Bioethics Conference - Houston, TX - April 2011

St. Tryphon

St. Tryphon of Lampsacus is one of the Unmercenary Physicians of the Church.   Listen to an account of his life on Ancient Faith Radio.  

A written account of his life is available on the OrthodoxChristian.info website.

St. Mary of Egypt: A Story of Tranformation

There are so many men and women in our generation who suffer from enslavement to the pleasures of the body.  The story of our Holy Mother Mary of Egypt shows us the symptoms and effects of such illness, the reality that spiritual therapy can be difficult and take a long time, the connection between fasting from food and control of other aspects of one's life, and the depth of healing and transformation available through the Orthodox Way of Life.  You can hear an audio account of St. Mary's life on Ancient Faith Radio.  A written account of her life is available on the website of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America.  Another icon of her can be viewed on the same website.  Here is an article I wrote on St. Mary of Egypt a few years ago:

A hiermonk (priest-monk) named Zosimas walked deep into the Palestinian desert to spend several weeks alone in prayer and fasting. While there, he hoped to find a man of superior holiness who could help him with his own spiritual struggle. On his twentieth day in the wilderness, as he was praying, he saw a creature whose form resembled a human being. It was thin and naked. It had dark skin that looked as though it had been darkened by the sun and white hair that fell just below the shoulders. It was a woman. He ran after her. When he approached her she told him that she couldn’t turn around because she was a woman and naked. Zosimas gave her his cloak. After covering her body she turned around, addressed Zosimas by name, and recognized him as a priest, although he was dressed in the simple clothing of a monk.

Believing that God had led him into the desert to meet her, Zosimas begged the woman to tell him her story. Although ashamed of her past, she spoke to him about the life she once lived and how she came to reside in the desert.

She was a native Egyptian. Leaving her parents at the age of twelve, she traveled to the city of Alexandria, where she lost her virginity, became enslaved to lustful passions, and gladly fed her all-consuming desire for sexual pleasure. Her income came from begging and spinning flax, not prostitution. Even though men offered to pay her for her services she refused the money. She didn’t sleep with them for the money. She enjoyed it.

One summer she saw a group of Egyptians and Libyans heading toward the shore to board a ship that would carry them to Jerusalem where they could venerate the Precious and Life-giving Cross upon which Jesus Christ had been crucified. She wanted to go on the trip, not as a spiritual pilgrimage, but to find more men with whom she could satisfy her appetite for sexual pleasure. Since she didn’t have any money, she offered her body as payment. Not only did she seduce men onboard the ship, but after reaching land she continued to seek out lovers among both the residents of Jerusalem and foreigners who were visiting the city. Even on the holy feast day of the Exaltation of the Cross she was still looking for young men to take to bed.

She noticed that the people around her began making their way to the church to see the lifting up of the Precious Cross. She followed them there, but when she tried to enter the church she was stopped by an invisible force. Unable to pass through the door, she was swept aside by the crowd. Thinking that her problem was caused by some kind of womanly weakness, she tried using her elbows to push her way through the people. Again, while everyone else passed beside her to go inside, she was unable to enter as though a detachment of soldiers were guarding the way. After three or four attempts, exhausted, without strength for another try, she walked to the corner of the porch and stood alone.

Why couldn’t she enter the church to see the Life-giving Cross? The reason became apparent to her. She had been barred from the church because of her sinful lifestyle. The filth of sin had polluted her soul. As the eyes of her heart opened to see her shameful way of life, she cried tears of repentance and beat her breast in deep sorrow.

Looking up, she saw above her an icon of the Virgin Mary. In desperation she prayed,

O Lady, Mother of God, who gave birth in the flesh to God the Word, I know that it’s no honor or praise to you when one as impure and depraved as I am looks upon your icon, O ever-virgin, who kept your body and soul in purity. I justifiably inspire hatred and disgust in the presence of your virginal purity, but I’ve heard that God, who was born of you, became a man for the purpose of calling sinners to repentance. So, help me, because I have no other help. Order that the entrance of the church be opened to me. Let me see the Tree, worthy of honor, on which He who was born of you suffered in the flesh and on which He shed His holy blood for the redemption of sinners and for me, unworthy as I am. Be my faithful witness before your Son that I will never again defile my body by the impurity of fornication. As soon as I have seen the Tree of the Cross, I will renounce the world and its temptations and will go wherever you will lead me.

After her prayer, she walked into the crowd. The same force which once prevented her from entering the church seemed to clear her way. She explained to Zosimas what she saw when she entered the church: “I saw the Life-giving Cross. I also saw the Mysteries of God and how the Lord accepts repentance.”

When she left the church, she asked the Virgin Mary to lead her down the path to repentance. She heard a voice speak these words: “If you cross the Jordan you will find glorious rest.” Leaving behind her sinful life, she began living a life of repentance motivated and guided by the Holy Spirit.

By the time Zosimas met this woman, whose name was Mary, she had lived in the desert beyond the Jordan River about forty-seven years. During her first seventeen years in the desert she fought the wild beasts of her passions, the self-centered desires for pleasure that once kept her heart far from God. He past life haunted her. Those old unspiritual songs she once sung with enthusiasm remained fresh in her memory. They confused her mind. Sometimes she was tempted to start singing them again. The sexual appetite she once glutinously satisfied sought to regain control of her soul. “A fire was kindled in my miserable heart that seemed to consume me and to make me thirsty for embraces.” Through a spiritual lifestyle, including fasting and prayer, she overcame the evil passions, was healed of her self-inflicted wounds, and received the purifying grace of God.

St. Mary of Egypt, who fell asleep in the Lord in 522 AD, is a woman that our generation should get to know. So many young men and women in our own time can relate to her before she turned her life around through repentance. How many Americans are inflicting spiritual wounds upon themselves, desecrating the sanctity of their bodies, defiling the image of God within them, and following self-centered passions that lead them farther and farther away from the beauty of Paradise? There are so many young people in America who accept lustful passions and behaviors as “natural,” although they are really corruptions of our human nature that are contrary to sexual wholeness and spiritual life. Our culture, ignorant of the true and living God, accepts and promotes sexual sins that damage the soul, while ridiculing the pure and innocent. The sickness of American culture has caused a great deal of confusion and pain in our generation.

The life of St. Mary offers hope for those who have ripped and stained their virginal purity and lay in despair. Through repentance, turning to the loving God who heals, restores, and transforms, they can throw off their ruined garments and be clothed once again with the radiant garments of purity and holiness. No matter how distant they find themselves from God and how much they have been enslaved to sinful passions, God will meet them where they are and set them free. They can leave behind their sins and begin a life renewed by the Spirit. Through a lifestyle of repentance, the passions calm so that the temporary pleasures of the body lose their luster compared to the pleasure of union with the One who bestows every good and perfect thing upon us.

St. Mary was led into the desert. Does this mean that everyone who leaves behind a lifestyle of sexual sin will need to live the rest of his or her life alone in a deserted place? No, the desert is not for everybody. Perhaps God will lead some people in our generation away from society into the wilderness to live alone as hermits. Maybe He will draw some into monastic communities to fast and pray with others dedicated to the same kind of life. As God knew what St. Mary needed to overcome her sins, He knows what each one of us personally needs to overcome ours. Most people will probably live their lives of repentance while remaining in society. Instead of escaping to the wilderness or a monastery, some will remain unmarried, finding refuge in the life of a parish. For others, a marriage blessed by the Church and nurtured within the Church will be their path of salvation. Marriage is a relationship in which a husband and wife can repent of their past sins together and express their sexuality with one another in love and purity, without sin or shame.

St. Mary’s personal story involves repentance from sexual sins in particular, but she’s a model of repentance in general. Her life encourages us to repent of every kind of sin that afflicts us and draws us from God, in whose image we have been made. No matter what particular sins we find ourselves committing, repentance leads us to healing and wholeness. St. Mary shows us how to leave behind everything that hinders our spiritual health and growth, and to stay on the path to Paradise. Although she struggled violently against her former ways of thinking and acting for many years before she overcame them, she kept the Faith, remained in prayer, and stayed on course, guided and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. Healing sometimes takes time, but the Great Physician of our souls is always with us to care for us through the process. Let’s follow St. Mary’s example and ask her to prayerfully intercede with Christ, our God, on our behalf.

O Thou who searches the depths of our heart, who hast foreseen all things concerning us before we came into existence, Thou hast delivered from a life of bondage the woman who fled to Thee, O Saviour; and with never-silent voice she cries out to Thy tender love: ‘O ye priests bless Him, and ye people exalt Him above all for ever.’

O holy transformation, that brought thee to a better way of life! O godlike love that hated carnal pleasures! O burning faith in God! We bless thee, Mary worthy of all praise, and we exalt thee above all for ever.

O holy Mary, thou hast received the recompense for thy toil, and the due reward for all the labours whereby thou hast cast down the vengeful enemy. And now thou singest with the angels, crying aloud with never-silent voice and exalting Christ above all for ever. (Triodion)

The complete story of St. Mary of Egypt, as recorded by St Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, can be found at monochos.net. An abbreviated version of the story is printed in First Fruits of Prayer by Frederica Mathewes-Green, Paraclete Press, 2006.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. (The verses quoted at the end of this essay are from Vespers and Matins of the Fifth Sunday of Lent on which we celebrate the memory of Our Holy Mother, Mary of Egypt, canticle 8, 2nd canon, taken from the Lenten Triodion, St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2001. The icon of St. Mary of Egypt is from the IconoGraphics ColorWorks Library, Theologic Systems, Theologic.com. Used by permission.)

Theology and the Limitations of Psychology

Orthodox theology is revealed knowledge acquired through the experience of God.  Theology shows us what a whole, healed, perfect human person looks like.  This is the image given to Sts. Peter, James, and John on Mount Tabor. (1)  The Orthodox Way shows us who human beings were intended to be in the beginning, who we are now, and who we can become.  By way of experiential revealed theology, not speculative rational philosophy or theorizing, we know the ultimate cause of our problems and the most thorough cure for the healing of the human person.

Secular psychology is quite limited.  It is based, not on revelation, but on the observation of fallen humanity (that is, human beings who are afflicted by death and its symptom - the sickness of soul and body).  A “normal” person through the perspective of psychology is still a person suffering from sickness, corruption, and death.  "Normal" in a secular sense is far from perfection.

While the Orthodox understand human behavior and the cure of the human person from within the  revealed Tradition, which has been passed down and lived through the centuries from generation to generation, secular psychology is constantly observing human behavior and rationally speculating on causes for behaviors and methods for treatment.  While the methods of secular psychology can help people to some degree on a psychological (rational) and emotional level, it can never reach far enough to heal the soul on the spiritual level, where the root cause of sickness lies. The Orthodox Way, on the other hand, penetrates deeply into the soul to cure the entire human person.  

Theories of secular psychology cannot be effectively grafted onto the inexhaustible Mystery of the Orthodox Church.   The social sciences, including psychology, like the hard sciences, are by nature always open to change.  No scientific theory based on human ideas about the created universe should be dogmatized, but all theories, models, and views may be challenged, changed, or discarded in light of new evidence.  Revealed divine theology, which remains constant and abides in fullness within the Church, can never be tied to or integrated with humanly-made scientific theories or philosophies that progress and change over time.  Secular psychology has nothing to teach the Church, which is the “pillar and ground of truth” and fountain of healing.  Orthodox mental health professionals may, however, find helpful techniques developed within secular psychology based on observation of human behavior that could prove useful when firmly planted in the phronema (mind) and life of the Orthodox Church, the healing context of the Orthodox Way.  

A lay Orthodox mental health professional, dedicated to prayer, can make known the active presence and unconditional love of God to those who seek healing.  Some patients will be open to pursuing the deepest healing within the life of the Church, while others may deny the spiritual reality or resist addressing spiritual issues.  Even in secular facilities, Orthodox therapists may be permitted to ask clients about their religious/spiritual backgrounds and may endeavor to help the person understand who the true God is while guiding them toward an understanding of God's  love for us.  In our society, people (including atheists) tend to have a concept of God based to Western ideologies.  A mental health professional can perhaps share parables about the kingdom of heaven from the Holy Gospels and passages from the writings of the Fathers.  Hopefully, many Orthodox mental health care centers will be established wherein patients, Orthodox Christians and non-Orthodox people, can receive quality care according to the Orthodox ethos within the context of the life of the Church.

Orthodox mental health professionals who wish to be the offer the best care must pursue their own salvation with humility, prayer, and repentance.    

(1) See a sermon by St. Gregory Palamas on the Transfiguration on the OCA website.

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.

What is "the West"?

Orthodox Christians sometimes refer to "the West" in contrast to the Orthodox Way of Life.  By the term "the West," we don't mean simply the Western world in a geographic sense, but rather the Western culture as it developed following Western Europe's separation from the Orthodox Church.  By "the West," I am referring, in part, to Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.  Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, which hold much in common, may be grouped together under the heading "Western Christianity."

In The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, H. Tristram Engelhardt, MD, PhD wrote about his use of the terms "Western Christianity" and "Traditional Christianity" (Orthodox Christianity).  This is a helpful definition for understanding the meaning of "the West":
 

In this volume, "Western Christianity" identifies the cluster of religions that emerged in the West from the 9th century onward.  These compass the Roman Catholic church and its various schismatic offspring (e.g., the Old Catholics), along with the thousands of Protestant groups, which have in multiple ways dialectically determined each other, with the result that those religions are closer to each other than to traditional Christianity from which they sprang.  These Christianities are marked in various measures by a confidence in discursive reasoning or an emphasis on individual spiritual judgment isolated from a community of Christians, which experiences itself as one with the Church of the Councils.  On the one hand, the context of tradition is evacuated by rationality; on the other hand, tradition is abandoned to individual choice.  In this volume, "traditional Christianity" in the strict sense identifies Christianity that is at one with the Church of the first millennium and that recognizes itself united over the centuries by the Holy Spirit in right worship and right belief.  Traditional Christianity in this sense is materially equivalent to the Orthodox Church. (fn. 15, p. 49)

My point in referring to "the West" is to emphasize the significant difference between the Orthodox Way of Life and the ideologies present in Western culture, influenced by Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, secularism, and other Western philosophies. 

The Orthodox Church is sometimes called the "Eastern Orthodox Church."  "Eastern" is descriptive when used to contrast the Orthodox Way from "the West," but the Orthodox Church is not just for the the East.  There is only one Orthodox Church. the original Church founded by Christ 2,000 years ago for the healing of all.


Image: The Crowning of Charlemagne, 15th Century

The Flame of Divine Love: The Last Judgment

In Western society, many people tend to think of God and theology in legalistic terms. We may encounter those who think that God is an angry Judge waiting to punish them for breaking His laws. Contemporary movies and television programs have contributed the erroneous popular vision of God, judgment, Heaven, and hell. American misconceptions regarding hell likely find root, directly or indirectly, in the picture presented in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and religious ideas generally present in Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Within the Orthodox Way, however, theological understanding is primarily rooted in the Inexhaustible Love of God.  By teaching the true Orthodox vision of the Kingdom of Heaven and hell, inasmuch as we can comprehend it, within a culture that tends to compartmentalize knowledge and disconnect theological ideas from every-day life, we can help people to acquire an understanding that fits harmoniously within the whole Orthodox theological worldview, embodied in the comprehensive spiritual life of the Church.

Before the beginning of Great Lent, a period of preparation for Holy Pascha (Easter), we commemorate the Last Judgment when we all will stand before God:

When the thrones are placed, and the books are opened, and God sitteth for judgment, O what a fearful sight, as the angels stand in fright, and thy river of fire floweth by! What then shall we do, we men who have come under condemnation by reason, of the multitude of our sins? And as we hear him call the blessed of his Father to his kingdom, and send the sinners to punishment, who will bear that terrible verdict? Wherefore, O Savior and Lover of mankind, alone King of the ages, hasten to me before the end with repentance, and have mercy upon me. (1)

Before we commemorate the Last Judgment, we are prepared by the Sunday of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee, reminding us that the person accepted by God is not the outwardly religious Pharisee, who is filled with pride and judges others as worse sinners than himself, but the humble soul who, feeling the depth of his own spiritual sickness, sincerely and prayfully turns his heart to God in repentance.  We are also prepared by the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, which teaches us that no matter how far we drift from God and squander the good things we have received, if we repent (turning away from what is unnatural toward God), our Loving Father is ready to run toward us, warmly embrace us, and receive us back with joy.

God is Unconditional Love and God is a Consuming Fire.  God is Love and is Fire.  Love and Fire are One.  There is no contradiction here. God's Uncreated Love is Uncreated Fire.  In the prayers of the Church, we ask God not to consume us because of our sins, but to consume our sickness, our deadness, "the thorns of our transgressions," and to purify and illumine our souls.  For those who seek healing, the Uncreated Fire is purifying and transformative.  The Fire consumes all that is unhealthy and barren.  The Fire of God's Love does not cause pain for the purified and illumined, but is the moist breeze of Paradise and refreshing River of Life that brings everlasting joy and peace.

Those who are full of selfishness and pride will not experience God's Love as Paradise.  The unloving will be consumed by Pure Love.  St. Isaac the Syrian explained that

those who are suffering in hell, are suffering in being scourged by love.... It is totally false to think that the sinners in hell are deprived of God's love. Love is a child of the knowledge of truth, and is unquestionably given commonly to all. But love's power acts in two ways: it torments sinners, while at the same time it delights those who have lived in accord with it. (2)

St. Gregory the Theologian wrote from the same perspective, “O Trinity, Whom I have been granted to worship and proclaim, Who will some day be known to all, to some through illumination and to others through punishment!” (3) Likewise, St. Basil the Great said,

I believe that the fire prepared for the punishment of the devil and his angels is divided by the voice of the Lord.  Thus, since there are two capacities in fire, one of burning and the other of illuminating, the fierce and scourging property of the fire may await those who deserve to burn, while illuminating and radiant warmth may be reserved for the enjoyment of those who are rejoicing. (4)

Those whose hearts have been purified, their souls healed, and are filled with divine love become flames united with the Uncreated Flame of Unquenchable Love.  Our goal in this life is summarized in the words of an ancient spiritual father, Abba Joseph, who said, "If you will, you can become all flame."

As the unloving, proud, and impure will be tortured by the presence of Divine Love, they will also be abused by their own souls, a result of their refusal to accept the healing offered to them by their compassionate Creator and Physician. In his “Letter to Publius,” St. Ephrem the Syrian noted that “the gehenna [hell] of the wicked consists in what they see, and it is their very separation that burns them, and their mind acts as the flame.” (5) He explained that “the hidden judge which is seated in the discerning mind has spoken, and has become for them the righteous judge, who beats them without mercy with torments of contrition” and “saliently accuses and quietly pronounces sentence upon them.” (6) The “inner intelligence has been made the judge and the law, for it is the embodiment of the shadow of the law, and it is the shadow of the Lord of the Law.” (7)

The Last Judgment is a reality for each of us, but we are reminded of this reality within the Church as we are also reminded of the Way of the eternal kingdom of God: humility, repentance, love, and prayer. God has planted the Church for the our healing so that we may be united with Him and become radiant torches of Divine Love, Peace, and Joy. For those seeking the healing of their souls and union with God, the images of the Last Judgment assist us in finding humility and focusing on the condition of our own souls with rather than judging others.  Pride is a great enemy that keeps us from seeing ourselves as we really are with sobriety.  We live in a culture wherein we are constantly being tempted to act and think in ways unnatural to our human nature and that are contrary to the path of good health.

The fear of hell can serve to bring us to repentance.  The highest reason for pursuing salvation is love for God, not fear of punishment, but because of our spiritual delusion and the sickness in our souls, fear of separation from God in hell can serve as motivation to overcome our laziness and pursue the Way of spiritual healing that God has given us.  Always being mindful of God's love, we should remember the words of St. Silouan the Athonite, "Keep your mind in hell and despair not."

Since the Last Judgment is a reality, we should not downplay the necessity of repentance as an essential aspect of the healing process in this life.  When someone is facing physical sickness and death, they may be more receptive to hearing about repentance than at other times. Within an Orthodox context, we can help patients facing physical sickness and death achieve deep healing in their souls so that they may experience the Kingdom of Heaven (even in this life) and be resurrected in their physical bodies, not to judgment and spiritual death, but eternal life and joy in body and soul.

While some may not give much thought to the Last Judgment until they face their own mortality, others may possess a rational fear of hell, but without knowledge of God's love.  They may see God as a Judge, but not as a loving Father.  (Perhaps their concept of God has been twisted by exposure to heretical doctrine and/or unhealthy human relationships.)  In such cases, we must help these individuals learn about God's unconditional love for mankind (philanthropia), the Orthodox Way as the path of healing, and our goal of becoming purified, illumined, and united through the unquenchable flames of Divine Love.


(1)  Glory at "Lord, I have cried," Vespers, Sunday of the Last Judgment

(2)   Alexander Kalomiros, The River of Fire, presented at the 1980 Orthodox Conference, sponsored by St. Nectarios American Orthodox Church, Seattle, WA (Seattle: St. Nectarios Press, 1980), quoting St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 48. The text of The River of Fire is available at http://www.stnectariospress.com. See also Lazar, 8-9.

(3) Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, Life After Death, trans. by Esther Williams (Levadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 1996), 259, quoting St. Gregory the Theologian, Or. 23.13, On peace 3, PG 35, 1165B.

(4) Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, On the Nature of Heaven and Hell According to the Holy Fathers (Dewdbey, Canada: Synaxis Press, 1995), 9, quoting St. Basil the Great, “Homily on Psalms,” 28.6; See also Met. Hierotheos, 257.

(5) Ibid., 7-8, quoting St. Ephrem the Syrian, “Letter to
Publios,” para. 21-23. 

(6) Ibid., 8

(7) Ibid.