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A Homily by st John of Kronstadt for the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God
The Miracle of the Theotokos in Orchomenos on September 10, 1943
Εμφάνιση αναρτήσεων με ετικέτα Nazism. Εμφάνιση όλων των αναρτήσεων
Εμφάνιση αναρτήσεων με ετικέτα Nazism. Εμφάνιση όλων των αναρτήσεων
Τετάρτη 8 Σεπτεμβρίου 2021
Πέμπτη 10 Σεπτεμβρίου 2020
The Nativity of Theotokos (September 8) & Theotokos vs Nazi (September 10) !...
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A Homily by st John of Kronstadt for the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God
The Miracle of the Theotokos in Orchomenos on September 10, 1943
Κυριακή 2 Φεβρουαρίου 2020
Three Greek Orthodox Christian Hierarchs Who Tried to Stop the Holocaust in Their Country
Damaskinos also spearheaded a direct protest to the Germans, in the form of a letter in a bold defense of the Jews who were being persecuted.
The letter incited the rage of the ferocious Nazi General Jürgen
Stroop— the man responsible for the brutal suppression of the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising and the loss of 50,000 lives who had since been
transferred to Greece. He threatened the Archbishop with death by a
firing squad.
Damaskinos’ response was,
JOACHIM, the Metropolitan Bishop of Volos
”Greek religious leaders are not shot, they are hanged. I request that you respect this custom.”The simple courage of the religious leader’s reply caught the Nazi commander off guard. The appeal of the Archbishop and his fellow Greeks is unique; there is no similar document of protest of the Nazis during World War II that has come to light in any other European country. It reads, in part:
”In our national consciousness, all the children of Mother Greece are an inseparable unity: they are equal members of the national body irrespective of religion… Our holy religion does not recognize superior or inferior qualities based on race or religion, as it is stated: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek’ and thus condemns any attempt to discriminate or create racial or religious differences. Our common fate both in days of glory and in periods of national misfortune forged inseparable bonds between all Greek citizens, without exemption, irrespective of race…” ”Today we are… deeply concerned with the fate of 60,000 of our fellow citizens who are Jews… we have lived together in both slavery and freedom, and we have come to appreciate their feelings, their brotherly attitude, their economic activity, and most important, their indefectible patriotism…”
Photo from here
JOACHIM, the Metropolitan Bishop of Volos
Theotokos vs Nazi (photo)
Saint Charalambos of Magnesia (vs Nazi)
Orthodox New Martyrs in France vs Nazi A Saint Speaks To Europe From Dachau (1), (2), (3), (4) Not often you see a Nazi serpent in an icon
Holy New Martyrs of Jasenovac Concentration Camp
Orthodox Holiness - The New Martyrs of Bosnia
The Miracle of Saint Menas in El Alamein in 1942
Κυριακή 27 Οκτωβρίου 2019
Πέμπτη 12 Σεπτεμβρίου 2019
9/11 (September 11) in the Orthodox Church...
St. Theodora of Vasta, Warrior of Honor
The miraculous Church of St. Theodora of Vasta, with 17 trees coming from the roof (see here)
Δευτέρα 9 Σεπτεμβρίου 2019
Σάββατο 7 Σεπτεμβρίου 2019
The Nativity of Theotokos (September 8) & Theotokos vs Nazi (September 10) !...
Icon from here
Click please:
A Homily by st John of Kronstadt for the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God
The Miracle of the Theotokos in Orchomenos on September 10, 1943
Σάββατο 20 Ιουλίου 2019
Orthodox Christians Saints in these days (July 18-22)
ClickSaint Pambo of the Nitrian desert, whose face shone like lightning (July 18) (icon)
Nitria: one of the earliest orthodox christian monastic sites in ancient Egypt
Saint Macrina the Philosopher, the Sister of St Basil the Great (July 19)
Holy, Glorious Prophet Elijah (July 20)
Orthodox New Martyrs in France vs Nazi (July 20)
St Simeon of Emessa (Syria) the Fool-For-Christ (July 21)
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| St Macrina (from here) |
The Marvelous Death and Translation to Heaven of a Holy Fool (St. Symeon the Fool for Christ)
Myrrhbearer and Equal of the Apostles Mary Magdalene (July 22)
Saint Virgin Martyr Markella of Chios, Greece (Juy 22)
The martyrdom of st Markella by her father! Icon from here.
Κυριακή 10 Φεβρουαρίου 2019
Σάββατο 27 Οκτωβρίου 2018
October 28, 1940: the small Greece vs the Fascism & Nazism...
Feast of the Holy Protection of the Theotokos
OXI (No) Day
The Encyclical of the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Demetrios of America for "No" Day (October 28, 1940)
Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Our commemoration of OXI Day each year leads us to reflect on a very
challenging time in our world and for the people of Greece. As war was
spreading throughout Europe, the Axis forces demanded the surrender of
Greece on October 28, 1940. Bravely and honorably, the Greek people
replied, “NO.” Today, we honor the bravery and sacrifice of our fathers
and mothers who stood valiantly against the armies of the fascist
powers. They proclaimed a resolute “NO” to occupation. The people of
Greece affirmed their love of liberty and their right of
self-determination. They saw the evil and unchecked power of fascist
regimes, and in their response they committed their lives to protecting
their country. In faith they knew that no matter the outcome they were
willing to stand courageously in the face of this threat knowing that
ultimately nothing could separate them from the nobility of their
heritage and the love of God.
Today, we are inspired by our forbearers as we celebrate their courage
and honor their memory. They said “NO” to those who advanced power and
control at any cost. They stood firm against an ideology and its forces
that would only separate them from their freedom, their rights, and
their way of life. We find courage in their example and hope and
strength in the promise that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to
separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38-39).
Icon from here
The experience of God’s love and the promise that His love is always
with us helped the people of Greece in hope and faith to endure all
things (I Corinthians 13:7). They knew that the power of God’s love was
greater than the power of fascist regimes. They knew that the love of
God was essential to their freedom, and to their love for their families
and communities, and for their country.
With the assurance and truth of God’s love, we are able to stand firm
against any evil use of power or false ideology. As the people of Greece
in 1940 and as many witnesses of our faith have done, we can boldly
proclaim “NO” in the face of those who seek to destroy life and liberty,
those who use power to abuse and manipulate others, and those who try
to separate us from our faith and the love of God.
As we commemorate the valiant people of Greece on OXI Day, and we laud
their courage before the world, may we give thanks to God for the
witness offered to us and to generations to come. May we also pray for
the eternal memory and blessed repose of those who stood heroically for
their faith and their nation. May we be inspired to stand firmly in the
love of God, knowing that nothing can separate us from the great and
saving love we have in Him through Christ Jesus.
With paternal love in Him,
† D E M E T R I O S
Archbishop of America
See also
Theotokos vs Nazi - The Miracle of the Theotokos in Orchomenos on September 10, 1943
Saint Charalambos of Magnesia (vs Nazi)
The Miracle of Saint Menas in El Alamein in 1942
Orthodox New Martyrs in France vs Nazi
Saint Charalambos of Magnesia (vs Nazi)
The Miracle of Saint Menas in El Alamein in 1942
Orthodox New Martyrs in France vs Nazi
Σάββατο 8 Σεπτεμβρίου 2018
Theotokos vs Nazi - The Miracle of the Theotokos in Orchomenos on September 10, 1943
ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΕΔΩ
On
8 September 1943, the day of the feast of the Nativity of the
Theotokos, the Italians capitulated and in the beginning refused to
surrender their weapons to their German allies. In Orchomenos of Boetia
the regional organization E.A.M. felt they could capitalize on this and
accept the Italian arms. The Italians refused this and went with their
weapons to Livadia. On the way the Germans surrounded them and
disarmed them, and the Italians betrayed the people of Orchomenos by
stating their intentions. When the Germans learned of the intentions of
the people of Orchomenos they sent against them the next day,
September 9th, armored vehicles. When the people of Orchomenos heard
this they left and arrived at the crossroads of Agios Andreas,
unprepared and disorganized as they were, and scattered throughout the
surrounding area to the most remote Dionysus (Tsamaliou). The Germans
continued the chase, to retaliate against Orchomenos, as was their
usual tactic.
When
the Germans entered Orchomenos they took 600 hostages, left a section
in the village, and sent three tanks against the rest to Dionysus. On
the night of the 9th towards the 10th of September, at around midnight,
about 550 meters away from the Byzantine Church of the Panagia Skripou
(874 AD), the three German tanks were immobilized for no apparent
reason. As the German commander known as Hoffman later recounted, the
form of a woman had appeared in the night sky with her hand raised in a
prohibitive stance. Commander Hoffman then requested a tractor to pull
the tanks, and he beheld another miracle when the tractor was able to
easily pull the heavy tanks like an empty matchbox. He then proclaimed
"miracle! miracle!" and asked the residents to take him into the church.
From the icon in the church the commander recognized the woman to be
the Virgin Mary. He fell down on his knees and said: "This woman saved
you! You must honor her and glorify her!"
Orchomenos
was indeed saved by the Panagia and the 600 hostages were freed with a
vow by the commander that the village would not be harmed. Following
the war, Commander Hoffman returned to the Church of Panagia Skripou,
donating an icon of the vision he saw along with an large oil lamp. Just
about every year he returned on September 10th to commemorate the
event and light a candle in the church. For this reason the Panagia
Skripou celebrates a feast on September 10th every year. A procession
takes place with the icon on this day to the spot where the tanks were
immobilized.
Saint Charalambos of Magnesia (vs Nazi)
The Miracle of Saint Menas in El Alamein in 1942
Orthodox New Martyrs in France vs Nazi
Not often you see a Nazi serpent in an icon
Holy New Martyrs of Jasenovac Concentration Camp
Orthodox Holiness - The New Martyrs of Bosnia
Orthodox Pascha (Easter) in Dachau
Σάββατο 17 Μαρτίου 2018
The Sins of a Nation
Can a nation ever sin? If so, how can it be forgiven?
The stories and prophetic writings of the
Old Testament are replete with examples of national sin. There are
certainly stories of God dealing with individuals, but, on the whole,
His attention seems to be directed to Israel and other nations as a
whole. The promises and pledges are made to a collective people and the
chastisement falls on the whole nation as well. Our modern
sensibilities, rooted in a fundamental commitment to individualism,
recoil from this collective treatment. And we are not the first to
complain.
In Genesis 18, Abraham argues with God
about the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord has threatened to
destroy the cities on account of their sins. Abraham raises the
troubling question:
“Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen 18:23-25)
Thus, this question has had a prominent
place in the thoughts of the faithful since the very beginning. In
Abraham’s conversation with God, he asks if God would spare those cities
even if only fifty righteous were found. God agrees. With continued
pleading, Abraham takes the the number down to 10 righteous (and stops).
And the Lord says that He would spare the cities for the sake of just
10. Alas, less than ten were found. But we do not upbraid God that He
was willing to spare the unrighteous for the sake of a mere handful.
There is a mystery contained within the
entire exercise of that conversation. For the truth is, none of us
stands alone. No one stands free of the actions of others. Our lives are
deeply connected. We are ourselves the offspring of many generations,
and we carry within us ever so much that was not of our own choosing.
Our inheritance is tainted – both for good and for ill.
Fr. Thomas Hopko describes some of this as “generational” sin. To understand this requires that we remember that sin is not a legal
problem. It is not about what is fair or unfair. It is about a mystical
burden that we experience as debt, hindrance, oppositional weight,
weakness, brokenness and corruption, or just the starting place of our
lives. Virtually everything in our lives is gifted to us, and there are
many “gifts” that we would prefer never to have received. It is part of
our incarnational existence. We are the offspring of others. To have an
embodied existence in space and time is to have a body burdened with the
DNA of eons and a family and culture that is both the product and
carrier of history. Our own existence is a consequence of everything
that has come before us. We cannot rightly suggest that such a
contingent existence comes free.
Of course, many historical burdens become
the targets of political attention. No human being, no ethnic or
national group is without sin. Some sins are more recent and obvious
than others. But our accusers can never plead innocence. Acknowledging
this does nothing to remove our burdens.
In the 20th century, there have been some
notable national crimes that have, in some way, been acknowledged.
Japan renounced its military in response to the atrocities and errors of
the Second World War. Germany paid reparations to Israel and enacted
numerous laws renouncing and restricting the scourge of Nazism. Many war
criminals were punished. The Russian government, with no outside
political pressure, not only acknowledged many of the crimes of its
Communist past, but also built memorials and rebuilt churches (often
returning properties that had been taken away) in an effort of public
repentance.
Photo from here
It has rightly been noted that “history
is written by the victors.” It is therefore the case that we more easily
repent for the sins of history’s vanquished and leave the writing to
the victorious. But the burden of sin as historical reality remains.
Unaddressed, the sins of the past become the problems of the present.
Many of the most enduring conflicts in the modern world represent
centuries of unresolved issues and the inherited burden of our ancestral
legacy.
Often the legacy of history is carried on
in competing narratives. We do not always know or rightly remember the
details of what happened, but we know all too well the emotional burden
of its trauma. Hatred can be a very ancient thing.
And it is to trauma that I want to direct
our attention. Trauma is a word for the damage we suffer in extreme
circumstances. It can occur as a result of natural disaster, or war –
any time and place in which we are endangered, injured, or exposed to
terrible actions. People do not experience war and then walk away as
though nothing had happened. The war stops outwardly, but it continues
inwardly. This experience is as old as mankind itself. Trauma sometimes
leaves people emotionally and even physically crippled.
Among ancient peoples, the trauma of life
was met with liturgy – rituals, both public and private that sought to
restore them to their right minds, to appease the wrath of the gods or
the spirits of their enemies. The collective psyche of a whole people
was set right through various actions and beliefs that worked to make
peace and re-establish righteousness.
Modernity has very few such rituals. The
secular state, presiding over competing and disparate groups has almost
nothing to which it can appeal that serves as catharsis or repentance,
or even thanksgiving. Sport (such as the Super Bowl) comes closest to
public liturgy in modern America, but it serves nothing transcendent,
nothing permanent. It cannot heal or speak to the needs of a nation.
The outcome of this lack is an inability
for nations and often individuals to be healed of their trauma. The
wounds of lost wars or historical sins remain unaddressed, erupting from
time to time as renewed trauma in the national psyche.
Studying parish ministry in seminary, I
was introduced to the phrase, “recurrent latent cycling.” It was meant
to describe a struggle within the life of a parish that erupts
periodically, that is, in fact, the same struggle. It might be around a
new presenting issue – but it was still the same struggle. Healing the
parish required a discernment of what was actually going on – to bring
something that was latent into the light of day.
Nations (and individuals) who ignore
their wounds and griefs do not leave them behind – they bring them
forward and repeat their battles endlessly. Subsequent generations who
never knew the first cause, become the unwitting bearers of the latent
violence and destruction that they have inherited.
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| Icon from here |
Though Orthodoxy does not generally use
the term “original sin,” it doesn’t thereby deny the reality of the
inherited burden of sin. The growing study of epigenetics would suggest
that we may even inherit such burdens genetically.
The medicine we have received from Holy Tradition for this on-going sickness is repentance.
Of course, it is very difficult for nations to repent, though there
would easily be services for such in the Orthodox tradition. However,
the shame associated with national or collective sin is often denied or
retold in other ways. Without repentance, nations are doomed to relive,
repeat or act out the bitterness of their trauma.
There is, of course, another way. It was
first expressed in the prophetic words of the High Priest Caiaphas as he
contemplated the Jesus problem:
“You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish.” (Joh 11:49-50)
The death of Christ on the Cross becomes
the public liturgy for the sin burden of Israel. Of course, He was the
public liturgy for the sin burden of the whole world. But there was a
principle articulated in His sacrifice – that one man could die for the
whole. This is not a substitutionary legal event. Rather, it is the
mystery of coinherence and koinonia. “He became what we are that we
might become what He is,” the Fathers said. It has also been the
knowledge of the Church that we are invited into that selfsame
sacrifice. Buried into His death in Baptism, we are united to His very
crucifixion. United with Him in the grave, we journey with Him into
Hades, and there, brave souls make intercession for the sins of the
whole world, and with Him set souls free. The Elder Sophrony describes
such brave souls as Christ’s “friends.”
For at least as long as the days of
Abraham, we have had intercessors who saved the cities and nations of
the wicked. Their prayers were effective because they prayed in union
with the one mediator and true advocate, Christ our God.
Abraham was God’s friend. As God visited with him, He said:
“Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?” (Gen 18:17-18)
This is God’s inauguration of Abraham as
an intercessor for the nations. The greatest friends of God have always
taken up this same intercessory role. Through Christ and the prayers of
our holy fathers, God preserves the world and saves the nations from the
full brunt and weight of their history.
There are thus two kinds of people: those
who are the weight of history, and those who join themselves to Christ
in their repentance and bear the weight of history. This latter role is
the true life of the Church and the heart of her who prays, “On behalf
of all, and for all.”
About sin
LIVE, BEYOND THE LIMITS!
An Atonement of Shame – Orthodoxy and the Cross
Heaven & Hell in the Afterlife Acc. To The Bible
Salvation and atonement (& The significance of the “Antilytron”)
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