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Holy Zeal
Links with the Holy FathersIntroduction by Fr Seraphim Rose In our confused days, when a hundred conflicting voices claim to speak for Orthodoxy, it is essential to know whom one can trust as spokesmen for true Orthodoxy. It is not enough to claim to speak for Patristic Orthodoxy; one must be in the genuine tradition of the Holy Fathers, not merely “rediscovering” them in a modern academy or seminary, but actually receiving their tradition from one’s own fathers. A merely clever explainer of the Patristic doctrine is not in this tradition, but only one who, not trusting his own judgment or that of his peers, is constantly asking of his…
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2020 Vision: From Blindness to Sight in the Age of Collapse
“Life in the hive puckered up my night, / A kiss of death, the embrace of life.” –Television, “Marquee Moon” When we were born, OUR LUNGS INHALED CHAOS, and when our umbilical cords were cut, we traded mothers for motherboards. No longer linked to human wombs, our navels found new nutrition: We plugged—as by a USB cable—into the mainframe of a society hypnotized by gadgets, machinery, and glowing screens. This mainframe, this biomechanical machine, devoured our being and with it, the human being. It became our babysitter, our pedagogue, our hero, our sibling, our uncle, our elder, our entertainment: our closest, most sadistic and inhuman friend. Our souls, discounted as…
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Degrees of Spiritual Perfection
By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos “The most important work of the Church is to cure man. Therefore the Orthodox Church is a Hospital, an infirmary of the soul. This does not mean that the Church disregards other domains of pastoral activity, since she aims at the whole of man, consisting of both body and soul. She cares indeed for the physical, economic and social problems as well; yet the main weight of her pastoral service is put on the soul’s therapy, for when man’s soul is cured then many other intractable problems are solved. Some people accuse the Orthodox Church of not being very much involved in social problems. However,…
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The Divine Darkness
By St Gregory of Nyssa What does it mean that Moses entered the darkness and then saw God in it? What is now recounted seems somehow to be contradictory to the first theophany, for then the Divine was beheld in light, but now He is seen in darkness. Let us not think that this is at variance with the sequence of things we have contemplated spiritually. Scripture teaches by this that religious knowledge comes at first to those who receive it as light. Therefore what is perceived to be contrary to religious is darkness, and the escape from darkness comes about when one participates in light, but as the mind…
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The Bread, The Wine, and The Mode Of Being
by Chrysostom Koutloumousianos, Hieromonk The recent reappearance of the ancient terror of a pandemic has prompted fertile conversation among theologians and literary people across the world. Various opinions have been articulated, such as that disease can be transmitted through the current way of distributing holy communion, or that the Eucharistic Gifts themselves can be bearers and transmitters of pathogenic germs. It is said that since the bread and the wine do not alter their essence and essential properties, it follows that they are subject to decay and can also spread toxic viruses. This idea has supposedly found Christological grounds as well in that the human body of Christ is a…
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Three Saints of Hope and Pain
by Dr Nikolaos Koios It’s a profound conviction of the Orthodox Church that every epoch has its own saints and there’s not a single age without them. In every era, the saints are proof and demonstration of the grace of Christ, the love of the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit, in place and time, among us. When saints leave this earth for their celestial abode, they leave to the generation which knew them the privilege of Saint John the Theologian (I Jn. 1,2) to declare ‘what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands’. Our…
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God Is With Us
My dears! I should like to speak with you, seated at a cup of coffee. See, I have prepared coffee for myself, sweet, just as I like it. I realize that you are frightened, many of you are frightened with the current situation. Especially those who are in Italy. But let us not forget that God is standing at our wheel. God, who created heaven and earth, who created all things from nothingness. And as sacred scripture tells us with God even the hairs of your head are counted. Do you think that anything happens without God’s will, without divine permission? No. This is why I want to tell you…
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“I LEARNED FROM HIM HOW TO LIVE AND HOW TO DIE”
How Fr. Seraphim (Rose) Influenced the Life of One Future Priest An interview by Jesse Dominick with Fr Martin Person Matushka Sarah Person, and Martha Nichols. Archpriest Martin Person is the rector of the St Herman of Alaska Russian Orthodox Church in Sunnyvale, CA. He and his Matushka Sarah met in 1980 at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where there was an active Orthodox Christian Fellowship of students. That OCF group was mentored and inspired by Archimandrite Anastassy (Newcombe) and by Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose). Fr. Martin and Matushka Sarah were in Russia recently on a pilgrimage to the holy sites in and around St. Petersburg and Moscow. Among…
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A Word About the Store
After making exodus from New York, Death to the World has made home in Lompoc (/ˈlɒmpoʊk/, LOM-poke), CA with Fr John Valadez serving as the priest for the parish of St Timothy. Before leaving for New York, we left merchandise to be shipped by a team in Los Alamitos, CA. We are currently in the process of consolidating all merchandise in Lompoc where we will operate home base. Bad news first. We will be restocking the store site and adding some new gear, but all items being restocked will not be shipped until mid-September due to the logistics of moving. Also, in this process we had to take a good look…
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“ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL WAS A PARTY, AND I WAS DOING PROSTRATIONS”
I was born in 1967, and grew up, like all my peers, in an atmosphere of atheism...
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The Saint, the Priest, and Face-tattoos
By Fr Photios Parks Some years back, there was a point in my life when I didn’t give a second thought to the Saints. I really didn’t see how they had any place within my faith. In Bible College and in Protestant seminary, I was fed the idea that saints were either a type of good luck charm to sell my house, a statue in your yard to attract birds, or they were individuals likened to magicians whose bones were exploited in medieval times. Fortunately, I had a life-changing experience that dispelled my incorrect notions about Saints and changed my whole paradigm in the way I view these holy servants.…
