ß ðàçìåñòèë çäåñü ýòè ðàññóæäåíèÿ ýòîé äåâóøêè, ïîòîìó ÷òî ÷àñòî ìîæíî ñëûøàòü òàêèå ñîìíåíèÿ
×òî ïðåâàëèðóåò Âîëÿ ÃÎÑÏÎÄÍß ÈËÈ ÍÀØÀ ×ÅËÎÂÅ×ÅÑÊÀß?
ÈËÈ ÆÅ ÑÓÙÅÑÒÂÓÅÒ Ò Í ÆÅÑÒÊÈÉ áîæèé ïëàí äëÿ íàñ, êîòîðûé äåòåðìèíèðóåò âñå â íàøåé æèçíè, îñòàâëÿÿ äëÿ íàøåé ñâîáîäû âîëè ëèøü òàêóþ àëüòåðíàòèâó, êàê âûáîð ñîðòà âèíà çà óæèíîì.
Ñìîòðè: Áþðî ïîïðàâîê ôèëüì
â îðèãèíàëå ýäæàñòìåíò áþðî
see also
1919: The Last Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia
MAY 24, 2016 BY FR. JOHN A. PECK
1919: The Last Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia
By Anthony E. Stivaktakis It is commonly believed that the last Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople took place on May 28, 1453. However, the last Divine Liturgy to really take place in Hagia Sophia was on the 19th of January in 1919, which was officiated by Papa Lefteris Noufrakis (1872-1941) from Rethymno, Crete. […]
Why I Want To Be Orthodox
November 22, 2010 By Fr. John 6 Comments
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by Kenny Scott
Over at Preachers Institute, we are in the early days of our 30(40) Days of Blogging for Advent 2010. One of our bloggers, a catechumen named Kenny Scott, just posted this on his blog Our Orthodox Life. It is very worth republishing, and we do so with his permission.
Fr. Wayne the priest of St. Barnabas in Costa Mesa, asked us to write an essay on why we wanted to become Orthodox during catechism. A year again December, I posted that essay on Facebook. Today I am going to cheat a little bit and repost that essay below. Some of it you already read from my previous posts, but…
When I first left an Orthodox service I wanted to have nothing do with it. I told my friend who introduced me to Orthodoxy that it was “superstitious nonsense”. But the months that followed did not let me get the service out of my mind. I started to research the church and discovered the concerns I had were perhaps unfounded. And perhaps, my beliefs were more on the nonsense side than those of the Church. So I opened up closed doors and went to another service, and another, and another, until here we are. Catechumens in the Orthodox Church.
During the time of that first service until now Laura and I have asked many questions and received more answers with much grace and patience. We have had many, “Can this be?” and “What do we do now?” moments.
Do I want to be Orthodox? In some ways, I do not want to be Orthodox. My parents. My family. My friends. I, like many converts to Orthodoxy, come from a long line of Protestant heritage. I in no way want to dishonor that history nor am I ashamed by it as I found Christ through my church family and friends and they have nurtured the character and personality that I possess today. But I fear that some of my family and friends will see this as a rejection of those things they have instilled in me. I fear that for some it will cause unnecessary pain and worry. I fear that some of my friends will perceive this change as flippancy when it comes to faith, rather than progression. But I find that, despite these concerns, I can not go back without lying to friends/family, myself, and God.
I find that some of the ways I don’t want to be Orthodox are becoming the ways I do want to be Orthodox. I don’t want to have any authority over me. I don’t want to be accountable to anyone else but God. I don’t want to be guided by the Church in scriptural interpretation. I don’t want to follow a structured form of worship. But encountering the Orthodox Church has caused my wants to change. It has changed my perspective on authority, accountability, the Scriptures, worship, and more.
Do I want to be Orthodox? In some ways, I must be Orthodox. I must be Orthodox because I can’t be anything else. My thoughts on core doctrines like Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide have changed. The Scriptures never say it, the Church never taught it, so why should I believe someone who says otherwise, 1,500 years removed? My thoughts on authority have been shattered. Why should I trust what someone 2,000 years removed tells me what Paul truly meant, over a disciple of Paul himself? I simply can’t go back.
I want to be Orthodox because I am convinced, though I still have many questions and some practices remain uncomfortable. I am convinced this church is the Church Jesus established and the one that was built by His Apostles. This goes against what I am accustomed to. Like many Christians, when choosing a church to attend, it ends up being the church I am most comfortable in and requires little change. Essentially, a church that looks the most like me. This is the first time I am choosing a church that makes me uncomfortable.
I want to be Orthodox because this is the first time I have felt church is good for my soul. Sacraments that I had been taught were purely symbolic, I now know were never understood that way by early Christians. I desire the sacraments that have been missing from my life and that were given to the Church for my sanctification.
I want to be Orthodox because it is the Church Christ established.
I want to be Orthodox because it is the Church the bible came from.
I want to be Orthodox because the bible tells me so.
I want to be Orthodox because God is revered in this Church like I have never known.
I want to be Orthodox because I don’t have to keep up with Christian fads.
I want to be Orthodox because they have not forgotten the martyrs.
I want to be Orthodox because Mary is honored.
I want to be Orthodox because it is the Church I was always apart of but didn’t know.
I want to be Orthodox because Christ is risen and they celebrate it.
I want to be Orthodox because I want to be a better person years from now.
I want to be Orthodox because I want to dance with God.
I want to be Orthodox because I must.
by Jonathan Hill
I often read about convert stories to Orthodoxy typically finding a similarity in most of the stories. This similarity in others stories is totally antithetical to my own conversion story. Many find certain teachings difficult or disturbing to come to terms with during their inquiring phase. Only after I had technically converted, did I undergo such a process.
I grew up Lutheran to two ELCA parents in Connecticut. Both of my parents were musicians, more specifically church musicians. Music education was of huge importance growing up. I started violin at age 5, and singing at age 7. When I started singing it was decided that I would join a town over Episcopal cathedral steeped in the Men and Boy choir tradition. I sang there for ten years, from 7 to 17, in my final year going on tour of England seeing all the great wonderful cathedrals there.
Both of my parents where church musicians at their own respective church, and I sang at a third parish. Growing up I was never at church with my family. Choir practice was always right before the service too, exactly at the same time when normal church schooling occurred for youths. My parents tried to teach me as much as they could, but church education was never a high priority. If I had to wager I would contend that church education was more important to my mother, a fact which will become of importance later. I was ultimately communed in the ELCA, having taken a two year course at our local ELCA parish. Don’t ask me if I remember anything from this course, however!
Even though I did not make it to many official church schooling lessons or classes, as a musician we are told to *listen*. I couldn’t tell you what chapter or verse a story in the bible was from, but I could tell you any story almost from memory from just listening during the service.
At this point I want to mentioned two sort of non sequitur stories from my childhood regarding church and Christianity. At one point I remember questioning why as Episcopalian Protestants we were singing the Magnificat, and thinking anyone who prayed to Mary was “dumb.” I also remember questions posed to me by a Jewish friend down the street: what is salvation? he asked. I said,
“It’s becoming God!”
Oh kids say the darnedest things sometimes.
After I left my Episcopal church in CT, I moved to Boston for schooling. My father, an organ tuner, re-builder, and servicer, knew many many church musicians in Boston. As a family we would often travel there as my dad would go for extended periods of time. I grew up listening to great choirs and meeting many many organists, priests, pastors, you name it. So when I moved, the logical choice for me was to join the parish of Trinity Copley, in Copley Sq Boston. My dad knew the choir director there, and I got to sing for him as well. At this time I changed my focus from violin performance to vocal performance. I was around 20.
I sang at Trinity Copley for two years, leaving on a sour note.
2004, my mom passed. I mention this because, and not in any negative way, it was a real freeing experience regarding Christianity. For example. growing up I heard that, for my grandmother, it would have been better my mother marry a Muslim than a Catholic.
At this time I was rather interested in singing for a close by Anglo-Catholic parish, Church of the Advent, purely for musical and career reasons. They perform an entire mass each Sunday, never repeating music within a given season. I recall telling a friend, “I think God wants me to sing the mass!” I ultimately never sang there, but a bug had bit me, the bug of high liturgics.
It was at this time that I went both back to my roots and onward, joining the Men and Boys choir of All Saints, Ashmont. While being a men and boys choir, something familiar to my youth, it was also Anglo-Catholic high liturgics. I recall not wanting to kiss the cross on Good Friday, and after every service they would recite the hail Mary, and I’d purposely turn my back (which caught the eye of a number of disgruntled parishioners). So clearly I had *some* Protestant hang ups. It was during this time that I remember having a wikipedia night, one where you look something up, click a link in that page to go to another page, clink a link in that new page to a newer page, and so forth til, hours later, you no longer know how to got to where you are. Surprise Surprise! I landed on a wiki page about Orthodoxy.
I was at All Saints for only 1 year, again leaving on a sour note. It became apparent to me that working for the church, being a paid employee, seemed to garner a different behavior than what I would consider “Christian.” I got a job as a bar tender and started working Sunday mornings. I swore off church. I wouldn’t even step foot in one.
This is when what I would consider my real journey began. I had friends at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. Brandeis, at least at the time, was the 2nd largest Jewish university in the US, only to Yeshiva in NYC. I started going to Shabbas services, talking with reformed, conservative, and orthodox Jews; I even dated a Jewish girl and went to Israel while she was abroad there. I recall in a conversation with an orthodox Jewish man saying,
“Only Christ kept the true Sabbath, as He died and laid in the tomb.”
Curious again as that’s exactly what our Good Friday hymnography says!
I was reading about Islam; about prostration; about prayer; about the desert.
Then one day two singer friends of mine, a married couple, asked me about what church I attended. I hadn’t been to one in almost 2 years. The husband invites me to come to church with him. I think, oh great some mega/house hippy church. But no, they brought me to St Mary’s Antiochain Orthodox Church, Cambridge, MA. It was so different: the sights, the sounds, the smells. I remember thinking Byzantine chant was so “other worldly.”
But I was still not convinced. Venerating the cross at the end of liturgy my first service, I remember saying to myself,
“I will NEVER do that again!”
I thought, however, why not visit another Orthodox parish and see what this Orthodox thing was about. So I went Holy Trinity OCA Cathedral next to Fenway park. You can tell I was a convert/inquirer because I arrived early for service! Peering in through the door I could see…. NO PEWS! Don’t ask me why this mattered to me, all I knew was this was what I was looking for! Within 2 weeks of first attending St Mary’s I was venerating every icon. I just knew it was right.
That was July of 2008. I knew then I wanted to become Orthodox. But I must be honest, it was more out of a want to belong and be with my friends. I was told to take the 9am-10am catechism class before liturgy for a whole year, ending just after Pascha (being Chrismated on Pascha) of the following year. I could not wait. I also couldn’t seem to care. Because I knew I was going to do it (and also because I worked a night time bar tending job), I believe I only attended 50% of the actual classes, and of those I was most likely hung over more often than not.
But I knew I wanted it. Every Sunday I made it a point to stop by Holy Resurrection Bulgarian Orthodox in Alston, as it was right around the corner from where I lived. They had a nice gift shop and I’d buy a small icon every week to not only start my own collection, but to make icons and veneration a normal part of my life. There were sounds and smells in the Church that were new to me, too. Incense had been a thing I was used to, having attended Anglo-Catholic parishes.
But even then it was ‘other worldly.’ And what exactly was Byzantine chant? Growing up I had gotten used to four part Western harmonies and music. Perhaps if I had found a Russian Church first this wouldn’t have been such an adjustment. However, I am grateful for such an adjustment. Byzantine chant made the service so different, like I was entering another world. Isn’t that exactly what we think of the service too, that we’re entering heaven? This is also why I prefer the old calendar, it separates the Church from the secular world.
Whom would my patron be? I remember stressing over this question. Many choose a Saint whose day aligns with their birthday. Others read volumes of Saints lives finding which strike them. The first icon of a Saint I bought was St Nicholas of Myra. I thought this was important since I had hang ups of icon veneration. Previously I had only bought icons of Christ, or icons of stories from the Gospel. St Nicholas was the first Saint. But I also felt a strong connection to the Old Testament, and felt a Saint, such as an Apostle, someone who bridged the gap between the old covenant and the new, would be appropriate. So it came down to St Nicholas of Myra and St Stephen the Protomartyr. One night while praying before bed, starring up at the ceiling, questioning whom my patron should be, a few chips from the ceiling fell onto my head, and I knew, I KNEW! My patron Saint was St Stephen the Protomartyr.
Other curious stories, such as this, occurred during my year as catechumen. While looking for an icon on a given Sunday that year I was struck by a tiny pocket icon of The Theotokos Three Hands, by St John of Damascus. I had yet not gotten an icon of the Theotokos. I thought nothing of it and moved on. But curiously I kept finding myself looking at that tiny little pocket icon on the shelf. Finally I went to pick it up and look at it more closely. Immediately I “heard” (does anyone really know if they hear or not in these cases?) “You have no mother; today I am your Mother.” And I went and bought that icon.
I get that many ask questions about the structure of the services, vestments, hierarchy, bishops, liturgical calendar, and the like. For whatever reason I did not ask these questions. I was much more drawn to the two types of examples above, to experience. Only years later did my now spiritual Father, Fr Archimandrite Maximos, tell me that I am much more like Mary than like Martha.
I was ultimately chrismated Pascha of 2009. I recall that first holy week, all the services at night by candle light. It brought with it a feel of being in a cave like how I thought those first Christians gathered.
After I converted I learned about the Fathers. Just who were they? Why are we they important? Was it appropriate to read them? Who was St Maximos the Confessor? What is the Philokalia? What is the phronema of the Fathers and what is prayer of the heart?
All these questions! But you see, I had already converted and only now started to ask. What had I gotten myself into?
Looking back I think this was perfectly fine. Those questions are quite complex with no easy, next day answers. I know many struggle, wrestling with these very questions during their inquiring phase. I am grateful for the blessing God gave me to not struggle with these questions and just jump in, even if it did cause me sleepless nights down the road! Even now, 8 or so years later, I am still learning the meaning of forgiveness. As newly ordained deacon, Fr Steven (ROCOR) told me,
“Forgiveness requires a deep sense of self.”
And I think this is exactly what the phronema of the Fathers is.
My 5 years at St Mary’s was rather tenuous, and I almost left Orthodoxy. I wanted more Fathers, less modern writers. I even attended, for financial reasons, a Episcopal church 2013-2014, singing as a paid section leader, with a blessing of course. However, Glory to God, I was picked up by now my spiritual Father, Archimandrite Maximos Weimar, I attend a ROCOR parish in Boise, Fr David Moser presiding, and I often make trips to Seattle where I am welcomed as a family member at the Kotar’s at St Nicholas’ ROCOR Cathedral. During Holy Week this year after hearing me sing in the choir, Bishop Theodosy of Seattle said,
“Your voice is needed by the Church.”
God willing I will continue to chant and read the services to the Glory of God.
Christ is Risen!
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