Fighting Evil Thoughts: Humility & Prayer

"Evil thoughts afflict the proud soul, and until she humbles herself she knows no rest from them.  When wrong thoughts besiege you, call like Adam upon God, saying, ‘O Lord, my Maker and Creator, Thou seest how my soul is vexed with bad thoughts…Have mercy on me.’ And when you stand before the face of the Master, steadfastly remember that He will give ear to all your supplications if they be for your good.

A cloud blows over and hides the sun, making everything dark.  In the same way, one prideful thought causes the soul to lose grace, and she is left in darkness.  But, equally, a single impulse of humility – and grace returns.  This I have experienced and proved in myself” (441).

“It is very difficult to recognize pride in oneself.  But here are some signs to tell you:  if the enemy (devils) assail you, or wrong thoughts torment you, it means that humility is lacking in you, and so even if you do not realize the presence of pride in you – humble yourself” (447).  

- St. Silouan the Athonite

Archimandrite Sophrony, St. Silouan the Athonite, trans. by Rosemary Edmonds, Chapter 17, “Concerning Intrusive Thoughts and Delusions,” (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991).

+     +     +

A Prayer for One Who Has Shameful Thoughts

O Master, Lord my God, in whose hands is my destiny: help me according to Thy mercy, and leave me not to perish in my transgressions, nor allow me to follow them that place desires of the flesh over those of the spirit.  I am thy creation, disdain not the work of Thy hands.  Turn not away, be compassionate and humiliate me not, neither scorn me, O Lord, as I am weak.  I have fled unto Thee as my Protector and God.  Heal my soul, for I have sinned against Thee; save me for They mercy's sake, for I have cleaved unto Thee from my youth; let me who seek Thee not be put to shame by being rejected by Thee for unclean actions, unseemly thoughts, and unprofitable remembrances.   Drive away from me every filthy thing and excess of evil.  For Thou alone art holy, alone mighty, and alone immortal, in all things having unexcelled might, which, through Thee, are given to all that strive against the devil and the might of his armies.  For unto Thee is due all glory, honor and worship: to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.

The Great Book of Needs, Volume 3, trans. by St. Tikhon's Monastery (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon's Seminary Press, 2002), 47.

St. Basil the Great on the Art of Medicine

Selections from St. Basil regarding "Whether recourse to the medical art is in keeping with the practice of piety."

"In as much as our body is susceptible to various hurts, some attacking from without and some from within by reason of the food we eat, and since the body suffers affliction from both excess and eficiency, the medical art has been vouchsafed us by God, who directs our whole life, as a model for the cure of the soul, to guide us in the removal of what is superfluous and in the addition of what is lacking. Just as we would have no need of the farmer's labor and toil if we were living amid the delights of paradise, so also we would not require the medical art for relief if we were immune to disease, as was the case, by God's gift, at the time of Creation before the Fall.. After our banishment to this place, however, and after we had heard the words: 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread,' through prolonged effort and hard labor in tilling the soil we devised the art of agriculture for the alleviation of the miseries which followed the curse, God vouchsafing us the knowledge and understanding of this art. And, when we were commanded to return to the earth whence we had been taken and were united with the pain ridden flesh doomed to destruction because of sin and, for the same reason, also subject to disease, the medical art was given to us to relieve the sick, in some degree at least."

"Now, the herbs which are the specifics for each malady do not grow out of the earth spontaneously; it is evidently the will of the Creator that they should be brought forth out of the soil to serve our need. Therefore, the obtaining of that natural virtue which is in the roots and flowers, leaves, fruits, and juices, or in such metals or products of the sea as are found especially suitable for bodily health, is to be viewed in the same way as the procuring of food and drink. Whatever requires an undue amount of thought or trouble or involves a large expenditure of effort and causes our whole life to revolve, as it were, around solicitude for the flesh must be avoided by Christians. Consequently, we must take great care to employ this medical art, if it should be necessary, not as making it wholly accountable for our state of health or illness, but as redounding to the glory of God and as a parallel to the care given the soul. In the event that medicine should fail to help, we should not place all hope for the relief of our distress in this art, but we should rest assured that He will not allow us to be tried above that which we are able to bear. Just as in those days the Lord sometimes made clay, and anointed, and bade wash in Siloe, and on other occasions was content with the mere command: ‘I will, be thou made clean’ whereas He left some to struggle against their afflictions, rendering them more worthy of reward by trial, so it also is with us. He sometimes cures us secretly and without visible means when He judges this mode of treatment beneficial to our souls; and again He wills that we use material remedies for our ills, either to instil in us by the prolonged nature of the cure an abiding remembrance of the favor received, or, as I have said, to provide an example for the proper care of the soul. As in the case of the flesh it is essential to eliminate foreign elements and add whatever is wanting, so also, where the soul is concerned, it behooves us to rid ourselves of that which is alien to it and take unto ourselves that which is in accordance with its nature; for 'God made man right and He created us for good works that we might walk in them."

"To place the hope of one's health in the hands of the doctor is the act of an irrational animal. This, nevertheless, is what we observe in the case of certain unhappy persons who do not hesitate to call their doctors their saviors. Yet, to reject entirely the benefits to be derived from this art is the sign of a pettish nature."

"When the favor of a cure is granted us, whether by means of wine mixed with oil, as in the case of the man who fell among the robbers, or through figs, as with Ezechias, we are to receive it with thanksgiving. Besides, we shall view the watchful care of God impartially, whether it comes to us from some invisible source or by a physical agency, the latter, indeed, frequently engendering in us a livelier perception of the favor as coming from the hands of God. Very often, also, the diseases which we contracted were for our correction and the painful remedies we were obliged to submit to formed part of the instruction. Right reason dictates, therefore, that we demur neither at cutting nor at burning, nor at the pains caused by bitter and disagreeable medicines, nor at abstinence from food, nor at a strict regimen, nor at being forced to refrain from that which is hurtful. Nevertheless, we should keep as our objective (again I say it), our spiritual benefit, in as much as the care of the soul is being taught in the guise of an analogy. There is no small danger, however, that we will fall into the error of thinking that every kind of suffering requires medical relief. Not all sicknesses for whose treatment we observe medicine to be occasionally beneficial arise from natural causes, whether from faulty diet or from any other physical origin."

"So, then, we should neither repudiate this art altogether nor does it behoove us to repose all our confidence in it; but, just as in practicing the art of agriculture we pray God for the fruits, and as we entrust the helm to the pilot in the art of navigation, but implore God that we may end our voyage unharmed by the perils of the sea, so also, when reason allows, we call in the doctor, but we do not leave off hoping in God. It seems to me, moreover, that the medical art is no small aid to continency."


St. Basil the Great, “Question 55” in “The Long Rules,” St. Basil: Ascetical Works, trans. by M. Monica Wagner, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, Vol. 9 (Wash., D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1962), 330-337.  The text of this book is available online in various formats: http://www.archive.org/details/fathersofthechur027835mbp.

"On Healing" by Met. ANTHONY of Sourozh

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Again and again we hear in the Gospel the story of men or women who were healed of their illnesses, and it seems so simple in the Gospel: there is a need, and God meets it. Why is it then — we ask ourselves — that it does not happen to each of us? Each of us is in need of physical healing and of the healing of our soul. And yet, only a few are healed — why? What we miss in the reading of the Gospel is that Christ did not heal people indiscriminately. One person in a crowd was healed; many who were also sick in body or soul, were not. That comes from the fact that, in order to receive the grace of God, so that it acts in us unto the healing of soul or body, or both, we must be open to God — not to the healing, but to God.

Illness is something which we so often wish to banish from our experience, not only because it hampers our life, not only because it is accompanied by pain, but also — I suspect even more — because it reminds us of our frailty, it speaks to us of our mortality. Our body at this moment says to us: You have no power to restore me to health, you can do nothing, I may die on you, I may decay and it will be the end of your earthly life. Isn't that the main reason why we fight for health, we pray for health? And yet, if that is the way in which we ask God to heal us, to restore us to wholeness, we are only asking to be allowed to forget that we are mortal. Instead of being reminded, indeed quickened by this thought, realising that days pass, that time grows short, and that we must — if we want to attain the full stature to which we are called on earth — we must make haste to shake off all that within us is the power of death. Illness and death are not only conditioned by exterior reasons; there are within us resentments, bitterness, hatred, greed — so many other things which kill the quickness of the spirit and prevent us from living now, already now, in eternal life — that eternal life which is just 'Life' in the true sense of the word, life in its fullness.

What can we do then? We must ask ourselves attentive questions, and when we come to God asking Him to heal us, we must first prepare ourselves to be healed. To be healed means not just to be made whole with a view to going back to the kind of life which we had before, it means being made whole in order to start a new life, as though we had become aware that we had died in the healing act of God, aware that all that was the old man in us, this body of corruption of which St. Paul speaks, must go in order for the new man to live. We must be prepared to become that new man through the death of the past in order to start anew like Lazarus who was called out of the grave, not to go back simply to what had been his life before, but having experienced something which is beyond utterance, to re-enter life on new terms. And for us, these terms are Christ, as Paul puts it, 'For me to live — is Christ'.

Are we capable of receiving healing? Are we willing to take upon ourselves the responsibility of being made new in order to enter, again and again, into the world in which we live, with a message of newness — to be light, to be salt, to be joy, to be hope and faith and love, to be surrendered to God.

Let us reflect on it, because we all are sick in one way or another; we all are frail, all are weak, all are incapable of living to the full, even the life which is offered us on earth. Let us reflect on it, and become capable of opening ourselves to God in such a way that He may work His miracle of healing, make us new — but in order for us to bring our newness, indeed God's newness, into the world in which we live. Amen.  
This homily, preach on 7/23/1990 is found on the Metropolitan Anthony Library website.  The photo is from the same source.

Learning Patience through Difficulty

St. Paul the Apostle wrote, “And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us." (St. Paul's Letter to the Romans 5.3-5, NKJV)

 St. John Chrysostom's commentary:

  "And what he says is not 'you should glory,' but we glory, giving them encouragement in his own person. Next since what he had said had an appearance of being strange and paradoxical, if a person who is struggling in famine, and is in chains and torments, and insulted, and abused, ought to glory, he next goes on to confirm it. And (what is more), he says they are worthy of being gloried in, not only for the sake of those things to come, but for the things present in themselves. For tribulations are in their own selves a goodly thing. 

How so? It is because they anoint us unto patient abiding. Wherefore after saying we glory in tribulations, he has added the reason, in these words, 'Knowing that tribulation worketh patience.' Notice again the argumentative spirit of Paul, how he gives their argument an opposite turn. For since it was tribulations above all that made them give up the hopes of things to come, and which cast them into despondency, he says that these are the very reasons for confidingness, and for not desponding about the things to come, for 'tribulation,' he says, 'worketh patience.'

St. John Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Epistle to the Romans, NPNF:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf111.txt

Icon of St. John Chrystostom - public domain.

St. John Chrysostom: When You Suffer, Do Not Blaspheme, but Give Thanks

"Some people, if they stumble at all, or are slandered by anyone, or fall ill with a chronic disease, gout or headache or any such ailment, at once begin to blaspheme.  They submit to the pain of the disease, but deprive themselves of the benefit.  What are you doing, man, blaspheming your benefactor, savior, protector, and guardian?  Or do you not see that you are falling down a cliff and casting yourself into the pit of final destruction?  You do not make your suffering lighter, do you, if you blaspheme?  Indeed, you aggravate it, and make your distress more grievous.  For the devil brings a multitude of misfortunes for this purpose, to lead you down into that pit.  If he sees you blaspheming he will readily increase the suffering and make it greater, so that when you are pricked you may give up once again; but is he sees you enduring bravely, and giving thanks the more to God, the more the suffering grows worse, he raises the siege at once, knowing that it will be useless to besiege you any more.  A dog sitting by the table, if it sees the person who is eating continually throwing it scraps of food from the table, stays persistently; but if stopping at the table once or twice it goes away without getting anything, it stays away thereafter, thinking that the siege is useless.  In the same way the devil continually gapes at us; if you throw to him, as to a dog, some blasphemous word, he will take it and attack you again; but if you persevere in thanksgiving, you have choked him with hunger, you have chased him away and thrown him back from you.  But, you say, you cannot keep silent when you are pricked by distress.  I certainly do not forbid you to make a sound, but give thanks instead of blasphemy, worship instead of despair.  Confess to the Lord, cry out loudly in prayer, cry out loudly glorifying God.  In this way your suffering will be lightened, because the devil will pull back from your thanksgiving and God's help will be at your side.  If you blaspheme, you have driven away God's assistance, made the devil more vehement against you, and involved yourself even more in suffering; but if you give thanks, you have driven away the plots of the evil demon, and you have drown the care of God your protector to yourself."

St. John Chrysostom, "Third Sermon on Lazarus and the Rich Man," On Wealth and Poverty, trans. by Catharine P. Roth (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984), 69-70.

Elder Porphyrios: Overcoming Depression

"Nowadays people often feel sadness, despair, lethargy, laziness, apathy, and all things satanic.  They are downcast, discontent and melancholy.  They disregard their families, spend vast sums on psychoanalysts and take anti-depressants.  People explain this as 'insecurity.'  Our religion believes that these states derive from satanic temptation. 

Pain is a psychological power which God implanted in us with a view to doing us good and leading us to love, joy, and prayer.  Instead of this, the devil succeeds in taking this power from the battery of our soul and using it for evil.  He transforms it into depression and brings the soul into a state of lethargy and apathy.  He torments us, takes us captive and makes us psychologically ill.

There is a secret.  Turn the satanic energy into good energy.  This is difficult and requires some preparation.  The requisite preparation is humility.  With humility you attract the grace of God.  You surrender yourself to the love of God, to worship and to prayer.  But even if you do all in the world, you achieve nothing if you haven't acquired humility.  All the evil feelings, insecurity, despair and disenchantment, which come to take control of the soul, disappear with humility.  The person who lacks humility, the egotist, doesn't want you to get in the way of his desires, to make any criticism of him or tell him what to do.  He gets upset, irritated and reacts violently and is overcome by depression.

This state is cured by grace.  The soul must turn to God's love.  The cure will come when we start to love God passionately.  Many of our saints transformed depression into joy with their love for Christ.  That is, they took this power of the soul which the devil wished to crush and gave it to God and they transformed it into joy and exultation.  Prayer and worship gradually transform depression and turn it into joy, because the grace of God takes effect.  Here you need to have the strength to attract the grace of God which will help you to be united with Him.  Art is required.  When you give yourself to God and become one with him, you will forget the evil spirit which drags at you from behind, and this spirit, when it is disdained, will leave.  And the more you devote yourself to the Spirit of God, the less you will look behind to see the spirit that is dragging at you.  When grace attracts you, you will be united with God.  And when you unite yourself to God and abandon yourself to Him, everything else disappears and is forgotten and you are saved.  The great art, the great secret, in order to rid yourself of depression and all that is negative is to give yourself over to the love of God.

Something which can help a person who is depressed is work, interest in life.  The garden, plants, flowers, trees, the countryside, a walk in the open air -- all these things tear a person away from a state of inactivity and awake other interests.  They act like medicines.  To occupy oneself with the arts, with music and so on, is very beneficial.  The thing that I place top of the list, however, is interest in the Church, in reading Holy Scripture and attending services.  As you study the words of God you are cured without being aware of it.

Let me tell you about a girl who came to me.  She was suffering from dreadful depression.  Drugs had no effect.  She had given up everything -- her work, her home, her interests.  I told her about the love of Christ which takes the soul captive because the grace of God fills the soul and changes it.  I explained to her that the force which takes over the soul and transforms the power of the soul into depression is demonic.  It throws the soul to the ground, torments it and renders it useless.  I advised her to devote herself to things like music which she had formerly enjoyed.  I emphasized, however, most of all her need to turn to Christ with love.  I told her, moreover, that in our Church a cure is to be found through love for God and prayer, provided this is done with all the heart."

A selection from Wounded by Love: The Life and the Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios, trans. by John Raffan (Limni, Evia, Greece: Denise Harvey, 2005), 178-179.

"Care at the End of Life"

"Care at the End of Life: What Orthodox Christianity Has to Teach"

by His Grace Bishop THOMAS

I. Making Decisions at the End of Life in a Post-Traditional Culture: Finding One’s Way to God

Orthodox Christianity offers orientation in the cosmos. More precisely, it leads us away from our passions and purifies our hearts so that we can be illumined by the uncreated energies of God and come into union with Him. (1) Contemporary man finds himself bereft of such orientation. Both his life and his death tend to be trivialized, reduced to what can make sense without any recognition, much less experience, of transcendent mean­ing, purpose, and obligation. As a consequence, much reflection on end-of-life decision-making gives priority, if not exclusive attention, to com­fort care, death with dignity, and the preservation of personal autonomy until death. All of this is done without ever asking the foundational ques­tion, What was life really all about? much less the foundational spiritual question of how I should and can repent from a life that was poorly lived so as finally to turn in repentance to God. Properly directed care at the end of life is care that focuses on repentance. To talk about end-of-life decision-making and not to place centrally the urgent is­sue of repentance is to miss the target completely. Care at the end of life should offer a final opportu­nity to the dying person to find orientation. That is, end-of-life care must bring the dying person to repentance through a recognition of how the holy, indeed, God, defines the meaning of the right, the good, and the virtuous. Good end-of-life care can­not be the product of a secular or philosophical bioethics. It must be the proclamation of a liv­ing theology. Orthodox Christianity teaches how to become oriented in life and to achieve a good death. What is important to be said cannot be stated adequately in secular terms.

II. Against the Grain of Secular Culture: Re­membering That One’s Religion Is Not a Per­sonal Matter

We live in a world that increasingly accepts pas­sive euthanasia in the sense of withdrawing or withholding treatment with the intention to bring about an earlier death. More and more, this world accepts not only active euthanasia (for example, the use of analgesics to hasten death), but also physician-assisted suicide and blatant voluntary active euthanasia. All of this is exactly what a bad death is about: it is focused on the willful con­trol of the end of one’s own life, rather than on humility and repentance. Orthodox Christianity brings a quite different message. Orthodox Chris­tianity teaches repentance, conversion, and the importance of turning to God. It surely does have concerns with the good, with justice, and with protecting life. But these concerns are set within concerns for the holy. Orthodox Christianity is not against making the world better; indeed, it knows that in the end the world will be made better after Christ comes in judgment (Revelation 21). In the meantime, the Orthodox Church must remind the world that the first Orthodox Christian convert to enter heaven was the thief on the cross, who did no good thing save to repent and convert (Luke 23:39–43). The thief had no opportunity after his conversion to accomplish anything worthwhile. Literally at the end, however, he turned to holi­ness, which holiness is personal: the triune God. Orthodox Christians, too, realize that truth is not propositional, but personal. Because of his con­version, the thief on the cross had a good death. Orthodox Christianity has to teach first and fore­most that we should turn to that Truth and, in so turning, we will come to know holiness. This fact of the matter, that truth exists and is personal, should orient our lives and our deaths, and should direct all end-of-life decision-making. It should help us to see the death of the thief as the icon of a good death.

The personal character of the truth is one of the central distinguishing marks of Orthodox Christian theology. To begin with, those who are theologians in the strict sense are not those who merely know about God, but those who know God: they are holy Fathers. At least half of the great Orthodox theologians of the twentieth cen­tury were not academicians; many never attended a university. Yet they had noetically experienced God. They had come to know God. (2) This is why the Orthodox Church rarely, and only for rhetori­cal purposes, gives proofs for the existence of God. Otherwise, such endeavors would be some­thing like a wife developing five proofs for the existence of her husband with whom she lives. Offering such proofs would be a hint that she is alienated from her husband, that she no longer experiences his presence. Because we experience God, we do not believe in his existence as one might believe in a philosophical proposition. His presence is realized in our lives and in our deaths. For this reason, instruction in how to die well is not derived from manuals and treatises, but from accounts of the lives and the deaths of saints. We look to the models of proven successful dying. This point of attention always directs us beyond the good towards the holy.

Because it is central to understand the good, the right, and the virtuous only with reference to God, Orthodox Christianity refuses to accept the dilemma that Plato (428–348 B.C.) develops in his dialogue, Euthyphro. In response to the question as to whether the good is good because God approves of it, or whether God approves of it because it is good, Orthodox Christianity real­izes that the good, including the good of a good death, can never be understood adequately apart from God. It is something like not being able to understand the orbits of the planets without ref­erence to the sun. Orthodox Christianity refuses to reduce theology or moral issues to natural-law reflections or discursive philosophical analyses and arguments. It focuses instead on the kind of person we should be for eternity. It does this in the face of a Truth that it is absolute and endur­ing: the Persons of the Trinity.

In contrast, spiritual character-building in our contemporary culture is frequently regarded as a do-it-yourself task, like the assembly of a meal in a cafeteria. The result is that one examines vari­ous moral and religious positions as if they were dishes from which one could sample and choose on one’s own, composing in an aesthetic and will­ful fashion one’s own life and one’s own death. Orthodox Christianity, in contrast, reminds per­sons that they must rightly orient their life-and­death choices through ascetically directing their lives to the meaning of the universe, Who is God. Orthodox Christianity is thus not simply pro-life, but pro-life directed to God, which direction in our lives and deaths is only achieved through ascetic struggle. One can only have a rightly-ordered ethic of life through turning rightly to God. The good cannot be understood apart from the holy. A philosophical analysis and refl ection will never be enough. (3) Orthodox Christianity, as a consequence, does not offer an ethic of life, but a way of rightly and theologically living one’s life. There can be no adequate understanding of rightly directed decision-making at the end of life, absent an adequate theological orientation.

Although life in general, and dying in partic­ular, are ascetic struggles, one should note that Orthodox Christianity recognizes the importance of pain control and comfort care. In particular, Orthodox Christianity has from the beginning ap­preciated that pain and distress can bring the dy­ing to temptation and despair, thus leading them away from a wholehearted pursuit of salvation. St. Basil the Great (329–379) therefore notes with approval that “with mandrake doctors give us sleep; with opium they lull violent pain.” (4) In­deed, twice in each Liturgy, the Church prays for “a Christian ending to our life, painless, blame­less, peaceful, and a good defense before the fear­ful judgment seat of Christ.” (5) This prayer empha­sizes the goodness of a death that is painless and peaceful. In so doing, however, it does not lose sight of the great offering to God made by the death of martyrs. In all these cases, a blameless death is like the death of the thief, repentant and marked by confession of Christ. As a result, there is nothing more frightening than the prospect of dying peacefully in one’s sleep without warning, without a final opportunity for prayer and repen­tance. In summary, with regard to decision-making at the end of life, there must be a focus on God, and this can require withholding and withdrawing treatment when such would distract from turn­ing wholeheartedly to God. The focus remains on wholeheartedly aiming at repentance.

III. Seeing the Big Picture

Life lived fully within the horizon of the finite and the immanent has a trivial character in contrast to a life lived in recognition of God. So, too, does end-of-life decision-making remain radically mis­directed and incomplete, no matter how much it might be embedded within a concern for death with dignity or directed by an ethic of life. Set within the horizon of the finite and the immanent, reflections on one’s death and decision-making at the end of life highlight creature comforts for a creature who thinks of himself as about to go out of existence. One is blind to the earnestness of taking advantage of final opportunities rightly to orient one’s life towards the future beyond death, that is, to God. Orthodox Christianity has the task of pointing out this big picture: the significance of death and the nature of the truth. As to the latter, Orthodoxy reminds the world of Who this Truth is. Only oriented to the Triune God can one in the end understand the meaning of life, the signifi ­cance of death, and the goal to which one should direct one’s decisions at the end of life.


ENDNOTES

1 The final stage beyond illumination (theoria or union with God) is what is achieved by true theologians. “The mysti­cal and perfecting stage is that of the perfected ones, who in fact become the theologians of the Church” (Hierotheos, Bishop of Nafpaktos, Orthodox Spirituality, trans. Effie Mavromichali, [Levadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 1994], p. 50).

2 “The theologians of the Church are only those people who have arrived at a state of theoria, which consists in illumi­nation and theosis. Illumination is an unceasing state, ac­tive day and night, even during sleep. Theosis is the state in which someone beholds the glory of God, and it lasts as long as God sees fit” (John S. Romanides, Patristic Theology, trans. Hieromonk Alexis [Trader], [Goldendale, Washing­ton: Uncut Mountain Press, 2008], p. 50).

3 Orthodox Christianity has an attitude towards philosophical reflection like that of St. Paul’s: “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the dis­puter of this age? Did not God make foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world knew not God through its wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe. For indeed, Jews ask for a sign, and Greeks seek wisdom, but we proclaim Christ Who hath been crucified; to the Jews, on the one hand, a stumbling block, and to Greeks, on the other hand, foolishness” (1 Cor 1:20–23). This Pauline in­sight is often reinforced by the Fathers. One might consider the rather critical things St. John Chrysostom has to say regarding secular Greek philosophy. See, for example, his first Homily on the Gospel of Saint Matthew and his second Homily on the Gospel of Saint John.

4 St. Basil the Great, “The Hexaemeron,” Homily 5, §4, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, eds. Phil­ip Schaff and Henry Wace (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hen­drickson Publishers, 1994), vol. 8, p. 78.

5 The Liturgikon (Englewood, New Jersey: Antakya Press, 1989), pp. 281, 299.

(The article is by His Grace Bishop THOMAS, Diocese of Charleston, Oakland, and the Mid-Atlantic, Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. Used by permission.)

"Honor the Physician" - A Selection from Holy Scripture

"Honor the physician with the honor due him, and also according to your need of him, for the Lord created him. Healing comes from the Most High, and he will receive a gift from the king. The physician's skill will lift up his head, and he shall be admired in the presence of the great.

                                  

The Lord created medicines from the earth, and a sensible man will not loathe them. Is not water made sweet by wood that its strength might be known? And He gave skill to men that He might be glorified in His wonders. By them He heals and takes away pain, a druggist making a compound of them. God's works are never finished. And from Him health is upon the face of the earth.  

My son, do not be negligent when you are sick. But pray to the Lord and He will heal you. Depart from transgression and direct your hands aright, and cleanse your heart from every sin. Offer a sweet-smelling sacrifice and a memorial of the finest wheat flour; and pour oil on your offering, as if you are soon to die. And keep in touch with your physician, for the Lord created him, and do not let him leave you, for you need him. There is a time when success is also in their hands, for they will pray to the Lord to give them success in bringing relief and healing, for the sake of preserving your life. He who sins before the One who made him, may he fall into the hands of a physician."

- The Holy Scripture, Wisdom of Sirach 38:1-15 (LXX, SAAS translation).

The photo from the National Institute of Health is in the public domain.