'Perfected by the Sword' - The Way of Martyrdom in Our Times: Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

"The Church today must prepare her children and those who love Christ and His salvation for martyrdom, to become martyrs for Christ. Theology, missions and social work outside of the feel and view of martyrdom has no particular value. The great Elders during the time of the Turkish occupation were �coaches� of the martyrs. This is what the great Elders are doing also today." 

� Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos 

"The way of the Church is the way of sacrifice and martyrdom � this has been so since the foundation of the Church and it remains true for us today... We cannot begin to speak about how to expand the mission, if we do not begin with the reality of martyrdom, which is the only authentic foundation for our Apostolic work... We are here, in North America, called to be apostles and martyrs for Christ." 

� Metropolitan Tikhon of the OCA, (Source)

Holiness and Martyrdom in Our Times:
An Interview with Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

Pravmir � September 9, 2015

Holiness, asceticism, discernment and martyrdom are great riches of our Church that move us, attract us, transform us and save us from the distractions and lies of this world in every era. In an interview with His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou, he gives answers to the questions of a journalist (George Theoharis from /Agioritikovima.gr/) on these issues, and speaks of other aspects of ecclesiastical life...

� In many parts of the world today we see that Orthodoxy is persecuted. Where do you think our enemies will reach?

� You are absolutely right. Wherever an Orthodox Church exists it accepts temptations and persecutions. It is an undeviating law. We see this wherever an Orthodox Church exists � North, South, East and West. The only thing different is the method of persecution in each country. Sometimes it is obvious and aggressive and reminiscent of the ancient times of early Christianity, and sometimes it is insidious and more dangerous, such as secularization, that is, the intermingling with the world.

The Orthodox Church is the Body of Christ, it is the brilliant sun that causes and invites pain to those whose eyes are unhealthy and have vision problems. And where the sun is there is also a shadow, and in the shadow is darkness, where many bloodthirsty beasts circulate.

When people hate Christ, the Truth, the Orthodox Church, they have internal problems and can reach unfathomable places, to the point of madness. I saw on the internet a frightening scene of the beheading of a Christian by a fanatical Muslim and I was shocked. I thought how this was the way the Apostles and Martyrs were martyred, such as when the Synaxarion says �they were perfected by the sword�. 

And this is a test for us who love to have a good time, who compromise, who seek prosperity. Hence, persecutions show the internal illnesses of the persecutors, as well as the greatness of Christians. The measure of our love for Christ is very high. Holiness and faithfulness to the evangelical commandments are not given with the low criteria of ethical and social works, but they must have high standards.

Eventually, the Church today must prepare her children and those who love Christ and His salvation for martyrdom, to become martyrs for Christ. Theology, missions and social work outside of the feel and view of martyrdom has no particular value. The great Elders during the time of the Turkish occupation were �coaches� of the martyrs. This is what the great Elders are doing also today.

I was moved recently when I received a message from a Christian in Egypt that said: 

�Please pray to God to give us strength, peace and rest, so we can bear our cross with courage and firm faith, and be considered worthy to become saints and martyrs for the name of Christ.�

How can you not love such a disposition for martyrdom!

� In Syria the situation is unsettled. They threaten Christians there with massacres if they do not leave their homes. Where are we going with all this? Perhaps these war conflicts are generalized?*

� I follow with deep sorrow all that is taking place in Syria. I cannot say that I am on a particular side, because then I would be participating in the killing, and this is susceptible to divine justice. However, I deeply sorrow for this crazy river of blood, for the loss of human beings. We must create an army to pray that this crazy bloodbath will end and that peace will come to the region.

I sorrow for a particular reason, because I know these parts, since I repeatedly visited throughout the three-year period of 1988-1991, as well as many times after. In 1988, at the suggestion of Archbishop Seraphim of Athens and All Greece and the decision of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, I went to Lebanon to teach at the Balamand Theological School �Saint John of Damascus�. I had an official passport from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to have greater security. Because the airport in Beirut was not in operation, due to the civil war, I would go to Damascus in Syria and from there the Patriarchate of Antioch led me to Lebanon.

So for many days I would stay in Damascus, where I spoke with Orthodox young people, scientists and students who had a great thirst for God. I visited many of them and liturgized and spoke with the people, such as in Homs, Aleppo, Lattakia, etc. In Syria I came to know ardent Orthodox Christians, good monks and exceptional Clergy. There I gained dear friends and I grieve that I see daily the unrest in the region. I know Bishops and Professors who were students of mine at the Theological School in Lebanon, and I pray for them to God. Of course, I know Patriarch Ignatios of Antioch, with whom I spoke many times. He has excellent skills and is trying to preserve and protect the Church, but temptation is great.

However, we live in an era in which we should not only look after ourselves and our homes, but we should be concerned with the problems of our other brethren and Orthodox Christians, and we must pray for them.

Of course, God directs history, and we are under His Providence, and He intervenes in the proper time, but our prayers are needed. Hence, every Divine Liturgy is a prayer for the peace of the world, the stability of the Churches of God, the cessation of wars.

Let us make this a request for prayer. Let our hearts hurt, because unfortunately the world�s problems are geopolitical, since all people are considered small pawns in the international chessboard, instituted by some �global players�, without pity and pain. Let God be propitious to us all.

Read the full interview...

Special Request: For an Orthodox Priest and his Family in Great Need

Please consider helping to support Fr. Matthew Harrington and Matushka Anna and their family during this time of crisis. Rather than merely link to the GoFundMe site, I wanted to share Rod Dreher's full post, as Fr Matthew's story is a profound one of deep conversion, of brokenness, of mission, and of taking up one's cross and following Christ. Fr Matthew's story needs to be shared, because it is so authentic. Through his and Matushka Anna's crosses, through their suffering, and through our prayers and help for them, we all may learn and grow into the likeness of Christ together. . .

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As posted at Pravoslavie: We would like to post on our site a plea from Rod Dreher, Orthodox blogger at The American Conservative, concerning the current pressing need of his priest Fr. Matthew Harrington and his family, as his wife faces a dangerous and costly surgery for the birth of their fourth child. Please consider contributing as you can, through prayer and donations.

A CLERGY FAMILY IN GREAT NEED

by Rod Dreher, The American Conservative � July 19, 2015

If you�ve been following this blog for the past two or three years, or if you�ve read How Dante Can Save Your Life, you will have read about my priest, Father Matthew Harrington. As pastor of St. John the Theologian Orthodox Mission, he�s a terrific priest, and helped me tremendously through my own spiritual and emotional struggles, as I recount in the book. Here�s an excerpt from How Dante telling you a little about who he is:

St. John the Theologian is Father Matthew�s first parish. When Father Seraphim Bell, a Walla Walla, Washington, priest who is Father Matthew�s own spiritual father, dispatched the newly ordained Matthew to us, he told me that the former police officer was a naturally gifted pastor �because he has suffered.� 

After we had known each other a while, I asked Father Matthew what Father Seraphim had meant by that. I knew that Father Matthew had been raised by his grandparents and had never known his father. And I knew that he had been a police officer. One afternoon, sitting alone with him in the fellowship hall, I asked him to tell me his story. 

�I was a very capable police officer, but I always felt like I was being punished for doing my job,� he said, squaring his shoulders under his black cassock. �I would arrest some city bigwig for drunk driving, and my boss would fuss at me. Why? It really aggravated a sense in me of deep mistrust of authority. 

�And there were other things that are normal in police work but that started to get to me. I would think, �Why did that guy try to kill me? Why couldn�t I have saved that person?� As I progressed in police work, I felt more and more of a sense of being orphaned. It all came out of self-pity, but those are real, hard emotions that being a cop coughed up.� 

�Tell me about the breaking point,� I said. 

�It was the second-to-last call I ever took,� he told me. �It was a little girl. She lived right by a big aqueduct, and fell in and drowned. I never saw her body, but by then I was so emotionally fragile that the pictures by themselves shook up me up pretty bad. She had on these pink sandals with flowers on them. 

�That was a Saturday. The next morning, I went to liturgy, and in front of me was a little girl wearing the exact same shoes,� he continued. �I came undone. That was the end of my career. It really was. My wife knew. I knew. It was just how I navigated the exit.� 

Father Matthew�s last deed as an active police officer was to chase two suspected thieves who were escaping on bicycles. They dropped their bikes and slipped away. Enraged by this, he took out his knife and cut their tires. 

�Just like that,� Father Matthew said, shaking his head. �Then I realized that I had become what I was fighting. I couldn�t be a cop anymore. I talked to my chief and told him I couldn�t go on. I wasn�t a bad cop, and I wasn�t a malicious cop, but I was a suffering cop, and I needed out.� 

Father Matthew and his wife, Anna, had discovered the Orthodox Church through the parish pastored by Father Seraphim. As the young police officer�s emotional life disintegrated under job pressure, the congregation held him up. 

�What I thought was a strong wall cracked, and I fell apart,� the priest told me. �They didn�t judge me when they saw me bawling through vespers and liturgy, just bawling.� 

�Wait,� I said. �You? You cried in front of all those people?� 

Tall and stern, with a piercing gaze, Father Matthew is not the kind of man you imagine crying in public, if at all. Though he wears a cassock now (�my dress,� he snarks), this priest does not look like the sort of cleric fat-mouthing heretics would want to mess with. 

�Yeah, I cried,� he said. �I was broken. I still am broken. I can�t watch war movies or anything like that. It�s a humbling experience to know that you�re in the prime of your life and you�re broken.� 

Meeting Father Seraphim had made all the difference in his life. �He tells it like it is,� said Father Matthew. �He made me face myself, and all my pride and anger. Man, was I ever angry. Orthodoxy allowed me to come out of that.� 

�Dante would call it a dark wood,� I said. �So is that why you became a priest?� 

�I haven�t thought about it,� he said. �It was a response to the love I received from Christ through the Church. If anything, my time in the civil service showed me that the only way I could help people was to heal my own heart. I had to seek the fullness of life in Christ, to be able to see the divine light in anyone. Otherwise, all they�re getting is the blind leading the blind.�

Starting tomorrow [July 20], Father Matthew and his wife Anna are going to face the biggest challenge of their lives. Anna�the priest�s wife is called �Matushka,� meaning �little mother,� in the Russian Orthodox Church�will be admitted to the hospital for a high-risk, extremely complicated surgery, to give birth to their fourth child, a daughter they will name Irene. Theirs is a clergy family, one that serves a very small mission church. We in the congregation are giving all we can, but it won�t be remotely enough to meet all the medical needs of the Harringtons. Friends of the Harringtons outside our parish have set up a GoFundMe for those who would like to help them. From the GoFundMe site:

Due to complications with Anna�s pregnancy, Irene�s delivery will require her month-early arrival (July 21) by a complex surgical procedure. She will also be born with a special condition called hemifacial microsomia that includes pronounced spinal scoliosis. 

Matushka Anna stopped working at the end of April due to these medical struggles. While the members of the Parish of Saint John the Theologian lovingly support Father Matthew financially in his priesthood , the Harrington family also depended on Matushka Anna�s income to fulfill their needs. The Harringtons are facing major financial hardship. Anna will not physically be able to work, and baby Irene will require her attentions full-time. Irene will likely need future surgical procedures and the attentions of specialists to care for the many possible complexities of her condition. This includes medical care and may include travel to major hospitals in other areas of the United States. 

Matushka Anna�s condition is delicate in the sense that the procedure she will undergo is complicated and will require a week or so long hospital stay and her recovery will be longer than expected. The family has never been known for anything but grateful acceptance of even the most challenging situations, but these new tests have involved selling Matushka�s car, delaying almost all purchases, and belt-tightening to an extent which we, both friends and those who have been affected by Father, as well as those who appreciate voices of his variety, need to step up and do what we can.

I can vouch for the fact that the Harringtons lived a very modest life since they arrived to start our tiny mission church. Theirs has become much more modest since Mat. Anna had to quit her job. The family has the spiritual resources to face this challenge, but the financial aspect is going to be an enormity. I don�t post things like this often, but because Father Matthew�s work among our little congregation has touched many of you, via this blog and my Dante book, I thought you would like to know that the need for prayer and other forms of assistance is great with this family. Please do what you can.

* * *

For updates on Father Matthew and Matushka Anna, please see Rod Dreher's Twitter page.

Prayer For Our Enemies

Part of a series on prayer, transcribed from television episodes presented on Russian television in the spring of 1999 by Fr. (now Metropolitan) Hilarion (Alfeyev) with the blessing of His Holiness, the late Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia.

Pravmir � June 10, 2010

Archimandrite Sophrony, in his book about St. Silouan the Athonite, says: �Those that hate and reject their brother are flawed in their being; they cannot find the way to God, Who loves all.� This holds true. When hatred for man settles in our heart, we are not able to approach God. As long as we hold on to this feeling, the path to God is barred to us. This is why it is necessary to pray for our enemies.

The necessity of praying for our enemies stems from the very essence of the moral teaching of Jesus Christ.

In the pre-Christian era there was a rule: Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy (Matthew 5:43). The majority of people continue to live in accordance with this rule. It is natural for us to love our neighbors, those who do us good, and to treat with hostility and even hatred those who pose evil. But Christ says that our attitude should be completely different: Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you (Matthew 5:44).

Christ Himself, during His earthly life, repeatedly set an example both of love for enemies and of prayer for them. When the soldiers nailed the Lord to the Cross, He experienced frightful torments and incredible pain, but He prayed: Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34). At that moment He thought not about Himself, not about the fact that these soldiers were causing Him pain, but rather about their salvation; for, by committing evil, they were first of all harming themselves.

'When you see that someone is doing something evil, hate not him, but the devil, who is behind him.'

~ St John Chrysostom

We should remember that people who do us evil or treat us with hostility are not bad in themselves. What is bad is the sin with which they are infected. One needs to hate sin, but not its bearer: man. As St. John Chrysostom put it: �when you see that someone is doing something evil, hate not him, but the devil, who is behind him.�

[This is why in my book and in my talks I separate our Christian reaction against Islam from our Christian approach to Muslims. We must hate Islam "with a perfect hatred" (PS 140:22 LXX), for it is purely of the devil, and is a precursor of the Antichrist, as St John of Damascus boldly wrote. But we must love and pray for our Muslim neighbors � even those who hate and persecute us � for they bear within themselves the image of God, however obscured by the wiles of the devil, and the Lord may use our prayers to overthrow satan, who tries to ensnare as many as he can.]

One needs to learn to separate the person from the sin he commits. Priests very often observe during Confession that sin is really separate from the person who repents thereof. We should be able to turn away from the sinful image of man and remember that everyone, including our enemies and those that hate us, are created according to God�s image; and it is this image of God, these rudiments of good that are in everyone, that we should scrutinize.

'Those that hate and reject their brother are flawed in their being; they cannot find the way to God, Who loves all.'

~ St Silouan the Athonite

Why is it necessary to pray for enemies? It is necessary not only for them, but for us as well. We should find in ourselves the strength to be reconciled with people. Archimandrite Sophrony, in his book about St. Silouan the Athonite, says: �Those that hate and reject their brother are flawed in their being; they cannot find the way to God, Who loves all.� This holds true. When hatred for man settles in our heart, we are not able to approach God. As long as we hold on to this feeling, the path to God is barred to us. This is why it is necessary to pray for our enemies.

Every time we approach the Living God, we should be at absolute peace with everyone whom we perceive as our enemies. Let us remember what the Lord said: Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift (Matthew 5:23-24). And also other words of the Lord: Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him (Matthew 5:25). �In the way with him� means �in this earthly life.� For if we do not manage to be reconciled here with those that hate and offend us, with our enemies, then we will be unreconciled in the future life. And to make up there for what is missing here will no longer be possible.

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We should not be surprised when Muslims, secularists, or others hate us, persecute us and kill us because we belong to Christ. The Lord told us to expect this: 

"The time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service" (JN 16:2).

We are living through such a time right now, and it is only going to worsen.

Our duty, in imitation of and obedience to Christ, is to forgive them, and to pray for them, even and especially from the cross of our sufferings and persecutions. 

In my unworthy estimation, the way to pray for Muslims is twofold: "Father, forgive them, for they know not...", and, per the blessed example of St Silouan the Athonite, "Lord Jesus Christ, grant that their eyes may be opened, that they may be delivered from spiritual deception, and come to know Thee through the Holy Spirit."  And if the day comes that a Muslim sword is at our neck, to pray as St Stephen the Protomartyr did, "Lord, charge not this sin against them!"

We are given the opportunity in these darkening times to prove we are Christians, to prove not only that we "believe in" Jesus Christ, not only that we "belong to" Christ, but hopefully, that we have Christ abiding in us, with the Father and through the Holy Spirit. Archimandrite Sophrony related that being a Christian is not merely hard, it is impossible. It is only by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that we can survive these times and inherit eternal life. And the acquisition of the Holy Spirit comes only through a life of repentance faithfully lived within the confines of the Orthodox Church.