Tag: Christianity

Photo: priroda.inc.ru     

The Gospel reading now presents us with a wonderful conversation between the Archangel and the Holy Virgin; a conversation in which both the deep humility of the Holy Virgin and her unconditional submission to the will of God were fully revealed. Having heard from the Archangel that the Lord was choosing her as an instrument of the incomprehensible mystery of the incarnation of God the Word, the Holy Virgin—with the clear awareness that from henceforth all peoples would bless her—was not exalted in her thoughts; she attributed the greatness that the Lord bestowed upon her not to her virtues, not to her personal dignity, but solely to the will of God. And therefore, in response to the Archangel, she called herself but a servant of the Lord and expressed perfect submission to God, full readiness to fulfill His will. Behold the handmaid of the Lord, she told the Archangel, be it unto me according to thy word (Lk. 1:38).

A truly wonderful combination of humility with obedience to the will of God, and, we might say, the sole example of such a degree of perfection we see in the Holy Virgin! How many righteous ones there were who, terrified by the mere thought of not obeying God, nevertheless, in important decisive cases, out of a sense of humility, evaded fulfilling the will of God unwittingly, without even noticing it. For example, Moses the God-Seer, a friend of God—who could be higher, more perfect than this righteous man? But even he, when he heard the voice in the bush choosing him as an instrument for the deliverance of the people of Israel, out of a sense of humility, refused this honor. Appoint another able person whom Thou shalt send (Ex. 4:13), he said to the Lord! It was necessary to work a miracle to encourage the despondent, to utter a promise of aid from above, even to provide a visible helper to strengthen the languishing one, who trusted neither in his own strength nor in God’s help.

Let us also point to the great St. John the Baptist, of whom the Lord Himself said: Among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist (Mt. 11:11). And when the Lord required Baptism from this great prophet, he was not sufficiently obedient, but out of a sense of humility, he objected, saying: I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me? (Mt. 3:14). The Lord had to repeat His demand in order to see His will fulfilled. Notice how much higher—no less humble, but more obedient—the Holy Virgin was than them! Her humble heart had the strength of faith to contain the incomprehensible mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God, and she also had the willingness to fulfill the will of God revealed to her. The importance of the matter didn’t shake her firm hope in the help of Him for Whom nothing is impossible (cf. Lk. 1:37). Seeing herself only as an instrument of providence, she humbly and submissively answered the Archangel: “I am the Lord’s handmaiden; let it be with me as you have said!”

This, brethren, is the example that the holy Church annually presents to us for our pious imitation and reverent contemplation. Let us use it for our own edification; and in honor of the heroine of this present celebration, our Most Blessed Lady Theotokos, let us devote a few minutes to reflecting upon obedience to the will of God.

Obedience is usually referred to as following what you hear. The counsel of someone who is disposed towards us, our boss’s order that reaches us by our hearing, obliges us to act—to do as they advise, to fulfill what they order is to obey, to show obedience. In accordance with this general concept, speaking of obedience as a Christian virtue, let us understand such a disposition of the human soul according to which it will completely, freely, and lovingly follow what it recognizes as pleasing to God, in which it sees the will of God. For such a well-ordered soul, there are no misunderstandings in matters of faith and activity; there are no struggles between duty and desires. The machinations of a cunning mind and weakened heart are silenced before the Divine significance of the law. Thought, word, deed—everything that manifests the life of a rational, free being is balanced, adjusted, directed towards ensuring that the will of God is always fulfilled in everything.

The sad experience of Adam’s disobedience and the bitter consequences of this disobedience that we experience clearly show the importance of obedience to the will of God. Our forefather was blessed as long as he kept obedience; but as soon as he tasted the forbidden fruit, his blessedness disappeared. A multitude of calamities weighed down upon the transgressor. From the disobedience frivolously committed arose sin—an inclination, a need to sin; following sin came death, preceded by sorrows and diseases; and man, this crown of creation, called to life and beatitude, was abased to decay, cast down to dust! And that’s not all: Adam’s disobedience became a fruitful seed of sin for all his descendants. Receiving life from Adam, his corruption also passed to us; sin, death, and corruption permeated our entire being. Our spiritual eye was darkened to the point that, languishing in thirst for beatitude, we can’t clearly see the path leading to it; and with this moral impotence of the will, we can’t even faithfully follow the indicated path. According to the Apostle, we’re in a state of falling; we can’t do the good that we know on our own. The sin reigning in our soul causes us not to do the good we want to do, but to do the evil we don’t want to do (cf. Rom. 7:19). What a pitiful state disobedience has brought us to!

Now let us turn our attention to how the blessedness we lost has been returned to us. The Son of God incarnates, teaches us the perfect life by His example, becomes a curse for us, dies, and destroys our death by His death. Do you see what lies at the foundation of all these redemptive labors? Obedience! This is the brightness of [the Father’s] glory, and the express image of His Person (Heb. 1:3), equal and consubstantial with the Father (cf. Phil. 2:6). The Son of God humbles Himself out of obedience to the Father (2:8), conceals the glory of His Divinity under cover of the flesh, and throughout His earthly life speaks and does only what He received as a precise commandment from the Father (Jn. 12:49); and in general, He extends His obedience to the will of the Father to the utmost, in the words of the Apostle, even to death, and moreover the death of the Cross—the most shameful at that time (Phil. 2:8). And by this perfect, complete obedience to the will of the Father, the Lord regained for us that which was lost by our disobedience!

So, if Adam’s lack of obedience deprived us of our blessedness, and perfect devotion to the will of God in the Redeemer secured for us the right to regain, to become blessed again, then it’s clear how valuable is obedience. And now that everything is done, everything is prepared, when it remains for us only to enjoy the fruits of redemptive labors, to appropriate for ourselves the right to beatitude—even now, obedience to the will of God has not only not lost its significance for the souls of the saved, but has also become an object of special importance, special concerns, constant attention. The Lord Himself expressed this thought when He said to the Apostles in His farewell speech, and through them to all of us: “I am the vine, and you are the branches. As a branch can’t bring forth fruit unless it’s on the vine, so you can do nothing without Me” (cf. Jn. 15:1-5). From this analogy, the need for a close, essential union of the saved soul with its Savor—a union like that between a trunk and its branch—is clear. Consequently, it’s necessary that the thoughts, desires, and feelings of the Savior completely penetrate into the soul being saved; to penetrate in such a way that through its words and deeds, both others could see and that the soul itself, aware of its personal, separate existence, could rightfully say that it is no longer it that lives, but Christ lives in it (cf. Gal. 2:20). How can this be achieved if not by complete and perfect obedience to the will of Christ? In the matter of assimilating the merits of the Cross, our soul must completely submit to the will of God, diligently, steadily following the path indicated to us by the Savior, and thus, by obedience, introduce the life of Christ into ourselves.

St. Gury (Karpov), Archbishop of Taurica The will of God, ever good and perfect, is entirely directed towards restoring and strengthening the ability to live an eternally blessed life within us. To fulfill the will of God means to make it easier to achieve our desired goal; conversely, to evade fulfilling the commandments, to break them, is to destroy our own happiness. This is clear to everyone. But does everyone know that the will of God can be violated not only through frivolity, or being carried away by passions, or hardened opposition, but also through a painfully developed sense of piety, through a special, distinctive zeal to please God? Every violation of the will of God is bad, but the latter kind is especially unfavorable.

In the case of the former, there is hope that one day the conscience will awaken, will bring you to reason. In the case of the latter, the conscience itself disposes and incites a man to violate the will of God with the idea that he is thereby serving God. Let us beware, beloved, of this treachery of the father of lies! In the zeal to obey God, one must not add his own reasoning to the known will of God or be deceived by any conceptions of the mind, until grace illuminates and enlightens his vision; we must firmly remember the rule of Christian wisdom bequeathed to us by the Fathers, that good is not good if not done in a good way. That is, if we want to do what is pleasing to God, we must do it in a manner pleasing to Him—according to the exact meaning of the commandment—neither adding nor subtracting. Otherwise everything is in vain.

Let us remember Saul, the king of Israel. The Lord sent him to destroy the Amalekites for the evil that the Israelites suffered from them on their way out of Egypt, and ordered that he destroy everything—the people, their flocks, and all their possessions. Saul acted according to the commandment, destroying everything that he found among the Amalekites. He left only a few of the large and small cattle—not as spoils, but for a sacrifice to God.The deed was seemingly not entirely bad. However, how did the Lord receive this zeal? The Prophet Samuel said to Saul in the name of God: “Did you not know that obedience is better than the best sacrifice, that disobedience is the same as idolatry, that resistance is the same as sorcery? Therefore, know that as you have despised the will of God, so the Lord will humiliate you: You will no longer reign” (cf. 1 Kg./1 Sam. 15:26). Such punishment will seem severe, but it’s perfectly just.

The Lord, as All-wise and All-good, of course knows better than us what is useful to us and in what form; and if He commands anything, then it’s only out of a perfect desire for our own good. To change the meaning of the commandment, to even slightly tilt it, to adjust it to our taste—would that not mean to resist, to prevent us from doing good? Not to mention insulting the majesty of the Lawgiver. In the matter of salvation, our mind is certainly not the leader; it’s not even a light, but rather a lamp that still needs the light of the law of God. We must use our mind only to understand the will of God, so as not to deviate from the precise fulfillment of what is pleasing to God. The will of God should be the inspiring principle and the ultimate goal of our activity.

In the matter of salvation, it’s not unimportant whether we do something simply, as a good deed, or as a commandment, as the will of God. Of course, the deed in and of itself is the same in either case, but its significance, its relation to pleasing God, to spiritual salvation is substantially different. We are saved by faith in the redemptive merits of Jesus Christ; our good deeds are necessary only as proof, as an expression of our faith, and they contribute to our salvation only to the degree of our faith, that is, to the degree of our obedience to the will of God. Our good deeds can be compared with bank notes that conveniently substitute as coins for us. This piece of paper, in and of itself—what is it worth? But as soon as the bank’s seal and the manager’s signature are added to it, then its value is undoubted, and it’s accepted everywhere with the value affixed to it.

So it is with our good deeds: By themselves, they’re worth nothing, but as soon as we place the seal of obedience to the will of God upon them, the value of that priceless Blood that was shed for the purification and salvation of the world, then by virtue of the thought and name with which they are imbued and sanctified, they acquire value, and sometimes quite a high value! For a man who desires to walk the straight and faithful path to salvation, it’s very important that his every work should bear the character of obedience to the will of God, that his every activity should reflect the high standard of the obedience of the Savior, as a clear river in clear and calm weather reflects the sky with all its adornments.

Of course, the good that is done without the thought of thereby fulfilling the will of God is still good. This good is an honor and adornment for the man to whom it belongs; but a good deed that is not sanctified by grace is therefore a good deed within the bounds of corrupt nature. It won’t outlive the man, it won’t pass with him into eternity; it’s a beautiful, luxuriantly developed, but infertile flower. Among the multitude of soul-disturbing plants, it’s pleasant to look at, it’s nice to smell its fragrance, but only while it’s in bloom. The time of its blossoming will pass, its petals will fall off, and both its beauty and fragrance will disappear! It won’t give fruit, won’t nourish, won’t strengthen, won’t refresh anyone’s life! Such is virtue outside of Christ! This is human virtue. According to the Apostle, such good works, like hay or firewood cast into the fire, will be burned up and will not stand at the judgment of God (1 Cor. 3:11-16). For a good work to be truly good, to serve as an adornment here and as a justification and glory for a man beyond the grave, it must be done precisely and solely because God desires it!

Let us abbreviate our homily with an explanation: How can we know the will of God? The closest, most immediate herald of God’s will is the voice of our conscience. So, do you want to know the will of God? Pray to the Lord that He Himself might tell us the way wherein we should walk and teach us to do His will (Ps. 9:11, 8-10). While praying, hearken to the voice of your conscience; do not drown it out with the noise of the passions; do not weaken it with stubborn resistance, and the will of God will be revealed to you.

To help the conscience itself, that is, to make it more sensitive and therefore a more capable and faithful guide, attentively read the word of God, go to church more often, and diligently study the ascetic labors of the saints. Then the conscience will be enriched by the spiritual experiences of others; it will be enlightened, receive a special power, and become stricter and more insistent in its demands.

But even with these means, it’s never superfluous, and sometimes absolutely necessary to consult more often with your spiritual father as a man blessed for this work. In the name of God, submit your will to him; receive his counsel with faith and fulfill the will of God revealed to you directly by God Himself; then, according to the word of the Lord: He that heareth you heareth Me (Lk. 10:16)—you can be firmly assured that the fruit of the spiritual life is ripening within you, that you, as a true child of obedience, are walking the straight path to eternal beatitude (1 Pt. 1:14).

Amen.

Blessed Pierina Morosini was born in 1931 in Bergamo, Italy. Her family was poor, and she was one of eight children. When she was 15, Pierina went to work in a factory. 

Pierina had made a private vow to God to live a life of chastity. She taught catechism, and although she considered entering a religious order, she stayed home to help her mother care for their family. 

When she was 26, Pierina was attacked on her way home by a man who tried to rape her. She fought against him, upholding her vow of chastity to God, and he stoned her to death. 

Pope John Paul II beatified Pierina in 1987. She is the patron of rape victims.

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors has reaffirmed the requirement that every diocese, Catholic religious order and institution in the world have clear safeguarding guidelines and procedures and that they are publicly accessible.

The commission’s “Universal Guidelines Framework” also insists that “all reports of sexual abuse should be reported to the civil authorities” and that the local church maintain evidence that they have cooperated with civil authorities in investigating and responding to the allegations.

The pontifical commission began drafting the framework in 2022, invited comments on various drafts, including by members of the public through its website, and approved the framework for distribution during its plenary meeting March 5-8.

“Given the vastly different cultural contexts in which safeguarding policies and procedures are required to operate, the Commission will engage in a targeted series of pilot programs to evaluate their effectiveness especially in those parts of the Church that have little experience of implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of safeguarding guidelines,” the commission said in a statement published with the framework April 5.

While being sensitive to local cultural differences, the commission said, “the zero-tolerance approach to abuse” must be maintained.

Many of the guidelines in the framework — like child protection screening and training for all church workers — are standard in many countries that have dealt publicly with the clerical sexual abuse crisis, but they still are not universally followed.

Bishops and religious superiors, it said, should have “professional support in screening candidates for seminary/formation programs and before ordination/profession of vows.”

That responsibility, the commission said, includes asking if “the applicant or candidate has previously withdrawn or been exited from another seminary or formation program.”

Dioceses, seminaries and religious orders must have “a system in place to assess the safeguarding credentials — good standing — and manage the movement of all seminarians, clergy, religious and lay ministers between different seminaries, formation programs, other Church entities — especially across international borders,” it said.

The framework also calls on dioceses and religious orders to assign mentors to all newly ordained clergy and newly professed religious for a period of at least five years and mentors for clergy and religious arriving from other countries for at least two years, particularly to help familiarize them with aspects of the local culture involving respect for another person and what are commonly called “boundary issues.”

“Both physical and online risks” must be “assessed and managed within the provision of ministry,” the framework said, especially considering risks arising from: “one-to-one interactions between an adult and a child; ministries such as counseling, home visits, outreach, one-to-one tuition, the sacrament of reconciliation, spiritual direction and mentoring; potential physical contact between the penitent and the confessor where the sacrament of reconciliation is celebrated; (and) one-to-one interactions with vulnerable adults.”

When hiring personnel, the framework said, each position should be assessed “for the expected level of contact with children and/or vulnerable adults and appropriate safeguarding recruitment procedures are implemented,” including background checks.

As the Catholic Church continues to discuss the definition of “vulnerable adult” and to understand what constitutes abuse versus a consensual sexual relationship, the framework said the policies must acknowledge that when allegations are made, “power imbalances may exist between the complainant and respondent,” and those policies should be sensitive to the imbalance.

The framework includes an eight-page glossary of terms and lists under the heading of “vulnerable adult” not only people with cognitive impairments, but also those who “have suffered previous abuse” or who “in receiving a ministry are subject to a power imbalance.”

The power imbalance, it said, can be a result of the relationship, for example, between an “employer and employee, teacher and student, coach and athlete, parent or guardian and child, clergy/ religious and parishioner.”

The wounds of Christ’s passion and death and the stigmata given to some Christians over the centuries are reminders of “the pain Jesus suffered in his flesh out of love for us and for our salvation,” Pope Francis said.

But, the pope said, the stigmata also is a reminder that through baptism Christians participate in Christ’s victory over suffering and death because “it is precisely through his wounds that the mercy of the Risen, Crucified One flows to us as through a channel.”

With a visiting group of Italian Franciscan friars from La Verna and from Tuscany April 5, Pope Francis joined celebrations of the 800th anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi receiving “the gift of the stigmata” after he had withdrawn to the hills of La Verna to pray and do penance in 1224.

The friars also brought to Pope Francis a reliquary containing blood from the stigmata of St. Francis, a reliquary that is making a pilgrimage to different Franciscan communities.

The stigmata, or sharing the wounds of Christ, Pope Francis told the friars, is a reminder that a Christian is part of “the body of Christ,” not in name alone but in reality.

In the “communion of love,” which is the church, he said, “each of us rediscovers who he or she is: a beloved, blessed, reconciled son or daughter, sent to give witness to the wonders of his grace and to be artisans of fraternity.”

Pope Francis said that is why “Christians are called to address themselves in a special way to the ‘stigmatized’ they encounter: to those who are ‘marked’ in life, who bear the scars of the sufferings and injustices they have endured or the mistakes they have made.”

St. Francis of Assisi can be a “companion on the journey,” the pope said, supporting Christians and helping them “not to be crushed by difficulties, fears and contradictions, ours and those of others.”

The stigmata for St. Francis was a call to return to what is essential, he said, and the celebrations of the eighth centenary should be a similar call to Franciscans today: “To be forgiven bears of forgiveness, healed bearers of healing, joyful and simple in fraternity; with the strength of the love that flows from the side of Christ and that is nourished in your personal encounter with him, to be renewed every day with a seraphic ardor that burns the heart.”

Franciscans, he said, are called to bring to the church and the world “a little of that immense love that drove Christ to die on the cross for us.”

At the end of his speech, Pope Francis offered a prayer to “St. Francis, man wounded by love” and “decorated with the holy stigmata.”

“May our wounds be healed by the heart of Christ to become, like you, witnesses of his mercy, which continues to heal and renew the life of those who seek him with a sincere heart,” the pope prayed. “O Francis, made to resemble the Crucified One, let your stigmata be for us and for the world resplendent signs of life and resurrection, to show new ways of peace and reconciliation.”

The April 1 attack on a Spiritan seminary in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was the most recent one in a series of incidents involving Catholic Church targets, amid the worst violence crisis in Haiti in several years.

A group of armed criminals invaded the Petit Séminaire Collège Saint Martial, a minor seminary of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, in the afternoon, and began to set fire to the cars parked in the yard. The four priests who were present in the venue managed to run and hide in a nearby cathedral, along with four employees.

The invaders vandalized several rooms of the seminary, including the administrative offices and the residential area. Electronic devices were stolen or damaged.

The Haitian Conference of Religious issued a statement strongly denouncing “the attacks on church institutions, which are being looted and desecrated by heavily armed individuals who attack humble people that do nothing else but serve the entire population, especially the poorest.”

The conference expressed “deep pain” upon the “dizzying situation of chaos in which our beautiful people live today,” adding that it is “with indignation that we note how sons and daughters of the country attack private and state property without scruple and endanger the lives of others who seem to have no value in their eyes.”

The growing chaos in the Caribbean country, where criminal gangs have taken control over large portions of the capital city Port-au-Prince since the killing of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, has been affecting several segments of society.

On April 3, Spain’s Fundación Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (Our Little Brothers Foundation) promoted a press conference in Barcelona in order to call attention to the work of St. Damien children’s hospital, the only one treating child cancer in Haiti. The hospital faces everyday the challenge of selecting the children whose cases can be treated, amid the turmoil caused by the armed gangs in the capital city.

The chronic lack of basic services and public security has been leading more and more Haitians to leave the country.

The crisis in the Caribbean nation, one of the poorest countries in the world, reached its apex on March 11, when Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced his resignation, after at least one week of coordinated attacks on governmental targets waged by criminal organizations.

Haitians have been massively migrating to Latin American countries and the United States since the earthquake that devastated the nation in 2010. The economic and social crisis that followed the catastrophe led more and more people to look for work in countries such as Brazil, Chile, and the U.S.

Since 2021, the flux has only increased. At least 158,000 encounters with Haitian nationals have been registered by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the Mexican border since December 2022. Additional immigrants got into the country by sea, arriving in Puerto Rico and Florida.

President Joe Biden’s administration has expanded the Temporary Protection Status program for Haitian immigrants, which was first established by the U.S. in 2010. In 2023, 121,000 Haitians were approved for TPS. But the demand is much higher and many immigrants try to enter the country informally. Activists have been demanding the government suspend deportations to Haiti during the current crisis.

“The level of suffering in Haiti for many years has been alarming. The way the situation has evolved and continues to evolve can be described as the most terrible crisis in the entire American continent,” Scalabrinian Father Agler Cherizier told OSV News.

Father Cherizier said that besides the insecurity crisis, “there is also a humanitarian crisis that reaches a scale similar to that we usually see in armed conflicts, with more than 3 million Haitians suffering deep humanitarian needs.”

Although the neighboring Dominican Republic has been taking several actions to curtail the Haitian immigration, including the building of a 250-mile wall on the border, the influx of immigrants continues.

“Many Haitian nationals face various types of problems in the Dominican Republic because they are without papers and sometimes, even if they have them, they’re discriminated against, abused, mistreated, stolen and even raped,” Father Cherizier described.

Thirty-one-year old Ashley Pierre arrived in the Dominican Republic before Easter. She’s working on the paperwork and waiting for permission to go to the U.S. as part of the special TPS program for Haitians.

“I cannot find peace in Port-au-Prince. There are so many problems: violence, poverty, unemployment, natural catastrophes,” she told OSV News.

In 2023, her mother was shot in the arm by criminals, an event that traumatized both of them.

“We cannot work and live our lives normally,” she added.

Pierre has a cousin who lives in Miami, where most of the Haitian immigrant community in the U.S. is concentrated.

“I don’t know what kind of work I’ll be able to find there. I just want an opportunity to start again,” she said.

Many Haitians have been following other routes. Thousands have been working in South American nations over the past few years, with some having the goal of saving money and heading to North America.

“The Haitian population suffers discrimination and racism in all countries. Their experiences of rejection have been profound in Chile, for example. And along the route (to the U.S.) they are victims of exploitation,” Roy Arias, the coordinator of borders at the Jesuit Migrants Service in Costa Rica, explained to OSV News.

Arias accompanies many immigrants who have just crossed the highly dangerous Darién Gap, a rainforest zone between Colombia and Panama, where people have to deal with the challenges of nature and with criminals. Many of them end up dying during the journey.

Others come by boat through Trinidad and Tobago, facing the risks of the sea.

As soon as they arrive in Panama, they are put into buses and taken to the Costa Rican border.

“Haitians are a group made invisible by the immigration authorities, which means that their particular needs, such as their language, customs and cultural roots, are not attended to,” Arias added.

The Latin American church has been calling attention to the Haitian crisis and asking the international community to intervene. The region’s bishops conference, known by the Spanish acronym CELAM, along with the Confederation of Latin American Religious, or CLAR, and the Latin American Caritas issued a pre-Easter letter “All for Haiti” March 22.

The document urged that there are 362,000 displaced in Haiti and 3 million children needing humanitarian help.

“The people from Haiti have been suffering greatly for some time. In recent weeks, the social and humanitarian situation has worsened enormously,” the letter read.

On March 22, bishops of bordering areas in Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica released a statement after visiting the Darién Vicariate and addressed the growing immigrant crisis, mentioning Haitians among the most significant nationalities crossing the region.

The bishops called the authorities to establish policies to help migrants to integrate and to “break down legal, physical, and symbolic walls of injustice and lack of solidarity.”

Arias pointed out that the church must recognize the Haitians in their specific needs and “open solidarity spaces to welcome them with cultural belonging.”

“And we have to denounce the exploitation they suffer along the route, boosting policies of human rights’ protection,” he concluded.

    

To the Venerable Clergy, God-Loving Monastics and Pious Faithful, Children of the Diocese of Great Britain and Western Europe

Dear in Christ, Fathers, Brothers and Sisters:

As we progress through the sanctifying period of Great and Holy Lent, I write to offer my encouragement in this annual period of ascesis and purification. May the Lord of compassion and tenderness, Who desires all to depart from sin and to embrace, through humble repentance, the Life of Truth, be with us all in these sacred and soul-profiting days!

I urge each member of the pious Christian flock in these God-preserved lands of Europe and the British Isles to enter deeply into the spiritual focus of these present days. I have received great comfort in seeing the enormous numbers of faithful that have filled our churches during the beautiful Divine Services of the first weeks of Lent: may this impetus continue in the weeks ahead, and may it be joined by a serious attentiveness to our fasting, our practice of almsgiving and mutual forgiveness, and the development of the inward yearning to draw ever more deeply into the mystery of the Life in Christ.

That the times in which we live are perilous is known to all. The evil of war — which is always and ever a manifestation of human sinfulness — not only continues, but seems to be spreading. I call upon all our clergy and faithful to remember that Lent is traditionally a period expressly dedicated to almsgiving, and that in these weeks we must redouble our dedication to those being so unjustly harmed and persecuted in the appalling wars taking place in Ukraine and Gaza. Let every parish — and indeed every individual Christian — work tirelessly to provide aid in whatever way is possible: support the work of our food bank in London, which delivers food to Ukrainian refugees and others in need; support the works of the Geneva Cathedral to provide concrete help to refugees in that city; support the undertakings of various parishes and their sisterhoods to raise funds to support those suffering in the Holy Land. Do whatever you can to ‘clothe the naked and feed the hungry’ as our Lord has commanded us (cf. Matthew 25.35-45).

Above, I call upon each and all to stand firmly within our inheritance as the Church Abroad, which was founded in a time of agonising political strife and war, and has lived through such tragedies before. In the more than a century that we have existed in our autonomy, since by God’s Providence the sorrowful Russian Revolution gave rise to the independent existence of our self-governing Synodal life across the world, our saintly hierarchs and primates have reminded us that we do and must live in the freedom of the Church: we follow no political ideology, we identify with no nationalist cause, we conscience no subordination of the Gospel or the Church to any worldly agenda. The only Kingdom by which we are governed is the Kingdom of God; we are the diaspora, ‘scattered throughout the world’, not of any worldly empire or State, but of that sacred and divine Kingdom. As the Head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has recently reminded us, the only world we seek to build is God’s world, guided by His love. Remember this, my dear brothers and sisters! Remember, in this period of evil human warfare, that there is one war that we can call holy, and this is the internal spiritual war waged against sin in the human heart. This is the battle of our Lenten moment. May we rise to the challenge, defeat the sin in ourselves, and become the causes of peace and healing in the world.

May God give each of you strength and consolation in these holy days, and may we soon together arrive at the Holy Resurrection of Christ. Assuring each of you of my unworthy prayers, and zealously coveting yours,

Bishop Irenei (Steenberg)Irenei (Steenberg), Bishop

“>+ Irenei

Bishop Irenei (Steenberg)Irenei (Steenberg), Bishop

“>Bishop of London and Western Europe

Third Week of Great Lent
20 March / 2 April 2024

A broad cultural shift is needed to recognize surrogacy is not a “right” but a violation of human dignity and of the rights of women and children, several experts said during an international conference in Rome advocating a universal ban on surrogacy.

Surrogacy, in which a woman agrees to become pregnant and deliver a child on behalf of another individual or couple, is “basically the practice of buying babies. It’s turning women into commodities” and represents the “commodification of human life,” Kajsa Ekis Ekman, a Swedish journalist and author, told reporters April 5.

“Just like the West has outsourced production of goods to other countries, we are now outsourcing reproduction,” she said. “The surrogate is not the person manufacturing a mobile phone to be sold. Being sold here is human life itself.”

Ekman and others spoke at a news conference on the sidelines of an April 5-6 conference sponsored by supporters of the Casablanca Declaration, an appeal drawn up by lawyers, doctors and psychologists asking nations to take measures to combat surrogacy and to commit to an international convention abolishing surrogacy worldwide.

Olivia Maurel, the spokesperson of the Casablanca Declaration, was born to a surrogate mother via “traditional” surrogacy through an agency in Louisville, Kentucky. In “traditional” surrogacy, a surrogate mother is inseminated with an intended father’s spermatozoa; with IVF or “gestational” surrogacy, which is the most common form of surrogacy today, the surrogate mother gestates one or more embryos that the intended parents have created with their own or with donor gametes.

“They abused the situation of a woman that needed money to feed her children and pay her bills,” she said of her surrogate mother in her talk April 5, calling the surrogacy industry “greedy” and noting it is set to grow from an estimated value of $14 billion in 2022 to $129 billion by 2032.

Often the stories being told about surrogacy, she told reporters, are from the point of view of the intended parents who are happy to receive a child.

She compared surrogacy to when slavery was legal, saying, “I’m sure there were beautiful stories of well-fed, well-dressed slaves. How does that help? Does it make slavery more ethical?”

“We don’t regulate a bad practice, we abolish it,” she said.

In her speech, she said, “I do not blame commissioning parents, like I do not blame my parents for having used surrogacy, as they only use something that is offered to them on a silver platter. I blame the countries, the governments, that let surrogacy be legal, that do not take actions to stop surrogacy in their countries.”

Maurel links her years of depression, fears of abandonment and other emotional, psychological and behavioral issues to lifelong doubts and instinctual feelings of being disconnected, she said. She discovered she was a child of a surrogate mother after taking a DNA test in December 2021.

“We children born through surrogacy have a huge loyalty conflict. We’ve been bought, wanted, desired, manufactured, so according to many we don’t have the right to suffer to be unhappy,” she said in her speech. “We should shut up, and thank surrogacy for our existence, for being alive. Well, no, I don’t agree. We have the right to say that for many of us, it has screwed us up,” as “surrogacy inflicts a real wound on the child.”

Ekman, who has been studying and researching surrogacy since 2007, said the women who enter into surrogacy contracts to give up the children they carry often suffer, too.

People who believe women can just go through a pregnancy and be separated from the child as if it were “nothing, must think that we women are robots. We women are not robots. Even though women in surrogacy are often poor, they also have feelings,” she said.

She said she has never met a surrogate who did not miss her child “because this is a bond that you can’t just cut like that.”

She told Catholic News Service that what surprised her most during her years of research was “how many Christian mothers become surrogates. A lot of them, in the U.S., especially.”

Many of them had given up their own biological child for adoption “when they were really young and they felt so guilty about it,” she said. With gestational surrogacy, “they almost felt purified through” giving birth without having sex and through “suffering” through the painful hormone treatments “for a good cause.”

“They felt brave and good for doing this whereas they would still be disappointed afterward because they thought the intended parents would keep them in the loop, but then they were just dispatched, like we don’t need you anymore and they never got photos of their kids or they never were invited to see how their kids were doing,” she told CNS.

Ekman said she was also shocked to discover there could be “no checks at all” by some agencies on single men opting for surrogacy while there would be more regulations regarding adoption. “Is this becoming a new haven for child molesters?” she asked.

Jennifer Lahl, a pediatric critical care nurse and founder of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network in California, told CNS she got involved after being constantly contacted by women who had “sad and bad stories” about being surrogates.

What affected her, she said, was seeing “just how bad” the medical establishment is acting. “I do not like that doctors are putting women in harm’s way” by letting them take the higher risks that come with IVF, with carrying multiple embryos and with gestating an embryo that has no genetic relation to the carrier.

“We can’t sell organs in the United States and about every 13 to 15 minutes somebody dies waiting for an organ transplant. We haven’t changed our laws to buy and sell organs because we know that when you buy and sell it’s the rich that can buy and it’s the poor that sell. It’s the same case in surrogacy. It’s the wealthy that can hire a surrogate, pay a surrogate, and it’s the lower income women” who are incentivized to become surrogates, she said.

Lahl said they can shift public opinion with educational campaigns, like was done with successful anti-smoking efforts, by revealing the risks, harm and suffering associated with surrogacy since “most people are unaware that a surrogate pregnancy is a much higher risk pregnancy.”

Also, she added, “shouldn’t we change systems so that women don’t have to sell their body or rent their body out to afford to live?”

The Catholic Church opposes surrogacy, saying a child is a gift and “techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple — donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus — are gravely immoral.”

Pope Francis told diplomats in January that he finds surrogacy “deplorable” and would like to see it banned worldwide. It is “a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs.”

Maurel told reporters she wrote to Pope Francis about her advocacy efforts in December and was “very clear” with him that she was “a feminist and an atheist,” saying the movement to abolish surrogacy transcended religious and political beliefs.

She said the pope, as the head of the Holy See, is an important ally and she and her husband sat down with him for 30 minutes in a private audience April 4. “It went very well. He is a very, very kind person, very open” and very knowledgeable about the subject.

“The pope said that he supported us and what we were doing and he also said our work was important” and “legitimate,” calling surrogacy a “market of women and children,” she said.

Maurel said she thinks the Vatican document on human dignity, scheduled for release April 8 and expected to address surrogacy and other issues, can have a big influence on the world stage.

“It only needs one state, the Vatican, for example, to put out this information for other countries to gather around and start talking about the subject,” she told reporters.

Revelation: Removing the VeilThis revelation was given by God to the Apostle John because we needed to know it.

“>Part 1
If Christ Is With Us, Death Is DefeatedThe book of Revelation teaches us a lot, especially when we begin to carefully delve into its words, when we see how Christ holds the world in His hands and acts with wisdom in all things.”>Part 2
Why Did the Lord Leave Man the Book of Revelation?Only the people of God, the saints, can receive revelations from God, and only they can interpret them, because a revelation, words from God, is given from God, from the Holy Spirit.”>Part 3
For the Time Is at Hand…We have to understand that God acts outside of time, and the events of Revelation don’t relate only to the end times.”>Part 4
Blessed Is He That Readeth…Christ sent the revelation through an angel to His servant the Apostle and Evangelist John, who conveyed the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ about what he saw and heard.”>Part 5
He Hath Made Us Kings and PriestsA man who is close to God, my dears, truly feels like a king—he has no need of anything. At the same time, he may have absolutely nothing.”>Part 6
John, Our Companion in Tribulation, and in the Kingdom and Patience of Jesus ChristOne of the most significant and frequent references to the Holy Trinity is in the text of Revelation.”>Part 7

Cave of the Apocalypse, Patmos Island     

His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire (Rev. 1:14). The Prophet Daniel described the same thing when he saw the Ancient of Days (he saw Christ).

Of course, we shouldn’t think that Christ or God the Father has white hair. Nothing of the sort—because God is spirit. But God appeared in a way that the Apostle John could see this image and describe it as having a profound meaning.

Thus, the Ancient of Days appears, God Himself, who spoke to the Prophets, with the Holy Prophet Daniel Among the chosen youths Daniel had three friends: Ananias, Azarias and Misail. All four steadfastly preserved their faith in the one true God and together refused to eat the king’s food for fear breaking one of Moses’ laws. They asked their overseer to give them only bread and vegetables, but the overseer was afraid that they would become thin and he would be made to suffer the king’s wrath. Daniel persuaded him to make a test and allow them to observe this regimen for ten days.

“>Prophet Daniel, who wonderfully described the same vision. His hair was white, like snow, and his eyes like a flame of fire. He described what he saw. And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and His voice as the sound of many waters (Rev. 1:15). This brass, “χαλκολιβανον,” is an alloy of that era with the addition of gold and silver—a precious, durable metal. When it was heated in the oven, it was all aflame. The feet of the Lord were like this metal, glowing in the fire.

You know that visions from God are always whole, complete—they’re never half-hearted. But in visions from satan, there’s always something missing; they’re not long-lasting, they flicker. Visions from God are long-lasting; there are never any omissions in them, like something missing. Those who see satanic visions always miss something; there’s always something missing in them. They’re short and the images are constantly changing. The works of God have a duration, and they’re completed, therefore the Apostle John describes a vision here that he beheld for an extended period of time. His voice was like the sound of many waters, like a roaring sea filling everything with sound; a voice was heard speaking to him. Imagine this amazing vision that the St. John the Theologian

“>Apostle John beheld!

And He had in His right hand seven stars: and out of His mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and His countenance was as the sun shineth in His strength (Rev. 1:16). The double-edged sword coming from the mouth of Christ symbolizes the word of God that runs through the human heart. His face shone like the sun in its full strength at the moment. Such an amazing vision was revealed to the Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian. And then Christ explains to him what he saw.

In verse 17, he says: And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the First and the Last (Rev. 1:17). What person could see and withstand this? The Apostle refers here to the right hand of God. Therefore, we cross ourselves with our right hand, which is considered the hand of blessing. The Lord put His right hand on the Apostle and said: Fear not; I am the First and the Last.

God removes man’s On the Fear of GodRepentance is the ship, and fear is its rudder, while love is its divine harbor

“>fear. The works of God have no fear in them. A man might feel fear momentarily—it’s in our nature, but God takes this fear away from him. When God acts, there should be no fear. There is love, there is peace in the human soul, but fear departs.

What do the words “First and Last” mean? It means everything. The beginning and the end. “There’s nothing outside of Me. I am everything—the First and the Last. And He that liveth (Rev. 1:18)—He Who exists, Who lives.

And was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death (Rev. 1:18). “As man, I died, and now I am alive unto the ages of ages. I live and exist in endless eternity. I hold the keys of death and hell in My hands.”

Miniature from the Gospel of Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas, 11th century We see the Almighty God Who became man for us and gave Himself for us, and we can live, having a relationship of absolute love with God. If I love God and feel Him to be my Father, then nothing can frighten my being, not even death itself if I’m united with God (despite my sin), Who has unlimited power and extends everywhere and always.

In verse 19, He continues: Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter (Rev. 1:19). “Write it all down.” And, in verse 20, He explains: The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in My right hand, and the seven golden lampstands. The seven stars are the angels of the seven Churches: and the seven lampstands which thou sawest are the seven Churches (Rev. 1:20).

What you saw in the form of seven stars are the angels of the seven Churches, about whom He further explains that they’re not angels, ministering spirits, but the bishops of the Churches; so further He will refer to them thus: “Unto the angel of the Church of Ephesus, unto the angel of the Church of Laodicea, unto the angel of the Church of Pergamos…” They are the bishops of the Churches, whom God, the Holy Spirit, gives to every Church to be His angels. Why are they angels of God? Because the bishop has a commandment from God to convey His will to the people of God, to teach the people of God. Therefore, a bishop’s first and main task is to teach the word of God. This is what bishops must deal with first of all. Therefore, a bishop is an angel of God, proclaiming the will of God, the word of God, the Kingdom of God.

Thus, these seven stars in the hands of Christ are the seven bishops of the Churches. And the seven golden lampstands are the seven Churches whom the Holy Spirit is addressing. In Dionysiou Monastery and other monasteries, the fathers depicted all these scenes: Christ amidst the seven lampstands holding seven stars in His hands, with a double-edged sword coming out of His mouth and the Apostle John falling prostrate before Him, as if dead.

Jesus Christ begins to speak with the bishops of the seven Churches. These are very important words from Christ; important and terrible for all of us and for the clergy, the bishops, who bear great responsibility from God. We hope that God will have mercy upon us and forgive us. But what can you do if God wanted people to serve in the Churches, not angels?

Fresco on the western wall of the Archangel Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin     

Let’s move on to chapter 2: Unto the angel of the Church of Ephesus write; These things saith He that holdeth the seven stars in His right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden lampstands (Rev. 2:1). Write to the bishop of the Ephesian Church what the One holding stars in His right hand says. What do His words “saith He” remind us of? Of how the Lord spoke in the Old Testament: Thus saith the LORD (Is. 43:1). Only God can utter this phrase, so when the Jehovah’s Witnesses say Christ isn’t God, Revelation fundamentally refutes this, because in Revelation, Christ speaks and reveals Himself exactly like God in the Old Testament. Only He can say thus saith the Lord. Only He can reveal Himself in the same way as the Lord revealed Himself to the Prophet Daniel.

It goes on to say that the Lord walks in the midst of the seven Churches. The greatest miracle is that the Church exists. Do you realize this? There is no greater miracle. I’m telling you this as a cleric and bishop. If it weren’t God Who established the Church, it would not only have fallen apart, but we all would have been hanged in the squares. We have all the prerequisites for a disaster. We present the worst image to the outside world; and things happen that are difficult for a man to imagine. If we were only a human organization, it would have fallen apart long ago, without a doubt. And they would have put us in jail, too. But the fact that the Church still exists, upholding and saving the world to this day, is God’s greatest miracle, at least for the Orthodox Church. Therefore, the Lord walks among the Churches, holding the seven stars of these Churches in His hands. And we shouldn’t worry too much about the Church. We don’t save the Church. The Church saves us. We don’t protect the Church; the Church protects us and intercedes for us. Christ protects the Church, which He established with His holy Blood.

Thus, he says to the bishop: I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: And hast borne, and hast patience, and for My Name’s sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted (Rev. 2:2-3). The Lord says that He knows his works, and talks with the bishop. This is a striking text. The Lord says He knows about his patience, his daily labors for the Church, his torments, sufferings, fatigue, and his many deeds; that he doesn’t associate with the depraved who fight against the works of God, that he doesn’t want to help them, that he tests those who want to be called apostles, showing that they’re false apostles. The bishop had works, labors, patience; he didn’t associate with the evil and depraved, didn’t participate in their works; he didn’t accept false apostles.

The third verse says the bishop endured a lot for the sake of the name of God, but didn’t become exhausted in his many labors. He didn’t say: “Forgive me, but I’m tired of this. I can’t be tormented anymore; I can’t suffer or endure any more in the name of Christ.” That is, he was a bishop who accomplished many things in his patience, who endured many sorrows and much confrontation, and never murmured.

But what does the Lord say to him? We read in verse 4: Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee. You can do works, you can be good, not accept lies, and have great patience, but I have somewhat against thee. And then: because thou hast left thy first love (Rev. 2:4). This affects all of us. Do you see what God says? “You’ve left your first love. You aren’t the same as you were in the beginning. When you began, you had much more love. Now, you’ve left it behind.”

All of us, if we turn back, will be exposed by these words. Let’s remember what kind of zeal we had in our youth. What kind of love for God burned within us? How much effort have we put into loving God? Unfortunately, time, age, conditions, daily cares, the devil, our evil deeds and sins have cooled our love for God; they’ve frozen it. God doesn’t want this, and we must concern ourselves with it. All of us, when we came to the Church, came with fervent zeal, but along the way, the devil managed to cool our love, to drop the temperature. Instead of growing in love, we have diminished it.

Further in verse 5, He continues: Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent (Rev. 2:5). Thus, Christ tells him: “You have so many good things, but you left your first love; you lost it, so remember where you fell from—where you were and where you fell to.”

And how can we go back, to God? Repent. Start those first things you did again. As our ever-memorable Geronda said: “Enter back through the door from which you fell.” Go back where you came from. If you were repelled from that love, say, by hedonism, then return through abstinence; if avarice led you astray, enter again through charity; if laziness took you away – come back by labors. Find the reason why you fell away and left that first love.

Repent, grieve over this, change your way of thinking, remember your first works that you did in the beginning, and do them now. They’ll save you. Remember how you labored then, and do it now. At least grieve with your soul that you can’t do these works anymore. “I used to stand vigil all night, but now my back knees, and feet hurt.” We say that diseases begin after fifty. All this has affected me too. After fifty, my legs and back began to hurt; I can’t endure standing in church now; I started talking pills. Let us at least repent; let us be contrite about it and say: “God, take pity upon me, that I’m so weak.”

It’s like God is saying: “If you don’t repent, then I’ll come to you soon and remove your lampstand.” He will create an earthquake to wake you up. What does this mean? Temptations, sorrows, obstacles—anything you can imagine. “I’ll remove your lampstand and maybe you’ll wake up, you’ll come to your senses.” You’ll say: “Where did I fall from? Where was I, and where am I now? How was I living when I came to the Church, and how am I living now? At least I’ll repent.”

And then, so as not to completely deprive a man of hope, God tells him, as if giving him fruit for consolation: But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate (Rev. 2:6). He didn’t say, “you hate the Nicolaitanes,” who were heretics, disciples of Deacon Nicholas, one of the seven deacons chosen by the Holy Spirit. This Deacon Nicholas became a heretic, a heresiarch. A deacon of the Church, whom God Himself chose for ministry, went so far astray that God says: “I hate his works.”

Why did God hate his works? Because Deacon Nicholas taught that people can attain theosis by giving themselves over unrestrainedly to carnal passions. It was a delusion, a perversion. Ascetics labor to cut off all this and keep themselves in purity, to achieve theosis. But here he proposed to do everything the opposite way—to ruin the body through boundless devotion to carnal passions. Therefore, the Lord says: “You hate these unrestrained carnal perversions, as I hate them. Because you hate them, you don’t want them, you fight with them, and you teach the people likewise, I love you, and I accept the works that you do.”

    

You see, He didn’t say He hates the Nicolaitanes. We don’t hate people, brothers and sisters. We don’t nurture hate for heretics; we love them. Heretics are our brothers according the flesh, but not according to the spirit. We love them and desire salvation for them; we want them to know God, but we don’t accept their deeds, their sins. We hate sinful deeds, but we love sinners; we don’t experience hatred for them, but we welcome them and help them come to repentance. But we don’t accept sinful deeds. We can’t accept such deeds.

And concluding this message to the bishop of the Church of Ephesus, the Lord says: He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God (Rev. 2:7).

He who overcomes sin in his life overcomes the devil, overcomes himself—the old man. And God will give him to taste of the Tree of Life, which is in the Paradise of God. This is the tree that Adam ate from and fell away from God, which is Christ. Christ is the Tree of Life, and the man who eats of it will not die (cf. Jn. 6:50). Christ says he will give Himself to such a man so he’ll be united with Him. The Tree of Life in the midst of God’s Paradise is Christ Himself. Thus ends the first epistle, addressed to the bishop of the Church of Ephesus.

To be continued…

“I paint on black because painting is not representing a light that is and that’s all, but rather participating in the light that is becoming out of the darkness.”  

— William Congdon

“The Sabbath of History: William Congdon, with Meditations on Holy Week,” by Joseph Ratzinger (Knights of Columbus Museum, $45), is a catalog on the work and reflections of painter William Congdon (1912-1998).

Congdon, an abstract expressionist and a convert, came to see the crucifix as his one — as the — subject. In 1961, he observed: “Our every experience finds its apex, its substance, and ultimate meaning in the death and Resurrection of Christ, whose image is the Cross (instinct crossed by the spirit). For this reason, every subject that takes me to paint sooner or later reveals, better still becomes the Cross of Christ. … Now, without looking for inspiration elsewhere, I always paint the Crucifix, because in it lies everything I have seen and lived so far until I have painted, and everything I shall ever see in the future; sum of yesterday and prophet of tomorrow: death and Resurrection.” 

The catalog (available for free at Internet Archive) was compiled to accompany a 1998 exhibition of Congdon’s paintings at the Knights of Columbus Museum (now the Blessed Michael McGivney Pilgrimage Center) in New Haven, Connecticut.

The museum paired Congdon’s paintings with new English translations of Father Ratzinger’s meditations on Holy Week and reflections on the “Origins of My Meditations on Holy Week” in such a way as to bring hope “especially near in the hour of silence and darkness” surrounding the crucifixion.

Congdon and Father Ratzinger never met, but the paintings and meditations beautifully complement each other.

Of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, Father Ratzinger wrote: “The image [the disciples] had formed of God, into which they tried to force him, had to be destroyed so that they could see heaven above the rubble of the destroyed house, so that they could see him who always remains infinitely greater. We needed the darkness of God, the silence of God.”

Born and raised by a wealthy family in Rhode Island, Congdon studied English literature at Yale, worked for a year during World War II as a volunteer ambulance driver, and in 1948 moved to a cold-water flat in the Bowery.

“This was the first time I was alone and solely responsible for my life, which now I began to create in my first paintings,” he later wrote.

His first show, at the prestigious Betty Parsons Gallery in 1949, included some of the many drawings he had made during the war, among them of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Bergen-Belsen.

As for the paintings — thickly impastoed urban landscapes often incised by awls — Congdon wrote: “Black abstraction of the city on lead. The sun is usually chartreuse and violet (or orange).’

He was anointed “A Remarkable New U.S. Painter” by Life magazine in 1951.

While continuing to show in New York, he moved to Venice.

His paintings lightened, became gilded with luminous grays, touches of gold and pale green, the vibrant saffron of warming fires.

“The orange moon that had risen above my fear-ridden vision of New York,” he wrote, “became the golden basilica of S. Marco to which I had access.”

He also began to travel frequently. On his first trip to Assisi, in 1951, he was transfixed by the Byzantine crucifix in the convent of San Damiano before which St. Francis was said to have been praying when he received the commission to rebuild Christ’s church.

He converted to Catholicism in 1959, effectively committing professional suicide, and lived the next 20 years in Assisi and Subiaco, increasingly focused on the crucifix.

“The joy and the peace gained through daily Mass and Communion with Christ released me from tension,” Congdon noted. “His love, which transcended my own limited and carnal sentiments, led me to a freedom in which I was constantly renewed in body and in spirit.” As he journeyed in the ’70s to Calcutta, Dakar’s former slave ports, and other sites of extreme poverty and sickness, his paintings came to reflect “an inner state of physical and redemptive suffering.”

His portrayals of the Crucifixion had heretofore featured roughly recognizable T or Y shapes, the rough white figure of Christ slumped against a dark background.

Of his 1974 painting “Crocefisso No. 90” (Crucifix), Congdon wrote: “It is all flat squashed by lava flow, but trampled as if the traffic of ‘sin’ had crossed over it for or since all eternity, until the body, what was body, became a stain. It is the road of Bombay, it is the world that continually tramples Christ under. The tar of the road became Christ who became tar in order to let himself be flattened until he flowed in the fire of love, beyond any boundary. He flows everywhere, and even more in the splinters of the ashes like a bombardment of hate. It is everything: sin without limits. And yet, under and through the ‘flow,’ his shape remains, the image that redeems.”

The image that redeems; the image that keeps us at our post when Holy Week fades from memory and we, too, are tempted once again to trample Christ.

Congdon lived the last 20 years of his life in the Milanese countryside, his studio adjacent to a Benedictine monastery, and painted up to a few days before his death at 86.

Greece, April 5, 2024

Photo: vimaorthodoxias.gr     

Those members of the Greek Parliament who voted to Greece becomes first Orthodox country to legalize gay marriageGreek Parliament voted late last night, despite the fierce and persistent resistance from the Church and society, to legalize gay marriage and adoption by gay couples.

“>legalize gay marriage have violated and offended the will of God, thereby calling down judgment upon themselves.

And were they to remain silent, they would become complicit and likewise condemned, state the monastic signatories of a new statement concerning the scandalous vote from mid-February.

The new statement, full of Scriptural references, is signed by the abbots and abbesses and their respective brotherhoods and sisterhoods of 35 monasteries from throughout Greece, including the Athonite monasteries of Xeropotamou, Dochariou, Karakallou, Philotheou, and Konstamanitou.

Until they offer their public repentance, the relevant members of Parliament are no longer welcome at the signing monasteries, and should they visit of their own accord, they will not be shown any honor.

Their statement reads:

With great sorrow, we, the abbots and abbesses of the holy monasteries and holy hermitages of our homeland, have witnessed the deplorable slip of the Greek government and the Greek Parliament.

At midnight on February 15, 2024, in the Greek Parliament, a conquest worse than the fall of the City was consummated: the abominable law regarding the legal recognition of the unnatural union between homosexuals as marriage, having equal rights before the law with the traditional Orthodox Christian marriage, was approved by a majority of baptized Orthodox Christians. This irrational recognition brings back to our heroic and saint-producing homeland the God-despised heresy of Nicolaitanism. Unfortunately, the rulers have reached the point of manically seeking to “liberate” themselves from every moral law and barrier, despising the Law of God, culminating in the legitimization of a sin that is diametrically opposed to His holy will.

They forget the words of God to the Bishop of Pergamum, as recorded in the sacred book of Revelation. There, God’s abhorrence towards the dreadful heresy of Nicolaitanism, which considers the dissolution of morals as something normal and acceptable by God, culminating in homosexuality (Rev. 2:14-16), is vividly manifested.

The condemnation of Sodom is known to all, which leaves no room for doubt that the consequences of such sin are death, destruction, and ruin. The silent yet terrifying image of the Dead Sea unrelentingly convicts the blasphemers of God across the ages. It is an unfalsified witness of His absolute aversion to this sin and the ensuing destruction and punishment of the guilty.

Despite these undeniable truths, the elected representatives in Parliament have desecrated the eternal and immovable boundaries of the Orthodox faith, ethics, and anthropology, against the acknowledged opposition of the overwhelming majority of Greek citizens to the shameful bill.

Do they realize that they will inevitably appear before God the Judge? How will they stand then before the dreadful tribunal, when today they so shamelessly disregard and mock God and the people? Do they forget that God is not mocked? (Gal. 6:7).

And we, as baptized Orthodox Christians, what excuse will we give, while tolerating and legitimizing such a sin? What excuse will we give, when, despite being a nation frequently blessed by God throughout history, we fail to stand tall and defend His rights? Our tolerance or silence in the face of such lawless legislation makes us de facto accomplices.

St. John Chrysostom, astonished, asks: “When Divine laws are insulted, is not he who remains silent and overlooks it, worthy of punishment?” Also, St. Basil the Great proclaims: “He who is silent appears to consent!” And St. Theodore the Studite the Confessor declares: “For it is the Lord’s command not to be silent at a time when the faith is endangered. Speak, he says, and do not be silent… Therefore, I, the wretched one, fearing the Judgment, speak” (PG 99, 1321).

Our glorious ancestors valiantly fought for the triad: Faith – Fatherland – Family. They managed, with many sacrifices, to make our God-protected homeland respected and enviable. What is happening today in our country, they didn’t even want to express with words; it was the “unspeakable.”

Therefore, fearing primarily to grieve and, much more, to offend our Holy Triune God with our silence, we declare that:

We no longer invite neither the members of Parliament who did not vote against the immoral law nor the members of the current government to any events of our holy habitations. It is better, as long as they remain unrepentant, not to come to our monasteries. If, against hope, they come voluntarily, they certainly will not receive any honor, as they have fallen from the honor due to them.

This stance of ours will be applied until they publicly and actively demonstrate their repentance (for which we wish and pray), proceeding with appropriate actions for the legislative annulment of the law. “He who is wounded also heals himself.”

This decision of ours is an expression of philanthropy, love, and respect both towards them and towards the people who elected them to represent them. Since they publicly trampled on the Law and the will of God and the people, they are publicly reproached, judged, and condemned.

Finally, hoping in the mercy and patience of our Holy Triune God, we pray for our God-saved and beloved homeland. We call on all conscientious Christians to remain firm and immovable in the Apostolic and Patristic Tradition of our Church.

The monasteries of Mt. Athos issued two unanimous statements (see Mt. Athos: We are opposed to any form of marriage that contradicts the GospelAmidst the controversy surrounding the Greek government’s proposal to legalize gay marriage and adoption by same-sex couples, the Holy Mountain has raised its voice.

“>here and Athonite abbots and Sacred Community: Gay marriage bill threatens all of mankind and creationAnother statement has come from the Holy Mountain concerning the controversy over the Greek government’s plans to legalize gay marriage and adoption by gay couples.”>here) on the matter before the vote was taken in February.

Greece: Corfu now the third diocese to excommunicate local deputies who voted for gay marriageFollowing in the footsteps of the Metropolises of Piraeus and Kythira, the Metropolis of Corfu has resolved to excommunicate local deputies who voted for gay marriage last month.

“>Three dioceses of the Greek Church have also excommunicated their local MPs who voted to legalize gay marriage.

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