Monks' Alphabet to ease the Jesus prayer

Temporal

 

'Translated' from Polish
(thank you, reader Martin!)

Monks' Alphabet 

Rejoice monk, and once again I say – rejoice, the first [is] this.        
 

Rejoice monk, obedience, and again I say, rejoice always monk, Lord's second [is] this.         
 

Close up the cell,         
And in this way, the monastery will rejoice.
 

Always rejoice monk, I'll say it a third time,  
 

Pray monk          
All the monastery rejoice with you, monk!   
 

Always rejoice, monk, I'll say it for the fourth time.        
 

A fifth and final, listen monk        
 

If you experience a difficulty, catfish, if you fall into despair – do not lose hope,
do not retire, do not be weary, exhibit no faint-heartedness,
 

And when you need to, prostrate little bro.  
And so all the monastery rejoice with you, monk. 

"Te-Ri-Rem" – a Byzantine meaningless song during whose performance monks make the Jesus prayer.

CLICK for the text of the song in Greek along with neumatical writing –
(done by reader Martin!)

 

(The Studite Monastery) THE CHURCH OF ST JOHN the Baptist AT STUDIOS (in Istanbul)

T A L M A C H
so much and simple

     Constantinople's oldest Church, the only one of the time-bracket between Constantine the Great and Justinian the Great that has survived, is the Church of St. John the Baptist at Studios [now known in Turkey as Imrahor Camii]. It is referred to as one of the most attractive ruins in today's Istanbul – roofless and romantically overgrown around its edges. 

     The Church was founded in 463 by a Roman patrician [consul] named Studium. Every year on the feast of the beheading of St. John the Baptist (29 August) the Emperor would come by sea to visit the Church whose most sacred relic was the head of the Baptist. [Apparently the latter acquired in the 13th C. the gift of {{{{bilocation}}}}[who's mocking...], for after the Fourth Crusade's loot had been distributed around Europe both Soissons and Amiens boasted the possession of the head of John the Baptist.]

     Today we approach the Church through what was originally the atrium, [or the courtyard of the mosque 1000 or so years later] with the ablution fountain still remaining. The narthex still shows much of its fine entrance portals with magnificently carved capitals, architrave and cornice. Inside, the Church is an empty shell but for the six lovely columns, each formed of a single block of verd antique. The entablature on top of this colonnade is still in place, popped up by scaffolding, but its carving, once rich, is now badly weathered. Originally, above it there was another row of support columns to the wooden roof. We can see parts of the fine opus sectile floor, the gift of Michael VIII Palaeologus after the restoration of the Byzantine Empire in 1261, in place of the flooring destroyed by the Fourth Crusade. The shell of the semi-circular apse still contains some of the structure of the mosque's mihrab with its askew orientation. But only our imagination may re-dress the walls with the rich marble revetments and mosaics of the days of the Church's glory. 

     This is the oldest Church in Istanbul, [the only example there of] a pure basilica, the first type of building used for Christian worship [the secular basilica had long been used for public assemblies of various kinds – from legal to social or imperial].

     The Church of St. John at Studios was originally attached to a monastery whose monks were known as 'Acoemetae', the sleepless ones, from their round-the-clock liturgizing, on a relay basis, with intercessions for the sins of the world. Under the iconoclast Emperors of the 8th C., the monastery clung tenaciously to the use of images in both art and worship; but it was not until 799 – when Theodore the Great became Abbot – that it rose to its full prominence. Under his guidance the monastery became not merely a centre of resistance to iconoclasm – with the inevitable persecutions that this entailed – but it also became a world-famous centre of scholarship, icon painting, manuscript interpreting, and sacred music composing.

     The Studite monastery produced several Patriarchs; and had two Emperors spending their enforced retirement here as monks in the 11th C., Isaac I Commenus and Michael VII Ducas. Isaac I had also studied here in his youth. Another Emperor, the much-hated Michael V Calaphates, was dragged screaming from his sanctuary here on April 21, 1042 [3 days after banishing his uncle John ... and his aunt Zoe to a convent], to be deposed and blinded [+ 24 August 1042, Estimated value $ 90,000, Gold histamenon nomisma (4.44 gr.), Extremely rare: probably less than eight specimens exist]. A son of the Ottoman Sultan Beyazid I, a covert Christian, was buried here in 1417. 

     After the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Church and monastery remained Christian until about 1500 when Beyazid II's Master of Horse (imrahor) Ilyas Bey evicted the few remaining monks and converted the Church into a mosque – Imrahor Ilyas Bey Camii. Hardly a stone has remained of the monastery. Both it and the mosque were damaged badly in a fire in 1782, and were further destroyed by an earthquake in 1894, which turned the mosque into a roofless ruin.

     [[[where is your treasure?...]]] 

To St. Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra, Wonderworker

Temporal

 

Защото зная, че няма да оставиш
да се удави човек - да би имал само
малко вяра - или само дори изволение...

For I know thou shall not leave a man
to drown - should he have a little
faith only - or even only willingness [to have faith]...

[in Russian - see source below]

Молитвы святителю Николаю архиепископу Мирликийскому чудотворцу

Молитва первая

О, всесвятый Николае, угодниче преизрядный Господень, теплый наш заступниче, и везде в скорбех скорый помощниче, помози мне грешному и унылому, в настощем житии, умоли Господа Бога, даровати ми оставление всех моих грехов, елико согреших от юности моея, во всем житии моем, делом, словом, помышлением и всеми моими чувствы: и во исходе души моея помози ми окаянному, умоли Господа Бога всея твари Содетеля, избавити мя воздушных мытарств и вечнаго мучения: да всегда прославляю Отца, и Сына, и Святаго Духа, и твое милостивное предстательство, ныне и присно, и во веки веков. Аминь.

Молитва вторая

О, всеблагий отче Николе, пастырю и учителю всех верою притекающих к твоему заступлению, и теплою молитвою тебе призывающих, скоро потщися, и избави Христово стадо от волков губящих е: и всяку страну христианскую огради и сохрани святыми твоими молитвами, от мирскаго мятежа, труса, нашествия иноплеменников и междоусобныя брани, от глада, потопа, огня, меча и внезапныя смерти. И якоже помиловал еси триех мужей в темнице седящих, и избавил еси их царева гнева и посечения мечнаго, тако помилуй и мене, умом, словом и делом во тме грехов суща, и избави мя гнева Божия и вечныя казни. Яко да твоим ходатайством и помощию, Своим же милосердием и благодатию, Христос Бог, тихое и безгрешное житие даст ми пожити в веце сем, и избавит мя шуияго стояния, сподобит же деснаго со всеми святыми во веки веков, Аминь.

Source

Faith Impoverishment and Apostasy from God –Sources and the Way to Avoid...

Temporal

 

Translated from Russian

The Sources of Faith Impoverishment and
Apostasy from God,
and the Way to Avoid This.

• Nov. 25th, 2013 at 1:21 PM

Moscow Metropolitan Philaret: “By mixing up the concept of Truth to the extreme of darkening [the mind], especially under plausible pretexts. And this is, in essence, Satan who appears in the guise of an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14 ). Thus, by the time of the Antichrist truth will be fully destroyed on earth in both life and in concepts – and that will take place unbeknownst to people. Of those being saved able to avoid this net will be only those who incessantly monitor themselves, whether they have not fallen in some confusion of concepts. [Over] Self-confidence can easily be robbed and entangled in nets of confusion.” (Metr. Filaret /Drozdov/. Commentary to the works of St. Gregory of Sinai).

“You start with thinking about God and the devil knock you [down] with SOVOPROSNICHESTVO [making up questions – IN DOUBT] and curiosity about the mysteries of Scripture, which cool [you] down and develop pernicious conceit. You would take care of not offending anyone, and he will knock you [down] on pernicious servility to men. You would fear not to condemn, and he hastens to waft at you indifference both to good and to evil. Also in many other things the enemy [of man] entangles his own, – St. John says – love for strangers [hospitality] – with gluttony; sense of judgment – severity; meekness – with duplicity; joy – with self-esteem; hope – with laziness and so on. You see the way he plants [his seed, i.e. makes his preparations], the way these assassination attempts are called by people experienced in combating the enemy. You see how much plantation-preparations and exacerbation of the care for vigilance.” (St. Theofan the Recluse “On Repentance ...”, page 225).

This confusion of concepts is diverse [multifacetous], and lately Satan has begun to act with huge force, and just as huge covertness – what used to be impossible – through the evil teachers of the so-called “official church” (in different countries – differently, in ours [Russia] through the so-called “Sovetzkaya church” MP). Especially so, in front of my eyes humility is transforming into humility before the evil; love for one’s neighbor – into simple servility to men, where God is – as a matter of course, in any case – always in the second place; and love for the enemy – into love for his evil, when even the very concept of the enemy is absent specifically, taken away. This latter transformation (or rather, a perversion of the Christian morality) is the worst, especially when word goes not about universal, public interest, but about the Truth – which in this context is perceived as an action of the enemies of Truth.

Salvation from this can only take place – as already said above – in incessant monitoring oneself, and what is most important: in verification of all one’s activities against the Holy Gospel. I must say to myself from the very start, “this Book is the only true, the most major, the very basic source of knowing God, which I need to comprehend in perfect purity, renouncing all my knowledge, even everything human, to the extent possible – in any case”, and reading it, [I should] follow it. And my knowledge itself, eventually, I am to reconcile with the Gospel – whether it corresponds to it or not. The Gospel is the light of Truth, and the fact that it seems supposedly “dead”, immaterial in the present life, the reason for this is not it [the Gospel] (as some do believe due to their small faith), and not the external conditions, either, but their own helplessness and coldness of heart.

Prophecy against Gog Ezekiel 38

Temporal

 

Ezekiel 1

The prophecies of this book
were spoken and written in Babylon,
to the Jews who were captives there.
Ezekiel prophesied in the beginning of their captivity,
to convince them when they were secure and unhumbled;
Daniel, in the latter end of it, to comfort them,
when they were dejected and discouraged.

Ezekiel 38

(Prophecy against Gog)

1And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 2Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, 3And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal: 4And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords: 5Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet: 6Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.

7Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them. 8After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them. 9Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee.

The Spirit of the Times, the Orthodox Church and Its Mission in Contemporaneity — An Exposition of c. 2009

T A L M A C H
so much and simple

Translated from Bulgarian

[I apologize for imagining
myself apt to the task...]

Zeitgeist, the Orthodox Church and
Its Mission in Our Modern Times

A Letter by Bishop Photii of Triaditsa
to a Bulgarian Orthodox priest

bishop Photii of Triaditsa [1]

Dear Father N.
May God’s grace be with you!

          First I would like to thank you for the kind words and best wishes in your letter of March 1^st this year, and then I will try and respond to your supplication by sharing views of mine on the Church ‘s mission in our times.

          Let me start with a thought from your letter to me:

I understand that the question of the church calendar is something that seriously concerns you and a field in which you undoubtedly are competent to the possible utmost extent. Such a conversation takes a special attitude within the Church, just as well as a certain level of knowledge. We are still leading a survival fight, and when you chase the overall you miss out on detail. Meanwhile, we must not lose sight of the especially great need for a mission that would face the modern man.

          The question of our survival in the Church is for us not so much a matter of survival in a horizontal dimension, that is physical and social survival of the Church as an institution – and that, at any cost. Such a view, such an emphatically empirical sense of the Church’s survival has intensively been formed in this country during the years of communist dictatorship. In Russia, under a persecution – monstrous in its cruelty – of the faithful, the practical application of this concept for the Church survival was rejected by the majority of new martyrs and confessors of the Orthodox Faith and was called “Sergianism”. According to that kind of perception, according to that view for the survival of the Church of Christ – not only under persecution but also in [the conditions of] spiritually destructive processes within and without her – the primary, solid, tangible reality of the Church is above all the ecclesiastical institution, the visible structure of the Church as a social body [organism/constitution] in terms of its physical and social functioning. An organism with such an understanding of its own essence inevitably begins to struggle for survival primarily in the mainstream of the laws and logic of this world through adapting and compromising, which ultimately can provide its physical and social survival – but at the same time, put it in a deep contradiction with the Church’s essence as a God-man body. From this point of view, the basic reality for the Church survival – the heavenly-earthly Church as the Body of Christ, in which we can only survive as living members in Faith, in spirit and in truth, to which the institutional structure is but an external expression – becomes an “idea”, an “ideal”, something sublime, supposedly desirable in word but abstract and ultimately conditional on the reality of the institution, on the empirical social organism as a massive church body, which, however, loses its authentic church spirit. And so, in our understanding of the survival battle the overall and the detail emerge in a somewhat different light. To us overall, basic, and defining is the spiritual authenticity of the Tradition, of the doctrine, of the customs of the Church. Affiliation with this spiritual authenticity and fullness of Tradition is for us the major condition for our survival as members of the Church, the Body of Christ. In this context, the church calendar, too (or to put it more precisely, the calendar-and-paschal system of the Great indiction), being an expression of the Church’s liturgical unity ever since the sixth century, is to us an integral part of the Church Tradition, and not some immaterial detail liable to mechanical separation from the Tradition fullness. And it is by virtue of this feature exactly of the calendar that it should neither be underestimated, nor [made to] grow into an unlawfully enlarged and self-sufficient criterion of “orthodoxy”. 

Two Visions and a Prayer of Enoch Book of Enoch, Ethiopian version„последните дванадесет пастири са погубили повече овце, отколкото своите предшественици”

Temporal

 

[translated from] a BG rendition of
Dillman, A.
Das Buch, Henoch ubersetzt und erklart.
Leipzig, 1853

[The Book of Enoch is a pseudoepigraphal work
(a work that claims to be by a biblical character).
The Book of Enoch was not included in either
the Hebrew or most Christian biblical canons,
but could have been considered a sacred text
by the sectarians.
The original Aramaic version was lost until
the Dead Sea fragements were discovered.]

„последните дванадесет пастири са погубили повече овце, отколкото своите предшественици”

(второ видение на Енох)

LXXXIV. По-късно имах друго едно видение, което също искам да ти обясня, сине мой. И Енох стана и рече на сина си: Остави да ти разкажа. Чуй думите на моята уста и обърни внимание на видението и на съня на твоя баща. Преди да се оженя за твоята майка имах едно видение в леглото си.

2. Ето, един бик, който излиза от земята.

3. И този бик беше бял.

4. След това излезе една юница, а заедно с нея две млади телета — едно черно и едно червено.

5. Черното теле удари червеното и почна да го преследва по цялата земя.

6. От него момент не забелязах вече червеното теле; черното обаче достигна до дълбока старост. И с него имаше една юница.

7. По-сетне видях много бикове, родени от тази двойка, които вървяха след тях и им приличаха.

8. Първата юница напусна предишния бик и потърси червеното теле, но не го намери вече.

9. Мучеше тревожно и го търсеше.

10. И муча, докато бикът я приближи; от този момент тя престана да мучи и да се оплаква.

11. След време роди едно бяло теле.

12. А по-сетне и други телета и юници.

13. Видях в съня си също един бял вол, който порасна по същия начин и стана голям бял вол.

14. И от него произлязоха много други волове, които приличаха на него и се заместваха едни други.

... For All The Deliberate New-Calendarists Liers: I am with Christ forever - every moment on His narrow path

Temporal

 

 

 (God has deigned that many of His greatest saints' holidays be mingled in this awkward manner.
Still - a lie is a lie - and YOU know it but have no fear of God in your money-dizziness: )

I am with Christ forever -
every moment on His narrow path 

And my home is on this narrow countryside Road of Christ -
at 8, November - some Authorities and Kingdoms [Dominions]
would have it changed - to 21, November - but our home is
still the very same! Call us at our house number 8[OS]/21[NS].

Those Authorities and Kingdoms [Dominions] have been demoted -
rest assured! - and authorities and kingdoms are they no more! -
For I have the Powers - and the Will of the Living Word!

And the Thrones are being submerged - lest they be defiled by
Antichrist, who knows all lies.

                                                                      Archangel Michael

The Eighth Day (of indiction)

---

The world was created in Six Days
and the Seventh Day was attributed to honor the Creator.
And so the cycle started running in time...
It is called Genesis, week, calendar...

And on the Eighth Day

there came
the hope for salvation,
the beginning of our salvation was born on the Eighth Day of the indiction
(and through Her – the Most Holy Theotokos, Ever Virgin Miriam –
coming to this world was also our Savior),
subsequently (probably) still on that Eighth day
there will come our very salvation...

(For early Christian fathers the spiritual "Eighth Day"
is Christ's resurrection) or the end of the world...

But is our salvation an end –
[Yes, of course - in English -
yes, this is our ultimate objective!]
or our salvation is an end of the world, of this world?!?

---

TRANSLATION FROM RUSSIAN

---

Vision of Joseph Munoz

       A number or a day, or the year...? What prompted me to publish this? - I cannot understand. Perhaps Vladyka Philaret’s date of demise? Indeed, it has been 25 years now.

       …

       "Let me remind you of a portentous vision given to Joseph in the night of 20th against the 21st November 1985 – just a few hours before Metropolitan Philaret died.
       You were the first person whom Joseph told about this vision of his shortly after the news came of the Metropolitan Philaret’s demise.
       On November 24th (the Iberon icon’s feast day) 1985 Metropolitan Philaret was buried. Immediately thereafter Joseph came to us in Washington for a few days [stay] and on the very first evening, under the fresh impression of the vision he told us about it in details. This was also attended by Fr. Theodore Shevtsov.
       In the words of Joseph on the night of November 20th he felt very tired and went to bed. The holy Icon hanged on the wall opposite his bed – so that when lying he could gaze at it. Soon after he lied down, the icon-lamp hanging in front of the icon went out. He lit it up again but it went out for the second time. Then Joseph changed the oil, the wick, washed the lamp-glass, and filled it up again. But soon the lamp went out for a third time... This upset him, because he felt that the Mother of God intimately suggested to him that something significant was going to happen, since shortly before that the lamp in front of the Iberon Icon went out on three occasions – before the terrible earthquake in Mexico and before the eruption of the volcano in Colombia, in result to which thousands were killed. Joseph stood up for prayer. Under the icon, by the wall there was a [small] bench. Joseph knelt down to his knees, leaned against the bench and began praying. During the prayer he fell asleep.
       In the dream, a panoramic view opened to him – very much like a huge wide screen – and he was presented one such vision. Wooded nature with rocky soil. On the trail he saw – standing on his knees with a haggard face – Metropolitan Philaret. On the back of the Vladyka and on his right shoulder there lay a large heavy cross. The cross look was terrible – iron and cold (it lacked any life-giving heat, which gently emanates out of a wooden cross), it was an ugly color – dark green-brownish. Metropolitan Philaret was falling under the weight of the cross and was unable to budge. But, suddenly, unexpectedly, Metropolitan Philaret bent forward and with a decisive movement from right to left he dropped the cross onto the ground (the motion was strange as the Metropolitan could simply drop his right shoulder down and the cross would slide to the ground).
       Once the cross touched the ground, the Metropolitan disappeared. Joseph was seized with fear by what he had seen and out of horror he hid his face with his hands. When he finally dropped his hands before another picture appeared to him. He saw a land that has turned into a desert due to a terrible disaster. Instead of Metropolitan Philaret – standing on his knees was Vladyka Vitaliy with that same cross on his back, only the cross was more terrible, darker and heavier. Although with enormous labors, but still somehow the Vladyka budged little by little on.
       In a last, third part, of the vision Joseph saw a cross – purely black in color in that same desert, and crucified on it was – in full vestment, with miter – Bishop Vitaliy...”.

       …

       A few hours after this vision the world learned of the repose of Metropolitan Philaret... Maybe this vision – sent to Joseph – was the most significant of all signs of the Iberon Myrrh-streaming Icon. Maybe by this prophetic vision the Mother of God warns us about what might happen – lest it happens. Maybe we are currently witnessing the last part of the/a vision. God forbid! When at your insistence Joseph told You about his vision, tears came into Your eyes and You told him that the first part of the vision was clear, but the next [one] You did not want to interpret and preferred not to think about [it]... "(an excerpt from a letter bt Fr. N. to M. V.)

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