and energies of God simply because they want theological "weapons" to attack their opponents. These attackers have zero credibility on Orthodox theology.

In his attacks on the name of God, Fr. Panagiotes plagiarized an article from Wikipedia. The plagiarized passage -- about name-glorifiers allegedly using Plato as an authority -- was laughably inaccurate. But Fr. Panagiotes plagiarized it word for word, with no citation whatsoever. His dishonesty extends from plagiarizing historically-inaccurate content from Wikipedia to attacking Orthodox dogma on Christ's destruction of the power of Hades and Orthodox dogma on the essence and energies of God. Who can take Fr Panagiotes's dishonest propaganda seriously? Not any critically-thinking Orthodox Christian who loves the divine dogmas of the Holy Fathers.

Our Savior spoke of the name of God as the glory and power of Godhood that the Father and the Son share from before the creation of the world (see St Cyril of Alexandria's commentary on John 17). Fr. Maximus Marretta has issued "anathemas" against this teaching. Fr. Maximus Marretta has anathematized our Saviour! Fr. Panagiotes has distributed and endorsed at least one of Fr. Maximus Marretta's un-Orthodox writings on this topic. These people, in their zeal to condemn Orthodox Christians, have anathematized what they find in the Scriptures and Holy Fathers, because they are consumed with a passion to condemn those whom they once loved in the Faith.

Archbishop Makarios has written very capably about the uncanonical activities of the Kiouses/Kallinikos faction. If a person actually cares about what happened among the GOC in Greece, he can read Archbishop Makarios's book and his other writings on this topic. As far as I have seen, the Kallinikos faction does not have anyone who is intellectually capable of writing on Orthodox dogma and canon law in any way comparable to His Beatitude Archbishop Makarios. That is why writers from the Kallinikos faction have a well-established pattern of doing things like plagiarizing from Wikipedia, misquoting and even denying Orthodox dogmas, and, especially, making sleazy accusations. The Kallinikos people have also used the secular government authorities -- in both Greece and the United States -- to harass True Orthodox Christians who do not agree with their uncanonical and un-Christian behavior.

I, personally, commend Archbishop Makarios for cooperating with new calendarists and other citizens in Greece to oppose new laws on IDs that many citizens sincerely believed went too far and could be used to deny the right to full religious freedom for the True Orthodox Christians. The Archbishop is an educated man who can cooperate with other Greek citizens over concerns for religious freedom. He deserves our praise for this.

The attacks against His Beatitude are hatchet jobs. They are uncouth. They deserve to be ignored.

Thomas S. Deretich

What is Holy

What is Holy

There are two “kinds” of holy. There is holy by participation and holy by nature. Icons, the holy cross, relics, holy water and man are all holy or can be holy, by participation. We know actually that anything really can be holy by participation because by His Incarnation, God forever closed the chasm between the Creator and created. We know also that God dwells in these not in some kind of a symbolic manner but in reality; it is not man, or water, or an icon which work miracles but God who is present there.

But what about holy by nature. Of course, the only thing holy by nature is God.

Yet the questions arises…what do we know of God? How do we even know there is a God? Us, sinful, fallen critters of the earth…did we imagine Him? Did we think Him up? Again, you and I would agree of course not! We know God because God revealed Himself to us.

Not too long ago, I was reading the Mystagogy on the Holy Spirit by Saint Photios the Great. The introduction is really very good and here’s a small chunk of it.

“Were not the ‘knowledge of God implanted in us by nature’ as Saint John Damascus declared, and had He not revealed Himself in His ‘effects’ that is, His Energies and operations, and finally by His Incarnation, we shohuld have no knowledge of God whatsoever."

To be cut off from the Knowledge of Him, is death. So God revealed Himself to mankind first through His prophets then in His fullness; so we would know Him; this knowledge being Life itself, He Himself.  The most striking example of this revelation is when Moses literally asked Him “what should I call you? [what is the Truth about you?] and he answered “I am that I am, tell them, I am has sent me”. At the Revelation of revelations, His Incarnation, how did the Virgin know to call her son “Jesus”? Did not the Archangel, the messenger of God, tell her so? How do we know that Jesus was the Son of God? Did not God Himself say so at His baptism? “This is my beloved Son”.  How do we know that there is a Father? Did not Christ Himself tell us of the Father? How do we know the Holy Spirit…”I will send you a Comforter”, are Christ’s words.  “And this also it behooves us to know, that the names Fatherhood, Sonship and Procession, were not applied to the Holy Godhead by us: on the contrary, they were communicated to us by the Godhead.” Says Saint John Damascus.  It seems that every name we have of God and the Trinity was directly revealed to us by God; it is the God revealed Truth about Himself…how can that be created? How can this knowledge, if it is in and of itself Life (as Saint Athanasius puts it “when they [humans] lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it”) not be God?  It is this knowledge that enables us to say “I believe in One God the Father Almighty….and in One Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God…and in the Holy Spirit the giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father.” We could say a great many other variations of this yet this is our faith (and our salvation) and we know it to be Truth because the only Being who knew to tell us of it, is God.

And yes, we use words which in and of themselves are holy by participation, but our belief that rests in these words, the Truth about God that He Himself told us, is uncreated, and in this sense it is His Energy and only in this sense is His Name God Himself; as he said “I am the Life, the Way, the Truth”.  Saint Basil says: “The name of God is said to be holy, not entirely because it has a certain sanctifying power in its syllables, but because the whole specific character of God and the thought contained in what is specially contemplated concerning Him is holy and pure”.

It is in this “deeper” sense that The Church often refer to the Name of God.  For example, the Name of God in services is not referred to in the same way as things that are holy by participation. In fact, sometimes in exchange for saying  “the Son” the service uses “Thine all-holy Name” (“That by elements, by Angels, and by men, by things visible and by things invisible, Thine all-holy Name may be glorified, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.”) Similarly, Saint Maximus the Confessor says: "the Name of the Father is the Only Begotten Son" (Since the Father is known through the Son).  

Yet you could still affix your mind to “name” and say that’s created over and over. Yet what about Light?, We know God is Light (among other things). But Light is photons and waves. Are we, Orthodox Christians, pantheists? Do we gaze up at the sun when the clouds scatter and fall on our knees worshiping the light that comes from it, confusing God with His creation? Of course not.  Yet at the same time, acknowledging that our Faith is that of mystery, we say God is Light, God is Love, God is Truth, Life, Grace. Saint Gregory dedicated his life to defending the Uncreated Light.

 The fact is that there is nothing new about our Faith. Our Faith is not created by man, nothing was ever added to it or subtracted from it. Unfortunately, however, we live our lives taking for granted the words we say in prayer, not fully knowing what it is we are saying. Then when a conflict arises within the faithful, we do not set aside our own rationality and logic but allow it to cloud us from fearlessly searching the depth of our Faith for the unadulterated Truth. 

More Pictures

Here is a link to photos of Archbishop Makarius at Holy Nativity Convent
Archbishop Makarius at HNC