Paschal Sermon

by Bishop Photii of Triaditsa

“We feast death’s slaughter, the overthrow of Hell, the first fruits of a new
eternal life”

Canon of Pascha, Ode 7, Troparion 2

Beloved in our Risen Saviour Brothers and Sisters, children of the Holy Orthodox Church!

Today we celebrate the demise of death, the destruction of hell and the beginning of another, of a new and eternal life; today these glad tidings gush forth unstintingly and suffuse with mirth and light the entire creation, both visible and invisible. Yes, death is dead. And these words are not merely an impressing poetical metaphor; they are not a human dream, but a truth which springs from the Living God’s action and word. Because God Himself—the very Font of Life—in the Person of the God-Man Christ vanquished death, trampled death underfoot, destroyed death. And even more, the God-Man transformed death into a womb of life—of life new and eternal. Death swallowed His breathless body, but encountered God and was itself destroyed in its very den, in the bottom of hell which crushed before the power of the Omnipotent and lost all power over those who truly belong to Christ.

But what is death? According to human criteria and ideas this is the end of bodily life, the dying of the body. But man is not a mere body. Neither is he only a spirit, as the soul divested of her flesh does not comprise the whole person. God formed man of a soul and a body, which were wisely united in one creature endowed with immortality. After the fall of our Ancestors sin destroyed this unity between soul and body and in this sense it annihilates the very human existence. It is precisely this destruction caused by sin which we call death: a man dies, in other words, he no longer exists as an indissoluble union between soul and body, that is, he ceases to be a man, and he no longer is himself — such as God has made him on the sixth day of the creation. Therefore, death is not merely the end of bodily human life and the returning of the body to the dust. Death is the anti-natural disintegration of human nature in consequence of which the human body dissolves and the human soul sinks into the darkness of Hades. So, death disunites what God has united. That is why death is truly fearful. And we, just like the pagans, fear death mostly because it puts a sudden or a prolonged and painful end to the life of the body, because it takes away from us the people whom we tenderly love; we fear death because we have not gotten rid of our unpronounced and oppressive fear that death is stronger than everything that lives.

Today, however, the Church in thunders spreads the glad news: the God-Man did away with death! And He gave to man the opportunity to become free of death, [the opportunity] no longer to be death’s everlasting slave. The risen Christ made man, who was dehumanised by death, able again to be a man and even much more than that: He called man to be a god by Grace. Christ the Lord descended to the depths of hell, destroyed it and rose from the dead so as to resurrect all who are Christ’s (cf. 1 Cor. 15:23) and to grant them a new and eternal life. It is true that Christ’s children, too, pass through the gates of bodily death as all other people. Nevertheless, for those who die in Christ death is not a terrifying abyss, but the birth for a new life, the coming home to the Father’s house, where the Christian, the new man will joyfully enter into the fullness of his renewed human nature after the Resurrection of the dead.

Lo, how from an end Death has become a beginning. Not accidentally the ancient Christians celebrated the martyrs’ death as the birth for a new life in eternity. After the death and resurrection of the God-Man, the grave is no longer dark, because the Lord illumined it with uncreated light; the grave no longer inspires fear and trembling, because it no longer is the end of life, but it is birth and the beginning of an eternal life with Christ; the grave is not the last place of our terrestrial exile: it is only the last door along the way towards our heavenly Fatherland. The difference between death before Christ’s Resurrection and death after His Resurrection is comparable to the difference between an unextinguishable fire and the flame of a candle — in the words of the Serbian Hierarch St. Nikolai. From being an ominous curse over the human race, death — trampled by the God-Man — became for His children the door toward resurrection and life. Christ’s children are children of life because Christ and Life is the same. Christ’s children are children of Resurrection because Christ and Resurrection is the same. All, who with an open heart come to Christ, are filled with His Life of God-Man. Who could put in words the greatness of this gift? According to St. Athanasios the Great, even for the angelic tongue this is impossible, because “the gifts of Grace surpass the measure of things created: death is banished from among men, Hades is divested of his power of long standing, and humankind, condemned by the law of sin, is learning to reign according to the gift of Grace,”—words full of power, words permeated with truth and Grace, with spirit and with life; words whence the waters of life gush forth and irrigate, in our hearts and minds, the seed of the intransient truth, that the Resurrected and the Resurrector, the Ever-living and the Giver of life, Christ the Lord is with His living people and in His living men to the grave, and beyond the grave, both now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Christ is risen! Indeed He is Risen!

Pascha of our Lord, 2009.

Sermon on Great Friday

by Bishop Photii of Triaditza

4/17 April 2009

He Who clotheth Himself with light as with garment, was standing naked at the judgement. On His cheek He received blows from the hands which He created; lawless people nailed to the Cross the Lord of glory.

[From the Tenth Antiphon of the Matins on Great Friday]

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In trepidation we stand before Thy cross and tomb, o Lord, and we are asking ourselves: who are we? Are we Thy followers or Thy lawless tormentors, Thy disciples or Thy crucifiers? Who are we, o Lord?

We name ourselves with Thy name and yet with every misdeed of ours, with every foul thought and word of ours, with every evil action of ours we add new thorns to Thy thorny crown: who, then, are we, o Lord?

We name ourselves Thy servants and yet with our little faith, pusillanimity, sensuality and hypocrisy we meanly slap Thee in the face, and then, as Adam in the garden of Eden, we make haste to hide ourselves from Thy face, we masterfully deceive our conscience and then again we bow before Thy icon, venerate it and pray to Thee as though nothing particular has happened: who are we, o Lord?

We were redeemed with Thy precious blood, o Saviour, and we confess this, and yet, with our love of sin, love of self and love of money, with our lack of mercy, with our greediness we cruelly nail Thee to the Cross and then we kiss Thy Cross and make its sign upon us: who are we, o Lord?

* * *

In the great and holy day of today we stand before Thy Cross and tomb, o Christ our Lord, and we ask ourselves: who are we?

Do we not consider ourselves faithful and pious on account of our being secretly or overtly proud that we are not as unfaithful or as impious as the others?

Do we not believe we are faithful to Thee only because we condemn the apostasy of others from Thy Truth?

Are we not convinced we abide in Thy truth, o Christ, only because we wage a vehement combat against those who have abandoned it, not knowing, however, Thy very Truth in depth and width, without having ourselves become truly united to it?

Could we be called Thy witnesses, o King of glory? Does the heart of Thy holy commandments throb within our lives, do unity, fraternal love, honesty, candour and simplicity emanate from our lives? Or is it rather true that our mouths extol Thee, while our life and actions shamelessly defame Thee?

Are we aspiring towards Thee, o Saviour, with all our mind, heart and conscience, in spirit and in truth, or do we rather expect from Thee protection, favours and profits in this life, in return for which we fulfil some kind of religious duties and thus turn into the Pharisees of the New Testament: we offer Thee our hypocritical worship and at the same time crucify Thee ruthlessly: who and what are we, o Lord?

We stand before Thy Cross and Tomb, o Christ King, and we are mournful and speechless. Are we awe-stricken by Thy ineffable humility or do we grieve for our wretchedness, or do we start to see and—stunned,—we behold our hands: those very hands which Thou---, o Creator, has created—impertinently slap Your face; that not others, but we, o long-suffering Saviour, nail You to the Cross; not others, but we, thrice more lawless than Your ancient crucifiers, make Your Great Friday unending…

But may our insanity and our spite prove not stronger than Your benignity and Your mercy, o Lord Who loves mankind! Spare us, enlighten us so that we may come to our senses, become reasonable, open our eyes and become Yours: Your servants, Your disciples, Your followers, Your children, so that we would become and be forever Yours, o Saviour, both now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

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Nativity Sermon

Sermon on the Nativity of Christ

by Bishop Photii of Triaditza

What is this mysterious and greatest of wonders? How shall I take Thee and carry Thee, o indescribably Born Son of mine of no beginning That carriest with Thy word all things: thus was the All-Holy Virgin speaking, holding with tremor Christ on her hands.

(Menaion, 24 Dec. Old Style, Canon of the Matins, Hymn 7, Troparion 3.)

This short quotation from a Church hymn which I have just read is but a glimmer from the inestimable verbal treasury of the Church in praise of Christ’s Nativity. These words, uttered on behalf of the Mother of God, are not simply a poetic device, a rhetorical convention, but a spiritual truth, a wondrous immersion in the mystery of the Son of God and Son of man, in the mystery of the Divine motherhood. Yes, by way of theological contemplation, prayerful trepidation, amazement and awe-filled adoration entwined in words, the Church introduces us to the great mystery of godliness, of God made manifest in the flesh (cf. 1 Timothy 3:16.) The Church mirthfully invites us to an abundant verbal repast, the Church nurtures us, elates us, enlightens our minds and hearts with fathomless spiritual meaning, with Grace-filled exquisite spiritual sensations, from whence the light and joy of this great mystery we celebrate in this day gush forth.

Let us infuse in this verbal glimmer, too, the light-bearing words of St. Gregory Palamas: “He Who sits of the Cherubims as God, is laid today on the earth as Babe. He Who is invisible for the six-winged Seraphims—which cannot contemplate not only His nature but even the radiance of His glory, whereby they cover their faces with wings,—today is accessible to the sight of men and the eyes of flesh, as One Who has clothed Himself in flesh. He Who puts confines to all things Himself being confined by nothing now fits in a hastily prepared manger. He Who holds all things in His palm and makes them solid and firm is now firmly swaddled up… He Who possesses immeasurable riches now wilfully embraces such a poverty that even in the houses of men He finds no abode… and not only He Who is of the same nature with the Most High Father, in His Nativity is clothed in our fallen nature, not only He embraces this extreme poverty by being born in a mean cave, but even from His Mother’s womb He enlists Himself with the slaves: He Who is by nature the Master of all the universe.”

How poignantly great, unfathomably profound and boundlessly holy is the mystery of godliness!

But why are the souls of many who, on the face of it, celebrate Christ’s Nativity, deaf and blind for this mystery preserved in the bosom of the Church? It is because they are languished with the fatty material banquets of this world, because they have grown heavy with feelings and thoughts stuffed with earthy dust, because they are mesmerised by the flickering lights of another feast… Tiny caves with mangers, motley figures, richly adorned Christmas trees, shops, loads of food, din, vanity, seasoned but with a short church service, consisting of rites of no understandable nature, threadbare sermons to the purpose, in which many of the everlasting truths become spiritless and pusillanimous compared to the powerfully throbbing pulse of our age; and then, … then the element of the other feast takes precedence again.

Is there place at all here for Christ, for the Living God, for the Son of God Who became the Son of man? Is there a limit to the insanity of men which banishes Christ from the Feast of His Nativity? Is our time devoid of such burning in the spirit, Christ-faced men who, by word, spirit and life promulgate the mystery of godliness; is no such man—a faithful follower of Christ—to be found rejoicing at the Feast of this Mystery?

Alas! This material world with its elements ruthlessly slaps our senses with its vociferous fun, with the hullabaloo and sheen of the other feast, the feast without Christ. But Christ invisibly abides with His people to the end of times, and those faithful to Him shall exist until the end of times. For lo! Here and there, unnoticeably for us there are two or three, or even more together, who cherish in their bosom a ray of the mystery of godliness, a grain of the spiritual manna from the banquet of Faith. In these men and through these men does the great light of godliness which effuse abundantly from the hymnal theology of the Church; it spurts from the divinely enlightened thought of the Holy Fathers and echoes with a thunderous might in the words of the divine rhetor and Theologian Gregory: today “He Who was born without a mother is born without a father. He Who is fleshless is clothed in flesh. He Who is beyond the senses becomes palpable. He Who is ageless takes beginning. The Son of God becomes the Son of man.” May He be glorified, honoured and worshipped now and ever and unto eternal ages! Amen.

Merry Christmas!

Saint Nicodemos the Hagiorite

A Luminary of Spiritual Knowledge

by Bishop Photii of Triaditza

In 2009, two centuries will have passed since the peaceful repose of St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite, an ascetic and theologian, a luminary of spiritual knowledge in a difficult and dismal time for the Orthodox Christian Church. And even in our modern times, St. Nicodemos’ example is of immense significance. How hard it is for us in these days to find an unsullied spring of spiritual knowledge! For some people this is quite inessential. They regard with suspicion all theological knowledge and, seeing in it the breeding grounds of heresies, prejudicially extol blessed simplicity: “holy ignorance.” This heresy—the so-called gnoseomachy—of those who “resist knowledge” was denounced as early as the eighth century by St. John of Damascus. Others yet, half-educated and semi-ignorant, theologize with ease and find this quite natural, once they have embraced Orthodoxy. A third kind of people, of a liberal bent, view theology as an antiquated and ossified system of notions and categories, since they essentially consider all views grounded on absolute principles and put forth with the utmost clarity as intolerant with respect to views obviously incompatible with them.

St. Nicodemos was not an “armchair theologian” or an abstract theoretician. His spiritual knowledge and his theological insight were the fruits of practical spiritual experience inseparably wedded to his exquisite intellectual gift of expressing this very experience. What love of ascetic and intellectual labour emanates from St. Nicodemos’ image! At the cost of immense exertion and intense labour was he able to compile one of his many books, the Pedalion (or, “The Rudder”). The Saint’s fellow-struggler, Hieromonk Euthymios, who wrote the first Life of the Saint, notes that, having learned about the interpolations introduced in a book of his by the dishonest monk Theodoritos, and distorting its meaning, St. Nicodemos was so pained that, as he expressed himself, he would rather have preferred that someone stab him in the heart a thousand times, than add to his book or take anything out of it. In his literary work, the Saint fervently poured out his entire being, sweetly scented by his spiritual exploits: his mind, his heart, and his conscience. This is why the spiritual knowledge reflected in his books effuses light, enlightens, nourishes, and warms his readers. How remote we modern Christians and theologians are from this attitude toward spiritual knowledge! And how lamentable that such knowledge all too often becomes for us the means of intellectual swagger or of the intrusion of ill-conceived social action within the Church.

St. Nicodemos’ example is an eloquent substantiation of the truth that spiritual knowledge, being, as it is, genuine theology, is inseparable from the life of prayer, from its own proper liturgical context, from ascetic evolvement in evangelical virtues. In this sense, no spiritual knowledge and no theology exist outside the boundary of spiritual experience and spiritual perfection. “The pinnacle of purity is the beginning of theology,” says St. John Climacus. However, at the same time, theology is preparatory knowledge. Its ultimate goal is to offer verbal witness to the Mystery of the Living God. Theology is a kind of intellectual witness to God-revealed Truth. Nonetheless, only the fervour of pure Apostolic and Patristic faith fills this witness with live content. Therefore, theology is not an end in itself, but always only a path: a path which is indispensable in guiding us towards immersion in the conciliar experience of the Church. The mastery of spiritual knowledge—engrossment with theology— requires an ascetic exploit and profound sobriety of mind, an ability to evaluate the intellectual content and spiritual value of your thoughts and to assess your entire inner experience, so as not to allow it to become a wall between the depth of spiritual knowledge and yourself and, as well, to prevent it from distorting the authenticity of the theological witness of the Mystery of the Living God.

This is only a part of those truths which the life and literary works of this luminary of spiritual knowledge, St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite, reveal to our inner vision. May the Lord, through his prayers, enlighten us so that, amid the din and chaos of our times, we should not miss the path leading to authentic spiritual knowledge and correct spiritual life!

New Additions

Official Sector

Documents:

Exposition on behalf of the Ecclesiastical Council of the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria, regarding the Open Letter by Hieromonk Cassian date July 4, 2008.

In the communities of our Church an Open Letter is being circulated, addressed to Bishop Photii and his congregation and signed by Hieromonk Cassian (Angelov), who was expelled from the clergy of the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria by Decision of the Ecclesiastical Court dated November 4, 2005 (N. S.). Some of you are probably already acquainted with this letter. Its contents are yet another, and we should add, regrettable proof of the well-groundedness of the motives which guided the Ecclesiastical Court in taking their decision.

On the whole, the text of this letter exemplifies in a seemingly bizarre and paradoxical fashion the traits of the cult personality, to wit—a deep confidence in one’s own impregnable rightness and in the unconditional veracity of one’s personal opinions, assessments and attitudes. We say that these traits of the cult personality are paradoxically exhibited, because in the text of the letter, a tactic typical of such personalities (or, in other words, the alleged starets/elder) finds its vivid expression in Orthodox environment: underscoring one’s personal rightness by its ostensible denial; rejection of genuine repentance, cloaked by obtrusively repeated readiness to repent, which is in fact reduced to hollow declarations, to threadbare rhetoric regarding repentance. With such type of texts, their authors inevitably employ manipulation, distortion of truths, open lies and, so to say, “dropped down” arrogant, disparaging and ironical attitude toward their opponents.

[Read on...]

Saint Seraphim of Sofia, Sermon on his glorification

Sermon on the Glorification of the Holy Hierarch Seraphim, Bishop of Bogucharsk, Wonderworker of Sofia,

by Bishop Photii of Triaditza

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

“Holiness is not simply righteousness, for the sake of which the righteous are vouchsafed with bliss in the Heavenly Kingdom, but such a height of righteousness, wherein people are given so much Grace that it overflows to those who communicate with them. Being entirely full of love toward their fellowmen, which originates from their love for God, the holy persons are sympathetic with the needs and the petitions of men, and are their intercessors with God.”

Beloved, this thought belongs to the Holy Hierarch John, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco.

When, at a session of the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad Bishop Seraphim (Sobolev) was presenting his report against Archpriest Serghii Bulgakov’s Sophian heresy, the then young Bishop John, inspired and overjoyed, voted with both his hands in favour of Bishop Seraphim’s report.

To comprehend holiness is hard for us. This is understandable, since the ideas, feelings and attitudes that we uphold, so full of contradiction and anxiety, are too far removed from what we recognise as holiness. We seem to seek the external marks of holiness: the miracles, the clairvoyance, the extraordinary exploits, while its innermost and unseen essence is hardly comprehensible to us. Even when the Grace of holiness is pouring over us, we seem only to perceive some solitary rays of it. This is so, because—as Saint John of Shanghai and San-Francisco puts it—the essence of holiness is the Grace received by the holy person, wherein and wherewith he loves God and his neighbour. However, our perception of love, even when it is spiritual, oftenest remains theoretical because our egotism, deeply rooted in us, deadens our ability to feel the Grace-filled love and, respectively, to perceive holiness.

A novice of the Holy Hierarch Seraphim asked the Athonite Schema-Hieromonk Father Cassian, to whom the Archbishop used to confess: “What is your opinion of our Vladyka?” Father Cassian replied: “You want to know my opinion of your Vladyka? Well, he is a man of a holy life. He is all love. I have never seen such a Bishop before!”

Saint Seraphim often used to repeat St. Pimen’s words, that when we notice our neighbour’s weaknesses, we should cover them with love.

“After I receive Holy Communion,” confessed once St. Seraphim, “I am overwhelmed with such joy and love, that I am willing to kiss everybody’s feet.”

Now, this is the essence of holiness. This is why when one feels a ray of this Grace-filled love, streaming from the Saints, one becomes comforted in a marvellous and ineffable fashion.

Saint Seraphim was very close to God during his earthly life. For us, the loquacious, self-contradicting and multi-faced people, such a closeness is quite difficult to comprehend or even, perhaps, entirely incomprehensible. In his writings, at the very outset of commencing a new work, the Holy Hierarch used to address to the Saviour, the Holy Mother of God and the Holy Hierarch Nicholas moving prayerful requests, which declare his wondrous inner closeness to God and His Saints. His theological writings and sermons are lucid and plain in their exposition. Hardly could they gratify the intellectual pursuits of a typically modern man. Nonetheless, their power lies precisely in the closeness of the mind, soul and heart that bore them, to God. The Gospel itself—the Divine word of God—is written in the plainest and simplest a tongue, in the colloquial Greek language spoken in Palestine during the time when the Saviour lived and fulfilled His mission among men and His redemptive work.

Once a novice girl of St. Seraphim’s ventured to ask him: “Vladyka, do you sometimes experience spiritual struggle?” “What do you mean by this?”—said the Saint. “I mean, do you sometimes feel doubts, disturbances and sinful thoughts that must be banished?” “I have always been as plain as a child and have never had such struggles. My sole struggle was against the carnal lust. This was the only torment I have ever had.”

By these words you could get a glimpse of a soul united with Christ through the greatest of perfections,—childlikeness and lack of guile, purity and simplicity of thoughts, feelings and desires. We are blessed having such a spiritual father. It is true we are so very unworthy of him, it is true we are so very far from the spirit which St. Seraphim possessed. [And yet,] we are drawn near to him only by virtue of his love which ineffably and abundantly pours down on us. We are drawn near also by that regrettably rare ardour of our minds and hearts, wherein one feels the twangs of the quest for the one thing needful to us—communion with God and with those united to God, His Saints and the citizens of Heaven.

May God, through St. Seraphim’s holy prayers, find us worthy to be his children, worthless and leprous as we are, and yet, of his own kin. And may this holy man, in the day of the last Judgement, cover us with his protection; may we hear him then utter before the Lord these words: “Behold, Lord, I and the children which Thou hast given me.” Amen.

Sermon on Great Friday

By Bishop Photii of Triaditza

12/25 April 2008

Great Friday… No human words are able to enclose the fullness of meaning of Christ’s Great Friday. And, years and centuries accumulating, as though it becomes ever more difficult to encompass and express in words the tragic profundity of yet another, entirely human great Friday.

The meaning of Christ’s Great Friday is revealed within the secret chambers of minds and hearts concealed from this world and illumined by the uncreated light of Truth. The human great Friday gapes to swallow the entire world, to congest not a single day in human life, but years and centuries, in fact—its entire time, so as to turn it into a life without God and a life of struggle against God.

On Great Friday men passed their judgement on Him, Who at the end of times shall judge the living and the dead; they put to dreadful suffering Him, Who came to restore the entire humankind from sin and deliver men from death. The heirs of those insane creatures even today desire for Christ a Great Friday without Pascha, and death without Resurrection. But in this way they only render the more appalling their own great Friday, from whence they wish to escape to the illusory dreams of earthly paradise. But whither do these men stride today? Not a few of them are even now ready to destroy their proper humanness, so as to feel demonically free—in this their insanity—of all meaning, of all norms, of all things Divine and human—.

There is something else and no less distressing. An enormous multitude of High Priests and Priests who claim to be Christ’s and expatiate on Christ, while with their deeds they chase Him away from themselves, from their churches and from the souls of the little ones who believe in Him. Many an ecclesiastical sovereign of our days close the doors toward Christ’s Truth in the face of men, not entering themselves, and disallowing entrance to them who fain would enter (cf. St. Matthew, 23:13). In our days, the New-Testamental High Priests and Priests are in daily toil preparing anew a Great Friday for Christ. In our days, it is not Christ Who drives the money changers out of the Lord’s House, but the money-mongers are, who chase Christ out of His temple.

This is our human bleak great Friday—.

However, only a small drop of meaning from Christ’s Great Friday is capable of curing the insanity of the human great Friday and of dissipating its bleakness; for the meekness of the God-Man is stronger than the fury of men, His charity is stouter than the spite of men, and His humility is mightier than the pride of men. Men exert all efforts to obliterate God’s image from their souls while, lo!—Christ the God bestows power on His image, painted even on a piece of wood, and this image works miracles and illumines the images of them who venerate it in candid and hearty faith. When blind men become leaders to the blind, God grants the leadership to insignificant people, to infants and to paupers. When the tongues of men become dumb with incredulity, then even the bones of the righteous preach in thunder-like voices the Divine Truth. Immense is the import and tremor-inspiring—the mystery of Christ’s Great Friday; a defeat, greater than all the greatest human victories in all. A defeat, whereof spouted the spring-water of the victory over Sin, Death and the Devil. All human victories were fatally crushed and will continue to be crushed by death; only Christ’s Defeat on Great Friday defeated and vanquished this same Death. In a meek voice the long-suffering Christ and Lord is calling us to be restored to our senses, to return home to Him, where we belong; He is calling us to appease our hunger and quench our thirst on His Feast, to become partakers of His—from human standpoint—defeat and of His divine victory, so as in purified, renewed and illumined minds and hearts, in this great and holy day we should raise our voices in cheer:

We venerate Thy Passion, o Christ!

We venerate Thy Passion, o Christ!

We venerate Thy Passion, o Christ!

Show us also Thy glorious Resurrection!