How did Jesus appear to you? In a dream, in a vision? Or did you feel a general calling?
How do you know it was Jesus, and not a demonic imposter?
First of all, let me say I am not Catholic. The Orthodox Church disagrees with the Catholic church on a number of points. We reject Papal Infalliblity, the Filioque Clause, the idea of a universal bishop, purgatory, indulgences, the immaculate conception, absolute divine simplicity, created grace, and much of the teaching of the Schoolmen such as Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas, who clearly departed from the ancient Apostolic faith on a number of points.
One of the key doctrines of the Orthodox Church is a belief in Prelest, which is a Russian word meaning Spiritual Delusion. We believe, based on the warnings contained in the New Testament, that Satan and his legion of fallen angels routinely appear to mankind in the form of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the angels, and other saints, in order to lead people astray. As an example of this, consider the apparitions of a being who claimed to be the Archangel Gabriel, to Muhammed, who dictated to him the Quran. Anyone who studies the life of Muhammed cannot help but recognize that the prophet of Islam sincerely believed in his status as the Messenger of God, and the authenticity of the revelations he experienced. The Orthodox consider this prelest.
Another example would be the Catholic mystics who have received the Stigmata, of which St. Francis of Assisi was the first. St. Francis was a very good, caring, loving man, but the Orthodox believe that he was led astray by demons, who deluded him, torturing him with the stigmata and causing him to do penances in an over the top, Wagnerian manner. There was in St. Francis no proper discernment or exercise of restraint; Francis accepted his spiritual experiences uncritically. The result was clearly harmful to him. The fact that on his death bed he stated his belief that he had confessed all sins he had committed itself suggests a certain pride, which would be sinful. I pray for St. Francis, that God will have mercy on him. The Roman church should never have allowed him to found his mystical order on his own, but should have insisted that he have proper supervision by an experienced monk. When it comes to mysticism, being a freelancer is extremely dangerous, and almost all Christian mystics who set out on their own come to tragic endings. Indeed, the Orthodox are certain the Marian apparitions at Lourdes, and especially Fatima, were demonic, and the Roman church is in prelest for following them.
In Galatians, Paul teaches us that if anyone comes to you preaching a different Gospel, even if they are an angel from Heaven, they should be excommunicated. The Marian apparitions at Lourdes, Fatima and elsewhere did exactly that, and the dogma suggested at Lourdes was officially adopted at the First Vatican Council! (Papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception). The Orthodox regard Papal Infallibility as being another case of severe prelest; before our schism with the Roman Church, we honored many Roman Patriarchs as Saints, and one of our favorites was Gregory the Great (it should be noted that only in the seventh century did the Patriarch of Rome start calling himself Papem, or Pope; previously only the Pope of Alexandria used that title; it is thus amusing to consider that during those crucial years in the Fourth Century when the conflict between the Trinitarians and Arians was at its peak, the only legitimate Pope in Christendom was Pope Athanasius of Alexandria, and the Bishop of Rome who supported him was referred to either as a Bishop or Patriarch). Gregory the Great once declared that any bishop who claims universal jurisdiction is a precursor to the anti-Christ. He was writing to John the Faster, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who began calling himself Ecumenical Patriarch, meaning “Patriarch of the Byzantine Empire.” Gregory, whose knowledge of Greek was imperfect, mistranslated Ecumenical as Universal, but the validity of Gregory’s point stands (and indeed, the other autocephalous Orthodox Patriarchs often have to put the Ecumenical Patriarch in his place, as the various holders of that office often try unsuccessfully to make themselves the Popes of the Orthodox, without success, because each autocephalous Orthodox Church is fully independent, and the Ecumenical Patriarch has only a primacy of honor, and certain very limited powers to resolve disputes that occur between different sees.
The 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia hilariously attempts to work around this, by claiming that the infallible Pope did not claim Universal Jurisdiction. This is in my opinion utterly untenable, for the Pope has the power to both ordain and depose any Bishop of any rank (Cardinal, Archbishop, Metropolitan, Patriarch, Diocesan Bishop, Suffragan Bishop) in the church at his will (in the past, and I believe even now, all Bishops summoned to Rome must carry with them letters dismissory from the Pope allowing them to resume the duties of their Episcopate; a bishop who returns to his diocese without these letters is presumed to have been deposed, and the diocese will not allow him to exercise his office, but will instead await a replacement bishop). Not only can the Pope ordain and depose bishops at will, and appoint them to offices at will (consider the recent demotion of Cardinal Burke from the Archbishop of St. Louis, to the head of the Apostolic Signatura, and now to the insultingly insignificant position of Chaplain of the Knights of Malta, a Catholic charity, a position that is ordinarily granted to elderly bishops or cardinals who are effectively retiring, as an honorific), but the Pope can also, at his sole discretion, create and suppress dioceses, and redraw the boundaries of existing dioceses, restructure the Vatican bureaucracy, appoint and dismiss diplomats of the Holy See, change the liturgy, create new liturgical rites and suppress old rites, and otherwise do whatever he wants; while Catholic canon lawyers have argued that if a Pope openly embraces heresy he would in theory be deposed, in practice there is no legal means to do this; the College of Cardinals, appointed by the Popes, can appoint a Pope but not remove him. Thus the Pope certainly has universal jurisdiction, and is in severe prelest, and by the standard of one of the greatest Popes, Gregory the Great, is a forerunner of the AntiChrist. This makes me very sad, because I do believe that Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI were truly decent men, loving Christians and very good bishops, who drew the Roman church closer to the Orthodox Church.
In the Orthodox churches on the contrary, the primate can invariably be deposed by the Holy Synod, which consists of all of the bishops of his church, and which also elects him; even the largest Orthodox churches with hundreds of bishops find this a workable system. The most recent primates to be deposed were Metrpolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America, who was not in fact deposed but forced to retire, although he is still a Metropolitan and can serve the divine liturgy and do other episcopal things, and Patriarch Irenios of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, who was treated rather more harshly; he was deposed from the episcopate altogether and reduced to the status of a mere monk.
My point though is that it is very easy to fall into prelest, and assume you have holiness, a calling, spiritual powers, special knowledge, communication with angels, Jesus, God, or other deities, or the deceased, or the gift of prophecy, when in fact you are merely being deceived by Satan. In fact the vast majority of people who claim to have such gifts are being deceived.
Fortunately, in the Orthodox Church, for us, it is very easy to tell if an apparition is truly an angel or saint (or even Jesus); the Orthodox Church believes, on sound intellectual grounds, that it has preserved the Apostolic Faith in its fullness. First, we make the sign of the cross and say the Lord’s Prayer or the Jesus Prayer. Demons hate that, and will flee in most cases. If the apparition persists, we test it on the basis of dogma. If what it tells us agrees with the Gospel we have received from Paul and the Apostles, that is to say, the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church, then it is real; if it tells us anything else it is a demon, and we pray for it to be removed.
The Syriac Orthodox Church sings as a hymn the relevant verse from Galatians at every Divine Liturgy, before the reading of the Epistle: “If anyone comes to you preaching a different Gospel then that we have taught, even if it is an angel from Heaven, let them be anathema.”
Occasionally monks do fall into prelest, and there are many stories of such monks being rescued by their brethren. One monk thought Jesus appeared to him and told him to sacrifice his own son (who was also a monk; they lived together in the same monastery), so he would be like Abraham. Fortunately the son fled when he saw his father sharpening his knife, and the other monks restrained the deluded monk. In many other cases, monks were persuaded to hurl themselves off cliffs; in some cases, the brethren were able to rescue them in time, in other cases, they perished as a result of demonic delusion.
When we consider all the people who have founded religions based on private revelation since the time of Jesus Christ, on the basis of personal revelation, and indeed all the people who claimed to be Jesus Christ, such as Emmanuel Swedenborg, the warnings of Jesus himself regarding false Christs and spiritual delusion become clear. Persons who fall into prelest are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Now, I am not implying that you are such a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but you are making bold claims about your religious experience, and for me to consider accepting it, I need to know how you have come to receive messages from Jesus.
The following scriptures are just some of what the Church no longer teaches.
(Matthew 6:19) “Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moths and woodworms destroy them and thieves can break in and steal.”
The Orthodox Church still teaches this. We discourage our members from living decadent lives, and encourage simple living and generous donations to charity. We have a special class of saints called Holy Unmercenary Healers, such as Saints Cosimas and Damian, who are doctors who freely treated the poor. This was rare in the fourth century, and such saints were regarded as heroes by the church, and we venerate them. They remain rare at present, although fortunately the poor have better access to medicine. Far from good however.
For that reason I am thrilled to report that the Roman Catholic Church apparently also teaches this, as they have one of the few Holy Unmercenary Healers of our generation that I’m aware of: a Medical Doctor who became a Penitential Hermit of St. Mary, and who lives in a hermitage he built in a tiny village in The Gambia, a small, impoverished, English-speaking country in West Africa. The village in which he works is mostly Muslim, but has a Catholic minority; he treats all, free of charge, including the officials of the Mosque, who love him, and he loves them. He loves all the people of the village. To the Catholics in the village, he is their main spiritual guide, as the village lacks a church, but a several times a year a priest will come by the village and celebrate Mass for Brother Dismas and the Catholics in his hermitage; his hermitage is quite special in that when it’s not a medical clinic, it is a church. The same room where patients are treated also features an altar. Brother Dismas is not paid and receives no stipend from the Church; he finances his hermitage through donations of medical supplies by readers of his fantastic blog, brotherdismas.blogspot.com, and through the sale of Rustic Rosaries, which he carves by hand in his spare time. So clearly, the Catholic Church must still teach Matthew 6:19, for Brother Dismas has made it the basis of his life, and will likely be canonized as a saint, as a Holy Unmercenary Healer.
(Matthew 23:8-9) “You, however must not allow yourselves to be called Rabbi, since you have only one Master, and you are all brothers. You must call no one on earth your father, since you have only one Father, and he is in heaven.”
In any polemic against Catholics, this comes up, but it also affects Anglicans, Orthodox, and Assyrian Christians, because we all call our Priests Father. We do not believe this passage should be taken literally.
Why? Let me ask you a question: do you refer to your biological father by his first name? Because you can’t call him Father, and you can’t call him Dad or Pappa because they mean the same thing; the semantics are identical. So if we literally accept this teaching, every human being is obliged to refer to their father by their name. They can’t even say to another person who their father is! You can’t say “This person is my male biological parent” because, once again, you’re caught by semantic equivalence. That translates to “Father.” So frankly, a literal interpretation in this case is utterly absurd; there is no way Jesus meant that statement literally.
What is more, Rabbi literally means “Doctor” or “Teacher.” If no one can call himself that, how will we know who to go to for medical care or education? And we can’t get around it by using terms such as “Healer”, “Physician”, “Educator of Children,” “Professor”, et cetera, because Rabbi was used to refer to all of the above in ancient times. So obviously, a literal interpretation is required.
Now, my King James Study Bible, which has commentary written mainly by low church premillennial Calvinists and Baptists, with a token Methodist, all of whom believe in the Rapture, in spite of the fact that the Rapture originated with John Nelson Darby in the 19th century and the Plymouth Brethren, and was a doctrine unknown to John Calvin, Martin Luther, or John Wesley, or the various Baptist founders, dares to offer this solution:
“Here, He means that we should call no man Father in a spiritual sense.”
To which I can only reply, says who? Really? What makes their interpretation of the Bible, much of which consists of novel doctrines that date from the 19th century, and much of the rest of which rests on Calvinist doctrines which date from the 16th century, any more valid than that of the apostolic churches?
The Orthodox Church still relies primarily on the scriptural interpretation of the Fathers of the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth centuries; these were summarized in the eighth century by St. John of Damascus in his Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Now, we never believe the Patristic age ended, unlike the Catholics, who posit a Scholastic Age beginning around the year 800 or so, with figures like St. Odo of Cluny, Anselm of Canterbury, St. Dominic, and Thomas Aquinas, and most traditionalist Catholics regard the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas as the definitive exposition of the Catholic Faith. The Orthodox however focus on studying works such as the Epistles of St. Ignatius from the 1st Century, the Apologies of Justin Martyr, the writings of Origen, which are useful, even if at times heretical, the beautifully written works of St. Athanasius such as On The Trinity, and the Life of St. Anthony, the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers (St. Basil the Great, who invented the modern hospital and together with St. Nicholas, is the inspiration for Santa Claus, his friend St. Gregory the Theologian, and his brother St. Gregory of Nyassa), the sermons of the fiery preacher St. John Chrysostom, the writings of the monk John Cassian in opposition to Pelagius, and so on. We start there, and continue to the later fathers.
Now many more recent fathers are important to us, but no one is allowed to introduce new doctrine. In the fifteenth century, St. Gregory of Palamas was accused of introducing a new doctrine regarding the mystical practice of the monks on Mount Athos called Hesychasm, the goal of which is to teach oneself to pray without ceasing using the Jesus Prayer; however, a Council of Bishops determined that he was merely defending ancient practices which could be traced back to the time of St. Anthony and St. Paul the Hermit, the first two monks, and which had already been documented many years earlier by St. Simeon the New Theologian. The accuser of Gregory of Palamas, Barlaam, left the Orthodox church, moved to Italy, and joined the Roman Catholic church. Now I should stress the modern Catholic church is much closer to the Orthodox church, and is a genuinely good institution that has fantastic charitable operations around the world, such as the Sisters of Charity in Calcutta, Brother Dismas in The Gambia, and innumerable other examples. Millions would die if it weren’t for the Roman Catholic Church. That they labor under some religious delusions is lamentable, but it does not devalue their Christianity, and I pray that in the 21st century full communion between Rome and the Orthodox will be restored, on the basis of the common faith we shared up until the Great Schism of 1054.
The ultimate point of the Orthodox authority in its interpretation of the New Testament is clearly demonstrated by the Philokalia, an anthology of monastic texts from the fourth through sixteenth century, collected in 1745 by two monks, St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. The name Philokalia means “Love of Beauty” in Greek, and also means “Anthology;” earlier, St. Basil and Gregory the Theologian compiled a Philocalia* of the works of Origen they deemed to be spiritually profitable, omitting those which they considered doctrinally unsound; unfortunately, this work is now lost. At any rate, the central themes of the Philokalia compiled by Ss. Nicodemus and Makarios are threefold: the mystical and ascetic praxis of the Orthodox Church, the Orthodox approach to Hesychasm, which is how we seek to obey Jesus Christ’s commandment to “Pray without Ceasing,” and lastly, Prelest, the dangerous religious delusion. Many monks thought they had attained Hesychasm when in fact they were under demonic delusion, and were forced to start again. What is remarkable is that all the writings compiled in the Philokalia, from the earliest to the latest, are consistent. You could read the very first texts at the beginning of the book and jump to the very end, reading texts by two different saints, and believe you had read the writings of the same individual, or at least, two individuals who were of the same faith who wrote in a similar manner. Since the Philokalia of 1745, there has been a new Russian Philokalia that continues the tradition, with stories of St. Seraphim of Sarov and other Russian mystics of the 19th and 20th century, and as one would expect, every chapter reads exactly like the Philokalia.
To give another example of the unique perspective we possess, the liturgy of the Orthodox Church uses texts that date as far back as the third century. The rubrics of the Divine Liturgy itself have not been changed since the Fall of Constantinople in 1453; but if you compare a service book from that time with one of the year 1,000, they are substantially similar; indeed, even the oldest manuscripts are the same in all key points. The only difference is over the years more petitions, prayers and hymns were added to the services, making them more beautiful. But we basically worship the same way we did in the Ninth Century, and what is more, these services are in turn mere elaborations of services that were authored in the third and fourth centuries. So there is a direct historical continuity to the early church, before the time of St. Constantine.
So when we call our Priests Father, we do so on the basis of nearly 2,000 years of unbroken tradition.
You may be interested to note we also call our Bishops Master. This strictly speaking passes a literal interpretation of the text in question; each Orthodox layman and priest has only one Bishop, or Master; each Bishop has only one Archbishop, Metropolitan, or thus Master, and each Archbishop or Metropolitan has only one primate, whether their title is Metropolitan, Archbishop, Catholicos, Pope, or Patriarch, and those primates in turn have but one Master, that being the all-holy life-giving, consubstantial and coeternal Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, One God. Christ alone is the High Priest forever; Bishops represent him vicariously as high priests in the celebration of the Eucharist, and Priests vicariously represent the Bishop (our beautiful vestments are designed to reflect that the Bishops and Priests are acting in the Person of Christ when they serve the liturgy or administer the other life-giving sacraments.
*Philocalia is spelt differently due to differences in age and dialect; consider the two anthologies were collected 1300 years apart.
(Luke 14:33) “So in the same way, none of you can be my disciple unless he gives up all his possessions.”
Firstly, the word possessions is a mistranslation; it would be more accurate to say “Property.” Only some Indian ascetics give up all possessions; to ensure they have nothing, they walk around naked with no clothes. As we know that Jesus did not require his disciples to preach in the nude, but rather the New Testament speaks of “girding up your loins”, and as Jesus also said “Take up your tent and follow me,” Jesus clearly was referring only to the property of his disciples that they did not need in order to conduct their ministry.
Furthermore, Jesus was talking to his twelve main Disciples; they followed this instruction, as did the 70 additional Apostles. They did give up all their possessions. However, since that time, no one in the Orthodox has dared to call himself an Apostle; Christ’s instructions to the Apostles were in this case specific. This fact is evidenced by the fact that the early church, as it grew, as described in the New Testament, nowhere required its members to give up everything they owned. However, those who pretended to donate all they had, while keeping some for themselves, met with an unpleasant demise for their hypocrisy.
At present however, monks and nuns in the Orthodox Church do give up all personal property when they join the monastery. They have possessions only in the sense that they are assigned a cell with a bed, robes, a prayer rope, et cetera, but no Property. So monks in the Orthodox church do actually literally obey this commandment. They also work hard at Hesychasm, to obey the commandment to “Pray without ceasing.”
Now, not everyone is able to live the monastic life. While the Orthodox see it as the Christian ideal, the majority of our priests are married. Married people have to live in the world, keep jobs, and obtain housing in order to provide for their families. Its in some respects a more difficult life than monasticism because it is so easy to live in the world.
Lastly, I have to ask, have you kept this commandment? At a a minimum, you were in temporary physical possession of someone's computer, perhaps at a library, when you wrote this. I would assume you own your own. So I would lovingly urge you to consider the implications of this commandment on your own life before condemning others.
(1 John 3:5-6) “Now you know that he appeared in order to abolish sin, and that in him there is no sin; anyone who lives in God does not sin, and anyone who sins has never seen him or known him.”
(Hebrews 10:26-31) “If, after we have been given knowledge of the truth, we should deliberately commit any sins, then there is no longer any sacrifice for them. There is left only the dreadful prospect of judgment and of the fiery wrath that is to devour your enemies--------“
