St Justin and Patristic Tradition

Here, in honor of the first celebration of the feast of St Justin of Celije, is a translation of a selection from an article by a spiritual son, Bishop Artemije, retired Bishop of Raska and Prizren, entitled "Saint Justin and Patristic Tradition." It was specially translated for this site by Olga Lissenkova and edited by myself.

Father Justin lived by Tradition and in Tradition, and therefore lived, thought, spoke, and wrote according to patristic Tradition.

Just as one of the main attributes of truth is immutability, inasmuch as it always and everywhere exists in itself, as something immutable, like God Himself, so too in Father Justin was there one trait that is not often met even among certain Holy Fathers. It is that Father Justin, from his youth, beginning with his first written and published lines until his last recorded thought, throughout the whole course of his life as a productive writer and thinker, always remained faithful to himself or, it is better to say, to the truth which he received and in agreement with the Tradition he served, about which he thought and wrote. His style, his language, and his fearlessness when it concerned truth and the Tradition of the Orthodox Church, remained unchanged throughout the entire course of his life. In this respect, before he reposed he truly never needed to repent of anything or to renounce anything in his thought or deeds, which distinguishes him from other minds, even great ones.

He had the rare happiness – or, better to say, God’s mercy and Providence – to have from the very beginning entered the right way of following the Lord Jesus Christ through following the Holy Fathers and Holy Tradition, and he never veered away from it, neither “to the right nor to the left,” whatever dangers or circumstances came his way. This is what is especially admirable and attractive in Father Justin. He is a bright example of a person rigidly persisting in truth, thanks to which the Church lives and creates.

To many, such a position of Father Justin seemed to come from stubbornness, insubordination, separatism, and lack of respect for the generally accepted manners and norms of his time. He suffered much from this and was pursued by his enemies, but he could not renounce his way, because this way was not his, but Christ’s, as Father Justin himself somewhere wrote. Many did and still do judge and condemn his actions, because his correct evangelical position, which was in full agreement with the the Tradition of the Apostles and Holy Fathers, burned them like live coals, witnessing, although not always verbally, that they were not on the right path and would not come back to the correct way because the wrong way was much more pleasant and convenient. Father Justin’s only concern was to “oblige God and be faithful to His truth.” What people thought of his views and deeds did not bother him very much, as he was ready to suffer a thousand deaths (his own words) for God’s truth, if only this were possible. This is why many contemporaries who knew Father Justin were of the opinion, and some express in openly, that Father Justin was and remains the conscience of the Serbian Church – and we would add, not only the Serbian. As Father Justin grew, lived, and created in the environment of the evangelical Divine-human reality, and through this in the environment of the whole Holy Tradition of the Apostles and Holy Fathers of Christ’s Orthodox Church, he belongs to the wholeness of the Universal Catholic Church, as all the Holy Fathers and all of God’s saints do. Not one single saint remains confined to the narrow limits of one people or any one local Church: inasmuch as he is saved in the Church, together with all the saints, so he belongs to them all.

Father Justin was a complex and multifaceted personality, which makes him close and “one’s own” to all groups and categories in which the Holy Fathers can be referred to according to one or another attribute.

Through his interest in world literature and philosophy, Father Justin resembled and was close to the learned Fathers of the Church, especially to Martyr Justin the Philosopher, whose name he accepted in monasticism, and the great Cappadocians: Sts Basil the Great and Gregory the Theology. Thanks to a profound and thorough knowledge and study of Greek literature and philosophy, they felt the incapacity of human thought alone to solve the eternal questions of human existence and, with all their souls, all their hearts, and all their minds they gave themselves to Christ. Like them, in his youth Father Justin was attracted by secular wisdom and “philosophy… after the tradition of men” (Col. 2: 8), but soon he saw that this was leading, all the more bitterly and all the more deeply, to the somber labyrinth of this world, from which one cannot find a way out, and with all his being he gave himself to the only true and unchangeable Wisdom – the God-Man Christ. On this way of this “philosophy according to Christ,” Father Justin had indispensable teachers and luminous examples to follow in the persons of the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, especially St John Chrysostom, St. Macarius of Egypt, Sts. Athanasius and Basil, Sts Isaac the Syrian and Symeon the New Theologian, and many others. Having learnt by his own experience that the secret of any saint is the Lord Jesus, Who is everything in his soul, in his conscience, in his heart, in his life and in his actions, Father Justin wisely concludes that “the contemporary Christian can be a true Christian only if he is guided by the saints day in and day out.”

As close as he was to the learned Fathers and theologians of the Holy Church, Father Justin was no less close and akin to the group of, secularly speaking, “unlearned” Fathers, such as St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia and St. Spyridon of Tremithous, and many others. Like these Holy Fathers, he was notable for a childishly pure and sincere faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he crystallized this faith into superhuman prayerful-ascetic podvigs, in which he was burning, not pitying himself. His ascetic life and ceaseless prayer, accompanied by plentiful tears and internal cries of the soul, against his will could not be kept secret, and attracted and amazed not only Orthodox souls raised in the fear of God, but also some people of other faiths who had the opportunity to get to know Father Justin more closely. For him, throughout all his life, he was guided by the words of St. Gregory the Theologian’s: “One must purify oneself first, before teaching others to be pure; one must become wise oneself first, before teaching others to be wise; one must become the light oneself, and only then enlighten others; one must come close to God first, before bringing others to Him; one must become a saint oneself, before sanctifying others.” Applying this patristic rule, Father Justin, by his selfless podvigs (especially those of fasting, prayer, and tears) mercilessly turned himself into a great ascetic of our time, and in so came to resemble the Holy Fathers: the ascetics and true theologians of Christ.

From this proximity and similarity of Father Justin’s life to that of the Holy Fathers naturally arose the theological faithfulness and compliance with the patristic Tradition mentioned above. Indeed, as his ascetically virtuous life was not a simple copy of any one or another Holy Father’s life, but the original personal and inimitable life “with all the saints,” so too his theology is not simply a mechanical rendering of patristic theology, but its organic maturity and development. It is nothing other than, in theological language, the description and expression of the personal experience of the knowledge of the mystery of the incarnation of the God-Man Christ in the personal lives of all believers. All his works testify to this, from his school and college notebooks to his last published and as-yet unpublished works.

Photograph: the future Bishop Artemije with St Justin outside the church in Ćelije.

Andrei Voznesensky: RIP

Serge Schmemann (the son of Fr Alexander) has an editorial tribute to the late poet Andrei Voznesensky up at The New York Times.

Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing (1 of 5)

Dr Jean-Claude Larchet begins his introduction to his book Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East with a survey of the many and competing systems of etiologies and therapies that exist today for the treatment of mental illness. He states that the goal of the present book is “to offer some insight into the manner in which early Christians viewed, understood, and treated insanity, and to show the benefits, however modest, that the thought and experience of the early Christians can provide.” He writes:

While modern psychiatry by and large appears to be split up into various schools, each holding to contradictory theories and claiming exclusive value for their own point of view, it is interesting to see that Christian thought developed a complex conception which recognized three etiological origin: organic, demonic and spiritual, and that each of these were associated with different and specific forms of treatment. This allows us to state from the beginning that the widespread idea among historians, namely, that the Fathers considered all mental illness to be the result of diabolic possession, is completely false.

For mental disorders diagnosed as organic, the Fathers “recommended such appropriate medical therapy as was available in the days.” As concerns the demonic, the Fathers considered the possessed not to be accomplices of the devil, but rather victims, and as such entitled to special attention and solicitude.” However barbaric demonic possession may seem to many today, “the similarity between aspects of the pattern thus brought to light [by modern psychiatry] and those that Christianity generally attributes to demonic activity is quite striking, with an impulsive lewdness and a relentless will to do harm being the most obvious.” The third etiology, mental illness from spiritual problems, is “generally defined as one or another of the passions developed to an extreme.” The nosology and therapy of spiritual maladies by the Fathers is of special interest today for two reasons. First, “it represents the cumulative experience and fruit of many generations of ascetics who have explored the depth of human soul and have come to a knowledge of even its innermost recesses in great detail; at the same time, they have spent their entire lives in mastering and transforming the soul and have acquired a unique and remarkably efficacious experience.” Second, the Fathers “envisioned man in all his complexity, taking into account the many dimensions of his being, including the problems posed by his very existence (especially its meaning), his overall destiny and his relationship with God.”

Another aim of this book is “to present the attitude of the great saints towards ‘fools,’ an attitude animated in particular by the Christian ideal of charity. But first it is necessary “to have some idea of the anthropological bases underlying their conceptions.” The work will conclude with a treatment of the phenomenon of the “fool for Christ.”

Larchet begins his first chapter with the assertion that the Holy Fathers “often insist that the human being is neither body nor soul in isolation, but entirely and indissociably both.” The two influence each other, with the result “that every movement of the soul is accompanied by a movement of the body and every movement of the body by that of the soul.” Nonetheless, “the soul, being incorporeal, has a different nature than the body and is superior to it.”

The Fathers normally distinguish three “powers” in the human soul: the vegetative, the function of which is “nutrition growth and generation”; the animal or appetitive, which comprises two elements: irrascability or ardor (thumos) and concupiscability (epithumetikon), “which encompasses desire, affectivity, and other surge urges; and reason, the two principles faculties of which are the spirit (pneuma) and intellect (nous). (Here Larchet notes that the authors of the first centuries used the former term, while Byzantine and subsequent writers preferred the latter term.) However, it should be pointed out that “the ‘elements’ that can be distinguished in the soul do not constitute three different souls, nor three separate parts.” Some Fathers used the dichotomous body-soul model, and others the trichotomous spirit/intellect-soul-body model.

God willing, I’ll continue with chapter two tomorrow.

Marriage with the Non-Orthodox

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: I myself am Orthodox, but I am going to marry a girl who was Baptized in an Old Believer Church. Now she attends a Protestant non-denominational church, but she has not received Baptism there. After our engagement we’d like to get married, but in the Orthodox church we were refused, inasmuch as they don’t marry Old Believers; in the Old Believer church we were also refused, inasmuch as they don’t marry Orthodox. But the Pentecostalist “church” marries everyone without any question. My future wife said that she doesn’t want to be Baptized Orthodox, and I respect her opinion; in my turn, I also don’t want to be rebaptized.

I want to ask the question: how does the Church look on us being married by Protestants, and is this allowable in principle. And in general may a Protestant perform the Mystery of marriage?

Answer: Canon 72 of the Sixth Ecumenical Council strictly forbids an Orthodox person to marry a heterodox person. The Holy Fathers based themselves on the Christian understanding of the family as the most important life union in the goal of salvation. There is even a definition: the small Church. It is obvious that such a union can be built only on a spiritual foundation. Marriage is possible only under the condition of the sincere conversion of a heterodox person to Orthodoxy.

Reading Group, 5b

Juridical Vengeance or Co-Suffering Love
A More Positive Exposition of the Moral Content of the Dogma of Redemption

a. To provide an Orthodox interpretation of the dogma of the redemption it is necessary to produce a feasible work in which the interpretation of the dogma is the central thesis. The treatise will proceed by observing what constantly occurs in life.

b. The assimilation of redemption by faith is regeneration. The example of Zacchaeus provides a better example of regeneration than the parable of the prodigal son.

c. There are three types of influence leading to regeneration: admonition, example, and something greater.

d. A person who is not deeply corrupted is sometimes brought to reason by exhortation and good example. Sometimes this is accomplished by a power placed into them, and this power is the force of regeneration, and by this power Christ has redeemed us.

e. By grace, people, and especially priests, are granted a certain portion of this power of regeneration.

f. The main question is: by what means does the Lord redeem and regenerate us?

g. The third force of regeneration is the power of co-suffering love, which sets regeneration in motion.

h. The co-suffering love of one who perceives the fall of a neighbor with as much grief as if he himself were the sinner is a powerful force of regeneration.

i. Only the first glimmer of such a manifestation of God’s regenerating grace is encountered.

j. Dostoevsky, in his earlier works, focused attention not upon those who serve in the mystery of regeneration, but upon those upon whom it was bestowed.

k. In The Brothers Karamazov he portrayed the characters of two such examples of brotherly love. The Prologue provides similar examples.

l. The influence of grace-bearing co-suffering love lies in its leading the soul out of a condition of moral indifference toward a definite decision, to be with God or against God.

m. Contact with regenerating grace does not destroy one’s freedom.

n. The Elder Jerome attracted about 2,000 monks to Mt Athos by his meekness and compassion, and his spirit blocked the way of sinners and brought people to repentance.

o. Dostoevsky portrays this action of co-suffering love, which divides people into those being regenerated and those being condemned.

p. One ought not to be disturbed by the use of secular literature in explaining dogma.

q. The principle of strength of moral regeneration is the power of co-suffering love.

r. The earnest of this gift is imparted in the mystery of ordination.

1. How can it be said that Christ has redeemed us by the power of regeneration? How does the regeneration that comes through Christ differ from that which comes through people?
2. What is the connection between the power of regeneration and the exercise of free will?

The Theology of Illness (3 of 3)

The third and concluding chapter of Jean-Claude Larchet’s book, The Theology of Illness, is entitled “Christian Paths toward Healing.” He begins:

If sickness and suffering can and should be spiritually transcended and transfigured in Christ, and if they can constitute an ascetic pathway capable of leading the ill person to spiritual heights, nevertheless they should never be either desired or sought after.

The struggle again illness is, indeed “a part of the larger struggle one is called to assume against the powers of evil.” The one true Physician is Christ. Indeed, “in order the show that it is the whole person Christ came to save, the Fathers and the entire Tradition of the Church are careful to present him as both ‘Physician of bodies’ and ‘Physician of souls.’” When the saints heal, it is precisely in the name of Christ.

Larchet then turns to a consideration of spiritual paths toward healing, beginning with prayer. He writes: “For the grace of God rests on all mankind – and in fullness upon those who are baptized. In order to receive it one need only face it and be open to it.” Praying for one’s neighbor and the prayer of the saints are also effective against illness. The saints are able to heal us through the deification they have received in Christ:

They can do so because they have been deified through grace and have become participants in divine Life and Power. We pray especially to the Mother of God, the first human being to have been fully deified and glorified, “the comfort of the afflicted and the healing of the sick,” “the hope of the hopeless,” ‘the strength of those who are struggling,” “unquenchable and inexhaustible treasure of healing,” “from whom marvels spring forth and healing flows out.

Healing from the saints also comes indirectly through their holy relics, “which are suffused with and radiate these energies.”

After considering the charism of healing and its nature and limits, Larchet turns to a treatment of Holy Unction. Speaking of the seven prayers read during the service of Holy Unction, Larchet writes:

Bringing to mind the mercy and compassion which God has always shown mankind, they ask him to preserve the life of the sick person, to alleviate his suffering, and to heal and strengthen his body. Most importantly, they ask God to forgive his sins, to confirm his spiritual life, to assure his salvation and sanctification, and to accomplish the regeneration of his entire being and the renewal of his life in Christ. Each prayer puts special emphasis on one or the other of these elements, but all of them connect the consolation of the soul with that of the body, spiritual healing with physical healing, and they emphasize the fundamental importance of the former without underestimating that of the latter.

The author also considers the use of holy water, which “conveys the healing energies of God by virtue of the Holy Spirit,” as well as that of the sign of the cross, which “invokes and effects the energies of the Holy Trinity, it is the effective sign of Christ’s victory over death and corruption, over sin and the power of the devil and of demons, and consequently over the illness connected with them.” He also considers the rite of exorcism, because according to the Church Fathers, “the devil and demons are at the root of certain illnesses. Larchet writes:

Thus, if we refer to the Gospels, we observe that possession and illness, or infirmities, are presented as orders of reality situated on two different planes, each with its own attributes, and not necessarily connected to one another. First of all, possession and illness, or infirmities, are clearly distinguished in a number of passages. This fact alone makes it impossible to equate the two. Secondly, the majority of illnesses, or infirmities, referred to in connection with the miracles of Christ are not shown to be in any way connected with possession. Thirdly, in certain cases, a person may be afflicted with both possession and illness (or infirmity) without the two conditions having any correlation.

Exorcism “is a sign that Christ has come to restore to mankind the kingdom which we had lost and to reclaim on our behalf the power we had given up to Satan. It has its place under the Name of the Lord of hosts.” The afflicted person, however, must be worthy to receive this grace: “To those invoke his Name, he grants this power only in proportion to their faith and to the purity of their hearts.” Exorcism, however, is not a technique; its “effectiveness depends above all on the spiritual well-being of the one putting it into practice.” The power of the demons, and the need for exorcisms, has changed over the ages. Nevertheless, especially with the expansion of Christianity, demonic activity, while manifesting its intensity, has changed shape and begun to manifest itself differently: it has become diluted, more subtle, harder to pinpoint and less overt.”

Larchet next turns his attention to the role of secular medicine, noting that “Christians have had recourse, since the beginning of the Christian era and in direct continuity with the Old Testament tradition, to any secular means of healing that the medical sciences of their age had to offer.” Medicine is “seen as a very special way of putting charity into practice,” and “from a spiritual perspective, the value of medicine lies in the orientation of the one who implements it.” During the Byzantine era, it was the Orthodox Church (including many individual Fathers) who “took the initiative to organize the medical profession into the systematic treatment and care of patients in a hospital setting,” and the Church itself took “the initiative in hiring, paying and organizing the services of professional physicians.”

There were also early Christians who took a “maximalist position,” rejecting the use of secular medicine, but they were always in the minority and, in a number of cases, heretics or schismatics (e.g., Tatian, Tertullian, and Arnobius of Sicca, who were linked to Montanism, Encratism, and Marcionites, respectively). There were likewise some Fathers, such as St Barsanuphius of Gaza, who looked askew on medicine, but in whose case his pronouncements were guided to the individual rather than universal in scope. “What actually seems important to Saint Barsanuphius,” Larchet notes, “is that one never forget, every time one resorts to medicine, that it is always God who heals through then”

Larchet goes on to consider a spiritual understanding of secular means of healing. The Fathers “emphasize that the remedies found in nature or created from natural elements, as well as the art of discovering, extracting and making them, just like the art of applying them beneficially, all have their origin in God.” St Diadochus of Photike even claims that God created herbs for their medicinal use: “As man’s experience would one day lead him to develop the art of medicine, for this reason these remedies preexisted.” “A physician,” Larchet writes, “through his art as well as through the medicine he prescribes, is merely implementing the divine energies that were generously poured out by the Creator, in all created beings as well as in the human spirit.”

It must always remembered, however, that “healing itself, while resulting from natural processes, actually comes fro God.” This stands in opposition to modern naturalism:

The Christian attitude is thus diametrically opposed to naturalism and sees as an illusion the belief that the medical arts and remedies are, in and of themselves, good and effective means of healing. St Barsanuphius emphasizes that “without God, nothing avails, not even the physician.” And he adds: “Do not forget that without God there is no healing for anyone.”

This is why Christians, while they rely of physicians, see them simply as mediators.

While recognizing the benefits of medicine, the Fathers also emphasize its limitations. St Isaac of Syria, for instance, “attributes to the lowest order of knowledge to any science or technique ‘governed by the body,‘ that is, ‘preoccupied only with this world,‘ and ‘does not see the Providence of God directs us.’” But since man is more than a body, the soul need not be forgotten. The healing of the body symbolizes and foretells the healing of our whole being, and illnesses of the soul are more serious than those of the body, since the former “hinders man’s entire being, body and soul, from being saved.” The nature of health in this world is always relative, but we are promised future incorruptibility and immortality in the next world. Christ’s miracles “seem to be primarily visible signs of this coming restoration, where our bodies will be healed once and for all of every illness and we will experience a perfect and permanent health.”

Our Lord Jesus Christ came to save not only the soul, but also the body: “He dies so not only in this life where he calls man to know, in both body and soul, the first-fruits of divine blessings, but also in the hereafter where, once his body has been raised and made incorruptible, he can rejoice in them fully in his entire being for all eternity. At the resurrection, each person “will be clothed with his own body, but it will be free of the imperfections, the weakness, the corruptibility, and the mortality that are characteristic of its current nature.” Speaking of the resurrection, Larchet writes: “Then man will experience in his body a perfect, complete and permanent health, that he might receive – in this body as in his soul – the fullness of grace.” (What awaits those consigned to hell, Larchet doesn’t say.)

This exemplary work deserves a place in the library of every Orthodox Christian – and in every hospital as well.

Why Crowns at a Wedding?

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: Tell me, why are crowns held over the heads of those being married?

Answer: During the Mystery of Marriage, crowns are borne on the heads of the bride and groom as a symbol of celebration, glory, and majesty. This is indicated in the mysteriological words which the priest pronounces: “Our Lord God, in glory and honor I marry [them].” This custom is altogether ancient. Holy Scripture speaks of it: “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels” (Is 61:10)

The crowns on the heads of the bridge and groom are also foreshadowings of those victorious incorruptible crowns with await us in the Heavenly Kingdom, if they build their family as a salvific union and, conquering all the afflictions and temptations of this world, inherit eternal life.