MAN AND HIS FALL By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, from "Entering the Orthodox Church—the Catechism and Baptism of Adults. ”

MAN AND HIS FALL

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, from "Entering the Orthodox Church—the Catechism and Baptism of Adults. ”

As we analyze the Parable of the Prodigal Son, let us go on to make a man-centered analysis of this parable. It will show us the true value of man and what true life is.

The father in the parable had two sons. Both sons lived at home and enjoyed their father’s goods.

God is called Father both in relation to His only-begotten Son and in relation to man. However, there is a vast difference between the two. The Father gave birth to the Son before all ages, whereas He created man within time. Man is also a child of God, but by grace, whereas the Second Person of the Holy Trinity is a Son by nature.

We can use an example to make this more comprehensible. An artist constructs a painting, which is his own spiritual creation, his own work. In a way, you could call it “his child,” because it expresses his thoughts and his gifts. At the same time, he begets children. Thus, he makes the painting, but begets the child. The same thing, with appropriate analogy, happens with God the Father in relationship to the Logos and men.

God created the whole world. In the beginning, He created the angels, what is known as the noetic realm. He then went on, within the space of five days, to create all the sensible world, nature, birds, fish, animals, plants and so on. Then, on the sixth day He created man, who was both noetic and sensible [sensory], i.e., he had a soul and body. As the Fathers of the Church say, first He created the Kingdom, the palaces, and then He created the King, man. From his very creation, man was called to be king of the world.

The Holy Scriptures say that man was made by God in His Image and Likeness. The Image refers to the noetic faculty and his free-will, i.e., he has a nous and freedom. Whereas the Likeness refers to the fact that he was created to become by grace what God is by nature. That is to say, he was created to become a “god” through grace. Of course, according to the Holy Fathers, the Image refers to the triune nature of the soul. Just as God is Nous, Logos and Spirit man also has a nous, logos and spirit. The nous is the center of his personality.

Christmas Christology: An Interview with Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

This interview with his Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou was published in the journal "Καθ' οδόν" by the Community Youth of the Sacred Metropolis of Limassol, and as the reader will see, the questions cover a large part of the Christology of Christmas.

 

Question: The word Χριστούγεννα (Greek word for "Christmas") means the birth of Christ. We would like you to tell us what was the purpose of the birth of Christ and generally why did the Word of God have to incarnate. Couldn't there have been another way for the salvation of the human race?

 Answer: As it is written throughout our biblical-patristic tradition, the purpose of the Incarnation of the Word of God is the theosis of humanity, which means that He who according to His nature is God became man, that we may become gods according to Grace. In one of his discourses, Athanasius the Great analyzes that God sent the Prophets in the Old Testament to speak to His people, but ultimately the issue was how man will be deified and how he will be released from death.

Before the new testament was the Divine liturgy.

 

We Orthodox live Christ within the Divine Liturgy, or rather Christ lives within us during the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy is a work of God. We say: “Time is a creation of the Lord”. Among other things it means now is the time for God to act. Christ liturgises, we live with Christ. The Divine Liturgy is the way we know God and the way God becomes known to us. Christ celebrated the Divine Liturgy once and this passed into eternity. His divinised human nature came to the Divine Liturgy. We know Christ specifically in the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy we celebrate is the same Divine Liturgy which was done by Christ on Great Thursday in the Mystical Supper.  The 14th through the 16th chapters of the Gospel according to John is one Divine Liturgy. So in the Divine Liturgy we understand Holy Scripture. The early Church lived without a New Testament, but not without the Divine Liturgy.

Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos--On Eternal Hell

   By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos
In many of his texts St. Gregory speaks of man's freedom of choice, which is not abolished by God, and also about the perpetuity of Hell. Both these positions of his remove every notion of the theory of the restoration of all things as affirmed by Origen.
In his great catechetical oration, in which he refers to the Catechism and the value of Baptism, at the end he continues the subject of the change in a man's whole existence which comes about by his choice. He writes that holy Baptism is called birth from above, that is, it is man's rebirth and reconstitution, but it does not alter his characteristic features. This human nature does not of itself admit of any "change by Baptism", and neither is his reason or intelligence changed, nor his cognition nor any other characteristic of human nature. This must take place through man's struggle before and after Baptism. The grace of God which we receive through Baptism does not bring about our rebirth unless we ourselves play a part in it.

Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos-Suffering is Part of Our Life

The Problem of Suffering 

by Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

In today’s turbulent society there is no one who does not face suffering in his life and taste the bitter cup of afflictions. We see people in distress, miserable, tormented, prostrate under the heavy burden of suffering. Their faces are downcast, but their hearts even more so. They are tormented and afflicted. Because of this suffering, or rather, because they handle suffering in the wrong way, they suffer various illnesses of body and soul. We shall therefore look at some aspects of this vast subject of suffering and pain in our lives.

1. Suffering is Part of Our Life

It is well known that suffering is closely linked with human life. Christ declared to His Disciples that they would have much suffering in their lives. “In the world ye shall have tribulation” (John 16:33). We encounter this truth throughout Holy Scripture and the teaching of the holy Fathers, who are successors to the holy Apostles. The Apostles Paul and Barnabas visited Lystra, Iconium and Antioch together, “confirming the souls of the Disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). St Paul testified to the Christians of Corinth, “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed” (2 Cor. 4:8). The necessary comments on the phrase “yet not distressed” will be made later in the chapter. Here we insist on the fact that the Christian life is closely linked with suffering and pain.

Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos-The Definition of Glorification

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos 

After purification of the heart and illumination of the nous comes glorification, which is the third stage of the journey towards perfection. Glorification is linked with theoria, which is the vision of the glory of God. When we say glorification we mean vision or theoria of the uncreated energy of God, which is seen as glory, as Light. Purification – the rejection of all thoughts (logismoi) from the heart and the transformation of the passible part of the soul (desire and anger) – must come first, as well as illumination of the nous, which is noetic prayer.

It should be stressed at the outset that glorification is an experience; it is not speculation or philosophy.

“Glorification is an empirical state. It has nothing to do with metaphysics.”

Man is not capable of arriving at this state on his own, but he is empowered by God. Thus glorification is a gift of God to the one who has struggled to keep His commandments. The Psalmist writes: “In Your light we shall see light” (Ps. 35[36]:10).

“There is no question of man being capable of knowing God. This is impossible. Only someone who is within the uncreated Light sees the uncreated Light. One must be in God to see God. Man sees God through God.”

The Uncreated Energy (logoi) of God in Nature

The Church has two fundamental doctrines with regard to the creation. The first is that God created the universe out of non-being and not from allegedly pre-existing ideas. The second is that God governs, maintains and provides for the creation through His uncreated energy and not by means of created laws.

The energy of God is single, but it is differentiated into many energies according to its results, namely: existence-bestowing, life-giving, wisdom-imparting or glorifying, just as there is the creative, sustaining, providential and glorifying energy of God. The entire creation participates to varying extents in God’s energy. At this point, when mentioning the energy of God in creation, we shall refer to the creative energy of God but not to His glorifying energy, in which the angels and saints share, as we shall see later.

“All things participate in the creative energy of God, but not in His glorifying energy.”

THE FOLLOWING IS ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON THE UNCREATED ENERGIES OF GOD

THE FOLLOWING IS ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON THE UNCREATED ENERGIES OF GOD

by Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos

            A contemporary monastic of the Orthodox Christian Church in Greece, Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, is a prolific writer and an expert on Saint Gregory Palamas and his teachings of the Essence of God and the Uncreated Energies of God.  He was born in 1945 and graduated from the Theological School of the University of Thessaloniki.   He taught Greek for several semesters and gave lectures on Orthodox ethics to the students of the St. John of Damascus Theological School at the University of the Patriarchate of Antioch in Balamand, Lebanon.  Already in his youth he was particularly interested in the Fathers of the Church, working for a time in the monastery libraries of Mount Athos, on the recording of the codices.  He was especially interested in the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas.

            The study of Patristic texts and particularly those of the Hesychast Fathers of the Philokalia, many years of studying St. Gregory Palamas, association with the monks of the Holy Mountain, many years of pastoral experience, all brought him to the realization that Orthodox theology is a science of the healing of man and that the Neptic Fathers can help the modern restless man who is disturbed by many internal and external problems.  Within this framework he has written a multitude of books, the fruit of his pastoral work, among which is “Orthodox Psychotherapy.”  Some of these books have been translated into various languages.  With these books he is conveying the Orthodox spirit of the Philokalia to the restless and disturbed man of our time.  This is why they have aroused such interest.

Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos- Defining “Orthodox Spirituality”

It is necessary first to define the terms: “orthodox” and “spirituality”. We cannot speak about “Orthodox spirituality” unless we know exactly what we mean by these two words. This is what the Holy Fathers of the Church have done. In his exceptional book “The Fountain of knowledge”, and more specifically in the sections entitled “Philosophical Chapters”, St. John of Damascus analyses the meanings of these words: Substance, nature, hypostasis, person, etc. Because these terms can be defined differently within other contexts he explains why they are so defined here.
The adjective “orthodox“ comes from the noun “orthodoxy” and shows the difference between the Orthodox Church and every other Christian denomination. The word “Orthodoxy” manifests the true knowledge about God and creation. This is the definition St. Athanasios of Sinai offers.
The term Orthodoxy consists of two words: “orthos” (true, right) and “doxa”.

Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos on Monastic and Married Way of Life

We divide people into monks and married people, and life into monastic and married, with the result that we praise the monastic life, which we regard as better and more suited to keeping God’s commandments, while we disparage married life as not suitable for the practice of God’s will.
Indeed we know very well that the Church praises both ways of life, both the monastic life and the married life. But this does not mean that one is praised at the expense of the other. And at this point we must say that the interpretation of the Parable of the Talents applies, which we mentioned before.
It can be maintained that in the Church the people are not divided simply into unmarried and married, but into people who live in Christ and people who do not live in Christ.

HOLY PRIESTHOOD & SPIRITUAL THERAPY

              

HOLY PRIESTHOOD & SPIRITUAL THERAPY

By Bishop Hierotheos Vlachos, Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and St. Vlassios; excerpt from his highly esteemed book "Orthodox Psychotherapy. ”

The priest has a double task. One is to perform the sacraments and the other is to heal people so that they can worthily approach and receive Holy Communion. We have further pointed out that there are many priests who are priests outwardly and perform their function unhindered but in essence have defiled the priesthood, and that this is apparent from the fact that they are not able to heal. They perform the sacraments, and the gifts are sanctified through them, but they cannot cure others or save their own souls.

On the other hand, there are laymen and monks who do not have the sacra-mental priesthood but can heal people because they have spiritual priesthood. We should like to dwell briefly on this point.

The Mystery of Baptism by Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

“The Church lives in the context of Pentecost. Illumination — which is the aim of Baptism and is assumed to be identical with Chrismation, as Chrismation is illumination — is the heart of the Mysteries, and Pentecost is the heart of the heart. The two go together, because anyone who reaches illumination, when and if God wills, arrives at glorification. Glorification, however, is not a continuing state, and he returns to illumination. Glorification is not a permanent state in this life. Thus illumination is supposed to be a permanent state. If someone is not in the state of illumination it means, according to the Fathers of the Church, that he has fallen. He returns to illumination through the Mystery of Confession. So we have the first Baptism, we have Chrismation and afterwards we have the second Baptism. The second Baptism may be the monk’s repentance in order to reach illumination, which he did not find at Baptism. Or it may be the Mystery of Confession that is sometimes accompanied by Chrismation, when those concerned have denied Christ.

Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos-On The Mystery of Pentecost

 (Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

After Christ’s Ascension into heaven, as He had affirmed, on the fiftieth day after His Resurrection and the tenth after His Ascension. He sent the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father.

Christ Himself had announced to the Disciples beforehand the sending of the Holy Spirit: “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper [Paraclete, Comforter], that He may abide with you forever – the Spirit of truth, Whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17). Immediately afterwards He said: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you” (John 14:26). Later He said: “It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you” (John 16:7).