Who is Really Serious about Cutting Spending?

All of the Republican candidates talk about cutting spending and smaller government but look at these numbers. Of the candidates still running only Ron Paul wants to reduce spending.

Keep up with the news concerning Ron Paul at lewrockwell.com.

Theophany and the Blessing of Homes

Fr. Timothy,the priest serving our small mission, will be coming to our home tonight for the traditional blessing that takes place in Orthodox Christian homes after the Theophany.

“Blessing homes of Orthodox Christians is done each year on or after the feast of Theophany. This act is the central sign of God’s sanctification of all things through Christ’s baptism in the river Jordan and his epiphany to the world.

Small churches
The family is considered, by the Orthodox faith, to be a small church. The family table is the home altar where the members gather each day to receive their daily bread from God with thanksgiving in the name of Christ.

Sanctification of the home
The sanctification of the home takes place with prayer and the sprinkling of holy water. The priest, at this annual visit, asks God to have mercy on the house, to rid it of every evil and to fill if with every blessing. Everyone of the house, prays together for the living and the dead of the family, and all who live and have lived in the house. They all sing the hymn of salivation and process from room to room while the priest blesses the house.

Traditions of the ceremony differ according to local custom, but these general guidelines should are observed:

A candle with an icon and some holy water should be placed in a suitable place, such as kitchen or dining room table, or a home altar.
Also, a list of first names for whom prayers are to be offered, including members of the family and all those living in the house. The list should have a clear distinction between the living an the dead. If it is the practice to give the priest a gift, it should not be placed with the holy objects on the table. It can be prepared in advanced, but given at the conclusion of the service.

When the priest comes, all who are present in the house should gather around the icon with the candle. They should, if they are able to join in, say the Trisagion Prayers and sing of the Troparion of the Feast of Epiphany. Then a family member leads the priest through the house with the candle. As he goes, he sprinkles holy water, and prays for a blessing upon each room and the activity that goes on there. When they have gone through the entire house, the family gathers again around the table and the priest blesses each person present.” – Orthodoxwiki

The prayers prayed during the house blessing can be read here.

What is a hypocrite?

“A brother asked abba Poemen: What is a hypocrite? The old man said to him: A hypocrite is one who teaches one’s neighbor something without making any effort to do it oneself.”

“Abba Poemen also said: Someone who teaches without doing what one teaches resembles a spring, which cleanses and gives drink to everyone else, but is not able to purify itself.”

Orthodox From the Inside Out

“What Kireyevsky says is very important: we should start developing within ourselves an Orthodox philosophy of life. It is all there in the Holy Fathers, but we must have the right reason for turning to them. You can open the Holy Fathers and have the same problem you have with the Scriptures: you need someone to interpret them because you find something unclear, or you don’t have the whole context, or you don’t know how to understand what one Father said as opposed to another Father and you think they might disagree, and so on.

There can be a whole realm of confusion in the Holy Fathers, and thus we have to approach them not with our ordinary rationalistic minds. We must be trying to raise our minds up to a higher level; and the way to do this is to soften the heart and make it more supple. There are many examples in the Protestant world where people have very soft hearts and are, out of love for Christ, kind to other people. We should not, as Orthodox, think that we can be hard and cold and correct and still be Christians. This is not basic Christianity.

A pre-Christian philosopher in China named Lao Tzu taught that the weakest things conquer the strongest things. There is an example of this here at our monastery: the oak trees, which are very hard and unbending, are always falling down and breaking their limbs, while the pine trees, which are more supple, fall down much less often before they are actually dead.

We can see the same thing in human life. The person who believes in something so passionately that he will “cut your head off” if you disagree with him, shows his weakness. He is so unsure of himself that he has to convert you to make sure that he himself believes. The contemporary forms of “super-zealotry” in the Church which are propagated by people who want so desperately to be on the right side, are in fact bowed up with weakness and insecurity.

The need to be “right” is again on the external side of Chritianity. It is important, but not of primary importance. The first priority is the heart, which must be soft and warm. If we do not have this warm heart, we must ask God to give it, trying ourselves to do those things by which we can acquire it. Most of all, we have to see that we have not got it—that we are cold. We will thereby not trust our reason and the conclusions of our logical mind, with regard to which we must be somewhat “loose”. If we do this, entering into the sacramental life of the Church and receiving the grace of God, God Himself will begin to illumine us.”- Blessed Fr. Seraphim Rose

Esteem Yourself as Nothing

“The soul that really loves God and Christ, though it may do ten thousand righteousnesses, esteems itself as having wrought nothing, by reason of its insatiable aspiration after God. Though it should exhaust the body with fastings, with watchings, its attitude towards the virtues is as if it had not yet even begun to labour for them.”
- St Macarius the Great

Media To Decide Next President?

How pathetic is this? Here are some interesting facts about the last Republican debate (not really a debate but that is what they call it) hosted by MSNBC in the state of Florida. In all of the debates Ron Paul has gotten the least amount of time every time.

Total Times
Romney: 21:11, during 13 times

McCain: 16:00, during 13 times

Giuliani: 13:50, during 11 times

Huckabee: 12:11, during nine times

Paul: 6:31, during six times

click

Bp. Hilarion on Christianophobia in Europe

On 24 January 2008 the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso met with the representatives of the Orthodox Churches to the European Union. Present at the meeting were Metropolitan Emmanuel of France (Patriarchate of Constantinople), Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria (Moscow Patriarchate), Bishop Porphyrios of Neapolis (Church of Cyprus) and Metropolitan Athanasios of Akhaia (Church of Greece). A number of issues were raised related to the ongoing dialogue between the Orthodox Churches and the European Institutions.

Addressing Mr Barroso, Bishop Hilarion raised the issue of growing Christianophobia in Europe: ‘We often hear about anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and very little is said about Christianophobia, which gains strength in many European countries. It exists in many different forms, including the removal of Christian symbols from the public sphere, the denigration of Christianity and refusal to recognize Christian heritage of Europe, the persecution of people who openly express Christian convictions and who choose to live according to Christian moral standards.’

The representative of the Russian Orthodox Church referred to a recent debate about Christianophobia in the UK Parliament and argued that similar debates would be timely and necessary within the European Institutions. Representatives of Christian Churches of Europe must be invited to take part in such debates.

Bishop Hilarion also informed the European Commission President about recent initiatives of the Russian Orthodox Church with regard to the discussion of the notion of human rights. ‘This notion’, commented the Bishop, ‘is often used to promote dubious moral standards and to undermine traditional institutions, such as marriage, family, childbirth. In the name of the human rights, abortion and euthanasia are propagated, and the “right to death” is considered more important than the right to life.’

‘We believe, however, that liberal concepts must not be promoted at the expense of traditional ones. We also believe the notion of human rights must be counterbalanced by the notion of human responsibility and accountability. Everyone is accountable not only to him- or herself, but also to other people and to the society,’ concluded Bishop Hilarion. From Orthodoxeurope.org

Read more about christianophobia.

HT: Fr. John

Our Holy Mother Xenia of Petersburg, fool for Christ (~1800)

Rdr. James at St. Symeon’s in Birmingham gave my family an icon of St. Xenia when we were baptized and chrismated and she has been an inspiring part of our family prayers ever since.

“She was born about 1730, and as a young woman married an army colonel named Andrei, a handsome and dashing man fond of worldly living. When she was twenty-six years old, her husband died suddenly after drinking with his friends, leaving Xenia a childless widow. Soon afterward, she gave away all her possessions and disappeared from St Petersburg for eight years; it is believed that she spent the time in a hermitage, or even a monastery, learning the ways of the spiritual life. When she returned to St Petersburg, she appeared to have lost her reason: she dressed in her husband’s army overcoat, and would only answer to his name. She lived without a home, wandering the streets of the city, mocked and abused by many. She accepted alms from charitable people, but immediately gave them away to the poor: her only food came from meals that she sometimes accepted from those she knew. At night she withdrew to a field outside the city where she knelt in prayer until morning.
  Slowly, the people of the city noticed signs of a holiness that underlay her seemingly deranged life: she showed a gift of prophecy, and her very presence almost always proved to be a blessing. The Synaxarion says “The blessing of God seemed to accompany her wherever she went: when she entered a shop the day’s takings would be noticeably greater; when a cabman gave her a lift he would get plenty of custom; when she embraced a sick child it would soon get better. So compassion, before long, gave way to veneration, and people generally came to regard her as the true guardian angel of the city.”
  Forty-five years after her husband’s death, St Xenia reposed in peace at the age of seventy-one, sometime around 1800. Her tomb immediately became a place of pilgrimage: so many people took soil from the gravesite as a blessing that new soil had to be supplied regularly; finally a stone slab was placed over the grave, but this too was gradually chipped away by the faithful. Miracles, healings and appearances of St Xenia occur to this day, to those who visit her tomb or who simply ask her intercessions. Her prayers are invoked especially for help in finding employment, a home, or a spouse (all of which she renounced in her own life). A pious custom is to offer a Panachida / Trisagion Service for the repose of her husband Andrei, for whom she prayed fervently throughout her life.
  Saint Xenia was first officially glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia in 1978; then by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1988.”-abbamoses.com

Troparion – Tone 8

In you, O mother was carefully preserved what is according to the image.
For you took up the Cross and followed Christ.
By so doing, you taught us to disregard the flesh for it passes away,
But to care instead for the soul since it is immortal.
Therefore, O Blessed Xenia, your spirit rejoices with the Angels.

Kontakion – Tone 7

Having loved the poverty of Christ,
You are now being satisfied at the Immortal Banquet.
By the humility of the Cross, you received the power of God.
Having acquired the gift of miraculous help, O Blessed Xenia,
Beseech Christ God, that by repentance
We may be delivered from every evil thing.

Thank You For Showing Me My Hidden Passion

Hidden Passion
It often happens that someone sees himself sitting peacefully and quietly, but when his brother says a word that upsets him, he is troubled. Thus, he thinks that he is justly upset with him, saying, ‘If he hadn’t come and spoken to me and troubled me, I wouldn’t have sinned.’ But this is folly and absurdity. Did the person that spoke to him give him that passion? He simply showed him the passion that existed within him, so that, if he wanted to, he could repent of it. He is like fine bread that shines on the outside, but when one breaks it, he sees its moldiness. In just the same way, he was sitting, as he thought, in peace, but he had this passion inside him he was unaware of. His brother said one word and revealed the filth hidden inside him. Therefore if he wants to receive mercy, he must repent, purify himself, progress and he must understand that he ought to thank his brother for being the great cause if his spiritual benefit.”

St. Abba Dorotheos of Gaza

HT:Fr. Alexander

Faith and Reason

“The writings of the Russian philosopher Ivan Kireyevsky contain some basic ideas which are very apropos for us today. The usual argument between faith and reason, he wrote, is not correct. Reason is such a thing that it must be raised up to a higher level, and this is what the Orthodox Church tries to give. By itself, reason does not offer any more than an understanding of this two-dimensional, corporeal realm, with which most of the critics and scholars of the West are occupying themselves. There is something, however, above this. According to Western thinking, if you go “above” this, you usually have to deny reason and “jump into the dark.” In Orthodoxy this is not so, for the reason itself is so exposed to Truth that it begins to be elevated above itself.”- Blessed Fr. Seraphim Rose