The Morning Offering

How to Curb Division 
in the Church

The Abbot's Study

Refrain from a 
Life of Super Correct

Driven by fear, there are people who leave the Church and head into schism. In Greece there are at least eighteen "Old Calendar" Orthodox churches who claim to be THE Church, not recognizing each other as canonical. In the United States there are nearly the same numbers, some Slavic and others of Greek origin. They are all filled with prideful people, thinking of themselves as the only remnant of Christ's Church. These people practice a form of Christianity that is  filled with self righteous rigidity, totally lacking in humility. Walling themselves off from World Orthodoxy, they become extremely pharisitical, harsh, punitive and rotten to the core. In their legalistic approach to the canons and traditions of the Church they enter into a state of constant judgment against anyone outside their arrogant, cultish religiosity.

In their narrow minded approach to the Church, they fail to trust that the Holy Spirit is guiding and protecting His Church. They don't see the Holy Spirit operating in the life of people because they themselves are closed off to the Holy Spirit. Where is the life of the Church manifested among such people? They do nothing for the love of humanity and their lack of love begets more schism. Schism begets schism begets schism. A never ending downward spiral into the abyss. 

Their usual premise is based on the issue of the calendar change and false ecumenism. The calendar issue is more important to them than the unity of the Church forgetting, as they do, that the early church celebrated many of the great feasts on different days. False ecumenism is hardly an issue today, with the numbers of theologians and bishops who are truly caught up in it has dwindled to almost nothing, along with the liberal thinking that has gone out of fashion since the fall of communism. The Russian Church, the largest of the Local Churches, has taken a strong stand against false ecumenism and is powerfully pushing forth the unchanging canons, traditions and faith of the ancient Church.

Orthodox Christianity has withstood two thousand years of attacks and persecution, yet the gates of hell have not prevailed against her. This was Christ's promise to his disciples before His Holy Resurrection. To believe otherwise is to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.

Love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

The Abbot's Study

Wednesday August 31, 2011 / August 18, 2011

12^th Week after Pentecost.
Strict Fast (Bread, Vegetables, Fruits)

Afterfeast of the Dormition.
Martyrs Florus and Laurus of Illyria (2nd c.).
New Martyrs Archimandrite Augustine of Orans Monastery, Proto-priest Nicholas of Nizhni-Novgorod, and 15 people with them (1918).
New Hieromartyr Gregory priest and Martyr Eugene and Michael (1937).
Martyrs Hermes, Serapion, and Polyaenus of Rome (2nd c.)

The Abbot's Study

2 Corinthians 3:4-11

 

The Spirit, Not the Letter

⁴ And we have such trust through Christ toward God. ⁵ Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, ⁶ who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Glory of the New Covenant

⁷ But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, ⁸ how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? ⁹ For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. ¹⁰ For even what was made glorious had no glory in this respect, because of the glory that excels. ¹¹ For if what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more glorious.

Matthew 23:29-39

 

²⁹ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, ³⁰ and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’
³¹ “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. ³² Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. ³³ Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? ³⁴ Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, ³⁵ that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. ³⁶ Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

Jesus Laments over Jerusalem

³⁷ “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! ³⁸ See! Your house is left to you desolate; ³⁹ for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’”