Orthodixie

For the past couple weeks I have been posting some of my notes from a clergy retreat led by Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou of the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist in Essex, England.

Now, just in time for Lent, you can listen to the talks themselves …

“The Hidden Man of the Heart” the 2007 Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America Clergy Brotherhood Retreat led by Archimandrite Zacharias of Essex is now available in a set of seven audio compact disks.

Each CD contains one of the talks together with Father Zacharias’ frequent asides and the insightful Q & A session which followed each talk. See below for titles of the talks and other details.

Cost per set is US$60.50 ($55.00 + $5.50 for priority shipping).
Check payable to Eighth Day Books.

Order from:

2838 E. Douglas
Wichita, KS 67214 U.S.A.
316.683.9446

Or … Here.

books@eighthdaybooks.com

_________________________________________________

The Hidden Man of the Heart
(I Peter 3:4)
The Christian Anthropology of Elder Sophrony of Essex, spiritual son of St Silouan the Athonite

Disk 1: “The Mystery of Man’s Heart”

Disk 2: “The Awakening of the Heart by the Mindfulness of Death and the Moment of Death”

Disk 3: “The Awakening of the Heart by the Fear of God and by Bearing Shame in the Sacrament of Confession”

Disk 4: “The Building Up of the Heart by Vigilance and Prayer”

Disk 5: “The Building Up of the Heart by the Grace of Repentance”

Disk 6: “Go In and You Will Find Rest”

Disk 7: “The Vulnerability of the Gift of Speaking in Tongues”

Copyright 2007
by the Clergy Brotherhood of the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America and the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist

Building up the heart by the grace of repentance

Rejoice in temptation: an opportunity to prove our fidelity to God.

We do not choose our cross — but accept the Cross of Providence.

Choosing a cross can lead to faint heartedness.

St Ambrose of Optina: “No better rule of prayer than that given us by the Publican — ‘Lord have mercy on me a sinner.'”

Two steps toward repentance:
1) sever ties with the world
2) find the heart/unity with God.

Faith & repentance = Church’s condition for baptism (2nd birth).
Our third birth is accomplished by ourselves: tears of repentance.

Repentance contains all the virtues.

Repentance breaks down the walls surrounding the heart.

Mingle prayer with tears — even if they’re psychological, make them spiritual.

Through repentance, man becomes true.

Man is infallible when he confesses his sins before God.

The Lord accepts confession as a Thank Offering … and in return grants Grace, leading to Life.

Christ’s call to repentance does not go unheeded — the Thief repented on the cross (granted Paradise that same day).

Man can only come to true repentance when he has caught a glimpse of the other world.

God is light and we must become as transparent as He is.

Dwell on any remembrance that brings contrition to your soul.

We should not suffer out pains alone — but include the Lord Jesus Christ.

St Silouan: “If we answer back when corrected, we hate our own soul. We should not have the last word. Our last word should be: Amen.”

Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four. Part Five. Part Six.

These notes were taken during the annual Clergy Retreat for the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America, February 6-9, 2007. The retreat was led by Archimandrite Zacharias of the Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist in Tolleshunt Knights-by-Maldon, Essex, U.K. These are my notes and were filtered through my poor faculties. Any and all errors theological are mine. Forgive me.

Image source

UPDATE: Listen to the entire talk — CDs now available!

I recently asked two knowledgable Archimandrites the same question: “Is there a set form or protocol for Confession? Perhaps some sort of ancient rules — a “confession typicon?”

They both, independent of each other, said …

“No.”

Fr Zacharias, of St John Baptist Monastery, admitted that he currently hears most confessions in his office. Fr Daniel Griffith of All Saints, Salina, KS said the same.

That’s been the norm for my own confessions. I meet with my Confessor in his office and we talk about my sins, temptations, and struggles. Then we go into the church for the formal rite, prayers, further counsel, etc.

(I keep a “prayer desk,” stole, and blessing cross before an icon corner in my office for this same purpose.)

Many people make their Confession in the church prior to, during, or after a service. In Russian practice there’s usually a stand, adorned with the Gospel and Cross, before which the Confession is heard by the priest (who serves as witness). Greek practice varies — but it is common to hear Confessions in front of an icon by the iconostasis. For most, these are the norms.

However, as is usually the case with Orthodoxy, there’s lots of room for wiggle …

And so having a time and place established for sacred confession — the time being in the morning,* the place being mainly the Church, or as ocassion demands, a modest house, clean and peaceful, as Symeon of Thessaloniki says, in which there also must be an icon of our Master Christ, and certainly His Crucifixion — you bring the one to confess there …

* – Although all times are suitable for confession (especially in time of need), according to Job in his Concerning the Mysteries, the most suitable time is in the morning, because at that time, the intellect, of both the Spiritual Father and the penitent, is more clear and collected. That which David says also bears witness to this: “In the morning I slew all the sinners of the land, utterly to destroy out of the city of the Lord all them that work iniquity” (Ps. 100:9), namely, in the morning I killed though confession all those evil thoughts of my heart and destroyed from my soul all the lawless demons and passions. According to Timothy (Canon 18), some should start confessing from ten years old, others from an older age. According to Balsamon, children should confess after six years of age (Responsa ad Interrogationes Marci, Question 48, PG 138, 996C – 997A).

— Taken from EXOMOLEGETARION – A Manual of Confession by St Nikodemus the Hagiorite (p.137).

Prayer as Infinite Creation

Prayer = proof of being [created] in the image and likeness of God.

Communication, Man with God, was broken in the Fall. The Son of God came in the flesh to re-establish, continue, the communication.

Prayer accompanies Man by accomplishing his salvation.

Man, of himself, is not a true source of life.

Faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ constitutes a beginning of relationship with the Divine.

Our one concern = not to lose such a goal.

Prayer bears fruits of repentance.

Crucified, hence freed, the mind turns itself over to the Lord — descends into the heart.

Contemplation of Christ strikes the soul with amazement.

I must let Christ know my deformity; I cannot see him unless I let Him see myself.

“He must increase – but I must decrease.”

Transition from psychological to the ontological level.

“Love acts like a transformer” (in every stage).

— uses every sensation, received from created worls, to intensigy his dialogue with God.

Christ didn’t turn his attention horizontally. Rather, He turned to the Father: “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Charismatic despair gives wing to prayer.

Part One.
Part Two.
Part Three.
Part Four.
Part Five.

These terse notes were taken during the annual Clergy Retreat for the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America, February 6-9, 2007. The retreat was led by Archimandrite Zacharias of the Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist in Tolleshunt Knights-by-Maldon, Essex, U.K. These are my notes and were filtered through my poor faculties. Any and all errors theological are mine. Forgive me.

Image source.

UPDATE: Listen to the entire talk — CDs now available!

On decorating our incorruptible house through the assumption of the virtues.

Brethren and fathers, people in the world when they erect a luxurious house give themselves no rest at night and at the end of the day they toil and plan, laboring until they have achieved their object; and such is the longing that fills them that their mind is wholly occupied in this and in considering how the roof may be well-covered, how the floor, adorned with many different marbles with every other form of elegance, will offer lovers of fine sights the most pleasing appearance. But if someone were to wish to tear them away from that care, they would be most distressed, as though they were being seriously wronged. But we, when we are building not a corruptible house but an incorruptible, not one made out of stones and wood but one skillfully constructed from spiritual graces, how can we be idle and come far below these others in zeal? How should this not be the greatest of wrongs? That other house harbors people who love the flesh and when it has passed through many masters it will be pulled down and deserted. The other knows that it welcomes the Holy Spirit, since we are a temple of the living God and the Spirit of God dwells in us, as the divine Apostle says. Moreover with those who depart from things here it leaves too and abides in heaven intact and eternal. What is the material of this building? The assumption of the virtues. Take first, if you will, as a foundation stone, the fear of God, since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Next understanding, courage, sobriety, justice; and so with one attached firmly to the other and fitted together with the bond of love it will grow into a holy temple of the Lord, as it is written. Let us be building this temple, brethren, at every moment, and let us not fail to adorn it with the beauty of the virtues, so that we may have the Holy Spirit for its inhabitant, so that by the pleasantness of our life we may turn the attention of angels and men to ourselves. But since one of the virtues is self-mastery, and we are more closely concerned about this one, let us give glory to God that we have arrived at the one stadium for it. Your faces have been changed from what they were before, but they shine with a fair change: the pallor that comes from self-mastery; your mouths have become embittered, filled with the bile of eating late, [meaning after Vespers in the late afternoon, when, traditionally, the only meal is eaten on fast days] but your spirits have been sweetened, flying on wings of hope. And these things are opposed to one another, and by mastering the one the other has become weak; so that we may rejoice for we are sided with the stronger. Perhaps someone will say that to eat every day is a failure of perfection. Not at all! Otherwise our Lord would not have ordered us to ask each day for our daily bread; the prophet Elias would not have been nourished each day in the desert by a raven; Paul, who dwelt in the desert before the godly Antony, would have received bread from God every day; Antony the Great preferred as almost necessary eating daily to a fast of above a day or for a week. And this is how it seems to me; for since our body is physically exhausted through its toil for the whole day, like a racing colt, and needs its rest, so necessarily the creator of our nature has arranged for it to be strengthened by its daily nourishment so that it might run well for the future, but not be exhausted and fading, which what they suffer who drag out their fast over two, three and five days. Nor would they be able to prostrate more frequently, not to join more lustily in psalmody, nor to accomplish their other services easily, unless something truly extraordinary happens. And so daily nourishment is not simply for the imperfect, but very much for the perfect by the traditional definition and canon. And thank goodness these things have been laid down by the fathers. And may you be granted again and again both health of body and strength of spirit to serve the living and true God and to await the last day, in which may you shine out like the sun as heirs of the kingdom of heaven, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and might, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages.

Amen.

CATECHESIS 55 by Our Venerable and God-bearing Father Ephrem the Syrian — given on Friday of the First Week.