The Forgotten Medicine, The Mystery of Repentance

Archimandrite Seraphim Aleksiev

Every Christian feels a natural yearning of heart towards God, a true desire to taste the sweetness of communion with Him; but the impurity of our hearts, full of passions, conflicts and fears, bars the way. Yet there is a cure for the weight of sin which burdens the heart and soul of each one of us, and afflicts the conscience; keeping us from that longed-for inner peace, and from peace with our neighbors and loved ones. That cure is the Mystery of Repentance.

The Meaning of Suffering and Strife and Reconciliation

by Archimandrite Seraphim Aleksiev

"The Question of suffering is one of the most sensitive questions. Many ask themselves: why has God created us to suffer in this world from diseases, sorrows, calamities, troubles, and misfortunes?..." And yet, "suffering in its nature is nothing els but a withdrawal from God. With God it would be well iven in Hell," declares Archimandrite Seraphim.  Where have we gone wrong that we suffer meaninglessly? Father Seraphim answers this question with penetrating clarity and with a compassion which warms the heart, helping us to come to the point where, "quiet hope has taken the place of the bitter despair of suffering, and suffering is not unbearably heavy anymore, because it gives birth to sweet fruit."  "How light your soul feels when you are reconciled with your enemy!... You want, like a bird freed from a cage, to fly up to the heavens with joy!..." In Strife and Reconciliation, Archimandrite Seraphim's counsels reveals the way from the raging sea of strife to the harbor of peace.

The Illness and Cure of the Soul in the Orthodox Tradition

Archimandrite Hierotheos Vlachos

The authors main conviction, which permeates this present book, is that Orthodoxy does not provide a system of moral conduct, but a therapeutic treatment which cures the innermost aspect of man's personality. The author maintains that this position is no innovation, but that he only highlights a central teaching of the Fathers of the Church: man's soul suffers malady which distorts his relationship with God, his fellow men, and even nature. The Church is a hospital which receives all people, and cures their spiritual illness. The cure of the soul is the "end" of the Orthodox way, and it can only be attained through the Orthodox therapeutic method which is asceticism, as it is expressed in the tradition of the Church.

Orthodox Psychotherapy, The Science of the Fathers

Hierotheos, Bishop of Nafpaktos

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Heavenly Wisdom from God-illumined Teachers on Conquering Depression

Modern society is Godless; not because man doesn't need God, but because he forgets God. The loneliness which results from forgetfulness of God becomes unbearable for the soul, and produces dissatisfaction, despondency, and despair. In the attempt to build "paradise" on earth and relieve this loneliness, man instead builds artificial golden cages which imprison the human spirit, depriving it of spiritual freedom.

Depression, a modern word for hopelessness, is especially prevalent in our times, demanding a remedy. Presented here is a brief life of a healer of depression in our century, Eldress Maria of Gatchina, together with a treasury of eternal teachings from the Holy Fathers and Mothers throughout the ages, who taught from personal experience how to fly out of the cage of despair. These teachings have already helped millions of people to overcome the demonic spirit of depression and attain freedom.

Beyond the Shattered Image 

by John Chryssavgis  (Minneapolis, MN: Light & Life Publishing, 1999)

  review by Vincent Rossi

For most environmentalists, theology remains a last resort, if they resort to it at all. And even if they do seek theology’s support, it is not as the "queen of the sciences" that they turn to theology, but merely as a form of eco-ethics buttressed by the supposed moral support of "religion" in general. For those, however, who are genuinely interested in the interface between religion and the environment as a first line of defense against the rape of nature, a restored theological vision capable of overcoming a disastrously individualistic and anthropocentric worldview and reintegrating God, man and the natural world is a vision-quest worthy of every effort. Many thinkers who are seeking a truly effective vision of religion and the order of nature are gradually recognizing that the deepest ecological thinking, the widest and most inclusive scope of environmental reconciliation, and the loftiest and most complete cosmic vision and spirituality are to be found in the riches of the Orthodox Christian theological tradition.

Beyond the Shattered Image, authored by the respected Orthodox theologian, John Chryssavgis, aims to present the full ecological significance of the Orthodox Christian worldview in its deepest, widest and highest sense. It is a tribute to the maturity and clarity of the author’s thought that he is able to accomplish this task in a slim volume of less than two hundred pages., and to present an essentially Eastern Orthodox perspective in such an attractive, irenic and winsome way that it should appeal across the denominational board.

The heart of an Orthodox ecological worldview, according to Chryssavgis, consists of the vision, the conception and, above all, the experience of the world as sacrament. To know and accept the sacramentality of the world in a truly effective way—that is, in a way that transforms the way we think, feel and act toward the creation—requires, to begin with, a conceptual awareness of the Divine Presence in the world as reciprocal transcendence and immanence, and, developing upon that conception, an experiential realization of that Presence in all created things. Now as God alone is sacred and the source of the sacred, a sense of God’s presence in and involvement with the created order is experienced by the believer as a sense of the sacred in creation. The creation as such is not considered sacred in the Orthodox tradition, but the creation as a sure sign of God’s will, providence and purpose is a revelation of the sacred in and through the world. Furthermore, if every life-form, indeed, every created object reveals in its own way the presence and purpose of God, then every created thing is also a symbol—that is, a visible and material form that not only represents but literally re-presents the invisible and beyond-the-physical dimensions of reality. "All creation," says Chryssavgis, "is a palpable mystery, an immense incarnation of cosmic proportions." The linchpin of Orthodox cosmology, according to Chryssavgis, is unquestionably the sacramental principle.

The sacramental principle is the means by which "we understand the world around us as being sacred." The world around us—which is, not coincidentally, the basic definition of environment—is not conceived in the Orthodox tradition as a conglomeration of objects, life-forms and processes without intrinsic meaning, but a vast revelation of God, called by the Fathers of the Church, the "Book of Nature" composed of numberless "words of God," the created beings which are living symbols that reveal as well as conceal the presence and purpose of God in creation. The sacred, the sacrament, and the symbol: for Chryssavgis, these three elements form the basis of the sacramental ecology of the Orthodox Tradition. The sacred, sacramental and symbolic dimensions of creation in the Orthodox worldview may be summed up in the saying of St. John of Damaskos that "the whole world is a single icon of God." The world is beautiful, and beauty, according to the Greek Patristic tradition, is one of the Names of God, and a sign of God’s presence in creation. "Cosmos," as Dr. Chryssavgis reminds us, means the ordered harmony that is the very essence of beauty.