May: Day 11: Teaching 2: Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodios

May: Day 11: Teaching 2:*
Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodios
 
(The Merits of the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodios for the Slavs)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Methodios, whose memory is celebrated today, together with his brother Cyril (whose memory is celebrated on February 14), was a teacher of the Slavs, to whose race we Russians also belong in the Christian faith. He came from a noble family in the city of Thessaloniki. Having received an education in his native city, he became governor of a Slavic region in Macedonia. But his heart was not inclined toward the world and its vain pleasures. After ten years of service he withdrew to the Monastery of Polychronion on Mount Olympus, where his brother Saint Constantine soon arrived. In the year 857 both brothers were called to preach to the Slavs. In order to accomplish this great and holy work more successfully, the holy brothers created the Slavic alphabet, translated the liturgical books from Greek into the Slavic language, and for the first time introduced divine services among the Slavs in their native tongue.

Because of the slanders of the German bishops, the holy brothers were summoned to Rome as preachers of the gospel in the Slavic language, while those bishops claimed that the word of God should be read only in the three languages in which the inscription on Christ’s Cross had been written. Pope Adrian vindicated the holy brothers. Saint Cyril, exhausted by his unceasing labors, became gravely ill in Rome and soon reposed there, while Saint Methodios was elevated to the rank of Archbishop of Pannonia or Moravia and returned to his flock, where he continued enlightening the Slavs until the end of his life. He reposed in the year 885.

The Reasons for the Anger of Westerners Against Photios (An Article by St. Nektarios of Aegina)

Introduction

By John Sanidopoulos

The following article titled The Reasons for the Anger of Westerners Against Photios was written in 1897 and published in the Thracian Yearbook by Metropolitan Nektarios Kephalas of Pentapolis (later Saint Nektarios of Aegina), at a time when he was Director of the Rizarios Ecclesiastical School in Athens and actively engaged in the formation of Orthodox clergy. The work belongs to the genre of Orthodox theological–historical apologetics and was composed as a systematic exposition of Orthodox ecclesiology through the lens of the Photian controversy.

Nektarios wrote in a period marked by intensified Roman Catholic missionary and apologetic activity in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans, as well as renewed debates over papal primacy, synodal authority, and the legitimacy of the filioque. In response, Greek Orthodox theology of the late nineteenth century sought to articulate its identity with clarity and historical grounding. Saint Photios the Great emerged in this context as a paradigmatic figure: defender of synodal governance, guardian of the unchanged Creed, and representative of the Eastern understanding of primacy as one of honor rather than universal jurisdiction.

Saint Anastasia Şaguna, Mother of the Holy Hierarch Andrei Şaguna (+ 1836)

 

Anastasia Şaguna (1785–1836) was the mother of the Holy Hierarch Andrei Şaguna, one of the most illustrious figures of Romanian Orthodoxy.

Born in 1785, she received a select education from her parents, in the spirit of fear of God, honor and steadfastness in the ancestral faith.

She married young, and at the age of 18 she became a mother, giving birth to Evreta, the brother of the later Metropolitan, followed by a little girl, Ecaterina, in 1806 and the infant Anastasios (the future Metropolitan Andrei Şaguna) on December 20, 1808, in Miscolts.

Anastasia's life took a dramatic turn when her husband, Naum Şaguna, for material reasons and forced by circumstances, converted to Catholicism. This choice generated an intense internal and external struggle for Anastasia, who decided to defend her faith and, above all, the souls of her children with all her might. Convinced that the holiest religion was the one in which her parents and ancestors worshipped, Anastasia chose to fight for her little ones to remain Orthodox.

The Church of Saint Katherine in Kampos on the Sacred Island of Tinos

Kampos, one of the few fertile valleys of the sacred island of Tinos, is a settlement with a population of a few hundred people with great historical significance. This is where Saint Pelagia was born in 1752, the daughter of the priest Nikephoros Negrepontis, who died a few years after her birth. Pelagia, whose secular name was Loukia, was raised in Kampos by her mother until the age of 12, when life's difficulties forced her mother to send her daughter to her native village of Tripotamos to be taken care of by her sister. At the age of 15, Loukia became a novice at Kechrovouni Monastery, where her other aunt was a nun, and eventually was tonsured with the name Pelagia. It was here that the Mother of God appeared to her over three consecutive nights urging her to uncover her sacred icon in the place indicated by her, which indeed she discovered in the field of Doxara on January 30, 1823. 

Holy Hieromartyr Maxim Sandovich (+ 1914)

St. Maxim Sandovich (Feast Day - September 6)

By Father Edward Pehanich

Saint Maxim was born in 1886 in Zdynia in the Lemko region of Carpatho-Rus which was then a part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in present day Poland. His father, Tymofej, was the cantor of Zydnia’s Greek Catholic church. After completing his education in the nearby town of Jaslo and Nowy Sacz, he entered the Greek Catholic Basilian monastery in Krakow. Dissatisfied with the attempts to Latinize the Eastern rite to make it more acceptable to the Roman Catholic majority and also attempts to denationalize the Rusyns, he crossed the border into the Russian empire and entered the famed Orthodox monastery at Pochaev. It was while at the monastery that his outstanding potential attracted the attention of the illustrious Bishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky) who enrolled him in the Orthodox seminary in Zhitomir.

He completed his seminary studies in 1911 and that same year married Pelagia Grigoryuk and was ordained to the Holy Priesthood. At that time in the Lemko region there was a growing movement away from the Greek Catholic Church to the Orthodox Faith of their ancestors. Fr. Maxim returned home to serve the Orthodox faithful in the villages of Hrab, Vysovatka and Dovhe. After serving his first Divine Liturgy in Hrab on December 2, 1911, the Austrian authorities, suspicious of the Orthodox Faith for its alleged “Russian sympathies,” issued an order forbidding any further Orthodox services. Father Maxim ignored the order and continued to conduct services in village homes. He was repeatedly fined and held under temporary arrest. Before Pascha in 1912, he was again arrested with his friend and spiritual father, Father Ignatij Hudyma, and held in prison for two years in a Lviv prison until their trial began on March 9, 1914. After being found not guilty he immediately returned to his native village and continued to minister to his Orthodox parishioners.

Saint Gabrielia on the Freedom Found in the Orthodox Church Taught by the Example of Saint Athanasios Hamakiotis

Nun Philothei, Abbess of the Sacred Hesychasterion Panagia of Vryoula, writes: 

The Eldress [now Saint Gabrielia] emphasized how privileged we Orthodox are, because we do not have a “bogeyman” God, in contrast to the Roman Catholic Church, where there is absolute submission:

“We, by divine grace, were born into a Church that is free. And this spirit of Orthodoxy is the true pedestal, on which Christ is directly the head. No one else - Christ is the head. When an Orthodox person says that Christ is not the head, he ceases to be Orthodox. That is why you will not see a truly Orthodox priest telling you absolutely to do this or that. If you see such behavior and it does not encourage you to ask your conscience and not discuss it, in order to make a decision, it means that something is wrong.”

“Orthodox Uniates”: Dangers to the Church (Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

At the funeral of Pope Francis, a group of cassock-wearers were heard chanting “Christ is Risen” in Greek, which impressed many [Greek] journalists, who were amazed because the entire world attending the funeral could hear the Greek language with this particular chant. They considered this very honorable. However, they did not know that these were Latin Uniates, whom the Vatican has in its fold and who are active in many Orthodox countries, to the detriment of Orthodox Christians.

The word Unia is a Polish-Latin word, which means union, and is an esoteric way of union between the Orthodox and Latins, regardless of doctrinal differences. The beginning of the Unia is considered to be the Lateran Synod of 1215, at which the Pope allowed the Orthodox East to keep their ecclesiastical customs, but to commemorate the Pope in the services and thus have communion with the Latins.

Pope Francis and His Admirers

Pope Francis and His Admirers

By Protopresbyter Fr. Thomas Vamvinis

It is very beautiful to speak of love, but it is more beautiful to connect it with truth, not the vague and indefinite truth, but with the truth that is the God-man Christ, the one ascended to the Throne of the Father, the Head of the Church, One of the Holy Trinity.

The autonomy of love from the truth/Christ and its use to dramatize heresy and generally error in faith or life, is an anti-ecclesiastical, anti-spiritual act.

The death of Pope Francis has exposed such divisions of love from the underlying truth. It has given rise to the expression of many subjective opinions, which show either unjustified ignorance of basic elements of Orthodox theology and ecclesiology, or (worse) a deliberate and knowing choice of heresy and justification in a climate of emotional love, vague and unsupported, of ecclesiological deviation.

The New Pope Leo XIV (Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

The New Pope Leo XIV

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

The Conclave of Cardinals, in a secret ballot, behind closed doors, elected the new Pope, the American Cardinal Robert Prevost, who belongs to the Order of Saint Augustine.

In the Latin tradition, there are various orders, which were founded in the West. These are organized monastic communities of Roman Catholics and have the purpose of spreading Christianity, combating heresies, organizing education, missionary work, etc. The well-known monastic orders are the Benedictines, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Jesuits, the Augustinians, the Cistercians, the Trappists, etc.

These monastic orders were created in an effort to support the “Church” from heresies, that is, they were used against heresies, just as the Dominicans were instruments in the Holy Inquisition. They were not created to save their members, living within the Church, but to “save” the Church, as if the Church needed saviors!