Don’t play soccer!

Today is the feast day of Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco. The picture above is of Hieromonk Maksim at the liturgy this morning for the feast at New Marcha Monastery in Richfield, Ohio. The celebration of this feast always confused me: is on this day or the Saturday closest to this day; or both?

A reader of this blog was reminded of my earlier post about soccer games and the World Cup in regards to today’s feast. Namely, St. John’s comments about soccer. It’s taken from the article which I think I posted on here before: (Here)

Vladyka realized that young people need some sort of amusement, but he was categorically against soccer. In conversations with young people, Vladyka especially emphasized the necessity of being righteous and of always speaking the truth, and would add, “He who tells a lie will also steal.”

Happy feast!

On Weddings

Source: Notes on Arab Orthodoxy (here)

Arabic original here.

Weddings

The crown in the Christian marriage service is the one that the holy martyrs receive after having committed to Christ to the point of death during their entire life. Thus we have in the wedding service the hymn “O Holy Martyrs…”

In the past, the crowning took place in the divine liturgy.

If, today, it is sometimes held during the liturgy, it can be very much abbreviated from the usual unnecessary social spectacles.

The Church forbade it from being held on Saturday evenings because marital relations are not proper the night before receiving the Eucharist.

This is in addition to the fact that for the most part the people taking part in the wedding would not come to the divine liturgy on Sunday.

Today, the Church does not prevent the wedding ceremony from being held on Saturday, given the currently predominant social customs known to all. However, she strongly advises the faithful not to get married on Saturday evenings.

*   *   *

On a practical level, there is a harmful confusion regarding the sacrament of marriage and the accompanying preparations and activities that damage the understanding and sanctity of the sacrament.

This includes immodest clothing and wasteful and extravagant spending on dinners, cocktail parties and their accoutrements.

All these displays have come to overpower the atmosphere of the prayers and the sanctity of the wedding.

The Holy Bible commands women to constantly guard their modesty when it says, “Women should adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing” (1 Timothy 2:9).

In this context, we must remind priests and parishes of the necessity of holding the service of the holy sacrament of marriage in churches, insofar as it is possible in their parishes, and not in resorts or public gardens…

Moreover, they must heed the times when the sacrament cannot be performed, I mean in particular the periods of Advent, Great Lent and the Dormition Fast…

*   *   *
Beloved, these ecclesiastical and paternal recommendations are not intended to overwhelm members of the Church with strict canons. Rather, they are intended to guide our children toward the necessity of keeping our holy Christian traditions and keeping them from being swept away by damaging, worldly social customs.

We must remain the good leaven in this world that is drowning in materialism and harmful lusts.

Try these sound Christian ways, even if they seem narrow in today’s world, and you will taste true joy in Christ God, who will never be taken away from you.

+Ephrem
Metropolitan of Tripoli, al-Koura and their Dependencies

The Military Frontier

From a homily on Vidovdan in Zagred by Archimandrite Danile (Ljubotina) here:

We must say something from our nation’s history considering that on this day an idelible drama was played out among our people. The drama commemorates our entire future history to this day. Vidovdan witnesses to us, Christians of today, that we are obliged to preach and stand on the side of the Gospel whatever the case might be in our lives for that is our transifiguration and salvation for eternity in the Lord Jesus Christ.

For five centuries, up until the Balkan Wars, we were under those forces but we defended Christianity as the remainder of the baptized people from which was created the Military Frontier (Vojna Krajina), that corridor that constantly defended the unfortunate Europe, filled with an evil appetite and deceit.  Europe, that not only abondoned Christ but also expelled Him from her thoughts and does not consider Christ as the victor. But Christ will be victorious and will come in power and His will be the Resurrectional victory until the end.

What’s in a name

I found a tweet from Fr. Samuel Davis’ Twitter (@samualmark25) where he writes: “Evangelicals are afraid of persecution – but that is the seed of the Church. Their fear and unwillingness to be a minority and persecuted for their faith betrays their lip service that their allegiance is Christ when really it’s an Americanism to which they are allied”.

This is a good description not only of Protestantism but even contemporary Christianity and churches. Yesterday’s feast of Vidovdan is the commemoration of a battle from a time Christians stood up for what they believed, regardless of how outnumbered they were and, subsequently, what the outcome would most certainly be.

Bishop Irinej in his homily yesterday mentioned the name of the feast. The Serbian word “vid” means sight. Vidovdan, then, is a feast that gives us spiritual sight: our sight is not on the fact we’re outnumbered, our sight is not on how we’ll save our lives if we submit, our sight is not focused on anything that would hinder our salvation and entrance into God’s Kingdom.

The bishop says:

This time, as well, I will repeat as I have many times before, the name of feasts reveal their essence. Such is the case with today’s feast from the 14th century.  Before that the feast that was celebrated on this day was the Prophet Amos, the Krsna Slava of St. Prince Lazar and the feast of the Martyr Vitus who suffered for Christ in the 4th century. It is from him that we get the name of today’s feast (Vit-Vid). Many ask why we celebrated the defeat of St. Prince Lazar? The side that fights for their neighbor and their country is always the victorious side regardless if at first glance, on the surface, that victory looks like a defeat. The decision of Saint Prince Lazar could have been to not fight against the larger power, but that would have been the wrong position, the position of worshiping defeat and accepting evil as the supreme norm. This is spiritual necrophilia. The holy prince with his army and people choose the path of suffering for the Lord, battling for the eternal, impassable values of God’s Kingdom, the only things worth living for.

Source

 

Injustices in soccer

Happy Feast of Vidovdan!

I saw this on Bosko’s Twitter (here) a few days ago after the Serbia vs. Switzerland game and meant to share it. It’ a loose translate and appropriate for Vidovdan.

Listen Up, Serbs!

It’s unbelievable that as a people we collectively react to the injustices in a soccer game, while all the other evils done to us we view as our inevitable fate, a role we accept joyously. Is our victory in the fact that defeat and loss are the only things that unite us?

The joy of the loser comes as a diagnosis. Our national being is not well and needs to find a way to return its immunity. Obviously I’m pecking at the minds of readers in vain, for they only hear the sounds of reality shows. In one night Serbs sent 16 million text messages and open support was given to debauchery and immorality. Almost 5 million Euros from the pockets of Serbian citizens went to the creators of the spectacle of the guinea pigs, the new role models of Serbian youth.

United in the injustices of soccer and the reality-show competitions, but divided over social justice, the defense over degradation of moral principles, Svetosavlje, Kosovo and Metohija….They are deaf to injustice except when it comes to soccer.  In that case, give us a soccer ball, a field, two goals and seven million of us on the field. Everyone in the jersey of their party, organization or movement and let’s play that final national game in which we will display our greatest ability – scoring against ourselves. For the most part, such a game is played every day though most of the players – unbeknownst to the players – nor do they know on what part of the field they are on, nor their role in the team and towards the end of the derby, when they see the score and the ones who scored against their own team, they cry out, complain …

And so, over and over again it goes. What are we to even do, how are we to awaken those who are convinced that they are sleeping, that everything is ugly but it’s a dream they have to dream and it’ll quickly pass in two or – at the most – three years? First of let’s deal with ourselves:  if we don’t love Serbia simply choose another country to live in, and the rest of us need to define the kind of country we want to live in.  As long as we ourselves support corruption we have no right to solve it on a national level. As long as we do not respect our ancestors, alphabet, faith, we have no right to complain how others are proudly asserting their own symbols.  As long as the injustices of soccer games more important than the destruction of education and health, we’ll have no resurrection. If we don’t become better, it’ll only get worse for us.

Bosko Kozarski
Founder of the Serbian-Russian Educational Center