51. Your Name, Your Patron, and Sponsor

If you have been baptized outside of the Holy Orthodox Church, but that baptize was in the Name of the Holy Trinity with water, please submit to the Priest your baptismal certificate. This will help the Priest or Bishop to determine by what method you shall be received into the Church.

Resources:

This list of Women Saints of the Orthodox Church on the Antiochian Archdiocese website may be helpful for female catechumens in the process of discerning a Patron Saint.

Antiochian Saints (that is, Saints of the Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East)

Saints of the West (Pre-Schism Saints of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Rome and the West)

See the calendar of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese to see Saints organized according to their feast days.

Orthodoxwiki is a fine resources for discovering the lives of the Saints.

52. Divine Medicine: The Holy Mysteries

53. Holy Mysteries & Unity of the Church

54. The Mystery of Holy Baptism

Selection from St. Gregory Palamas, Homily, “On the Sunday of the Fathers”:

“Just as a newborn infant has received potential from his parents to become a man and heir to their house and fortune, but does not yet possess that inheritance because he is a minor, nor will he receive it if he dies before coming of age, so a person born again in the Spirit through Christian baptism has received power to become a son and heir of God, a joint-heir with Christ (cf. Rom. 8:17), and in the age to come he will, will all certainty, receive the divine and immortal adoption as a son, which will not be taken away from him, unless he has forfeited this by spiritual death. Sin is spiritual death, and whereas physical death is annulled when the future arrives, spiritual death is confirmed for those who bring it with them from here.”

St. Gregory Palamas, The Homilies, edited and translated by Christopher Veniamin, homily 58, “On the Sunday of the Fathers (Waymart: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2009), 475.

55. Your Baptismal Cross

Selection from St. Symeon the New Theologian, “Practical and Theological Precepts”:

“Moreover, the saints—those who appear from generation to generation, from time to time, following the saints who preceded them—become linked with their predecessors through obedience to Divine commandments and, endowed with Divine grace, become filled with the same light. In such a sequence all of them together form a kind of golden chain, each saint being a separate link in this chain, joined to the first by faith, right actions and love; a chain which has its strength in God and can hardly be broken.”

St. Symeon the New Theologian, “Practical and Theological Precepts, paragraph 157, Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, trans. by E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer (London: Faber and Faber, 1951), p. 135

56. The Mystery of Holy Chrismation

57. Take Up Your Sword and Armor

Note: We live in a society dominated by secular pagan philosophy and many different religious paths directly opposed to the Orthodox Christian worldview, ethos, and life. When one leaves the Orthodox Way that leads to healing and instead follows one of the many heretical paths, he is heading toward delusion. A person may have an experience that, misunderstood, might cause him fall into a false belief that offers a tempting, yet false, interpretation of the experience. The experience of seeing created energy as light, whether demonic energy or the natural energy of the human person, should not be confused with experiencing God, Who is Uncreated Light. The personal experience of created light or an experience of intellectual insight is not true enlightenment. We should be watchful, vigilant in every moment, so we do not fall into temptation.

Selection from Elder Sophrony, St. Silouan the Athonite:

“Attaining these bounds where ‘day and night come to an end’ man contemplates the beauty of his own mind which many identify with Divine being. They do see a light but it is not the True Light in which there ‘is no darkness at all.’ It is the natural light peculiar to the mind of man created in God’s image.

This mental light, which excels every other light of empirical knowledge, might still just as well be called darkness, since it is the darkness of divestiture and God is not in it. And perhaps in this instance more than any other we should listen to the Lord’s warning, ‘Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness.’ The first prehistoric, cosmic catastrophe – the fall of Lucifer, son of the morning, who became the prince of darkness – was due to his enamored contemplation of his won beauty, which ended up in his self-deification.”

Archimandrite Sophrony, St. Silouan the Athonite, trans. by Rosemary Edmons (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991), 162. See also Hieromonk Damascene, Christ the Eternal Tao (Platina, CA: Valaam Books/St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2004), 327-330.

Selection from Elder Sophrony, We Shall See Him As He Is:

“It has been granted to me to contemplate different kinds of light and lights – the light the artist knows when elated by the beauty of the visible world; the light of philosophical contemplation that develops into a mystical experience. Let us even include the ‘light’ of scientific knowledge which is always and inevitably of very relative value. I have been tempted by manifestations of light from hostile spirits.”

Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), We Shall See Him as He Is, trans by Rosemary Edmonds (Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2006), 155-156. See also Hieromonk Damascene, Christ the Eternal Tao (Platina, CA: Valaam Books/St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2004), 327-330.

Selections from St. Maximus the Confessor, The Four Hundred Chapters on Love:

“It is said that there are five reasons why we are allowed to be warred upon by the demons. First, so that in offensive and defensive battle we cone to distinguish virtue and vice. Second, that in acquiring virtue by struggles and toil we shall hold on to it firmly and steadfastly. Third, that while advancing in virtue we do not become haughty but learn rather to be humble. Fourth, that having experienced vice we will hat it with a consummate hate. Fifth, and most important, that when we become detached we do not forget either our own weakness or the power of the one who has helped us.

Maximus the Confessor, Maximus the Confessor: Selected Writings, “The Four Hundred Chapters on Love,” Century 2.67 (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 56.

58. The Mystery of Holy Communion

Review the Pre-Communion Prayers and the Post-Communion Prayers to help you learn and remember both (1) the significance of the Eucharist (Holy Communion) and (2) the proper attitude for participating in this Holy Mystery.

See the Divine Liturgy section in the Orthodox Worship Study Notes.

59. The Mystery of Holy Confession

Selection from St. Gregory Palamas, Homily “On the Sunday of the Fathers”:

“Everyone who has been baptized, if he is to obtain the eternal blessedness and salvation for which he hopes should live free from all sin….

It is therefore consistent and just that anyone who, after divine baptism, after the covenants he made then to God and the grace he received from it, does not follow Christ’s way of life step by step, but transgresses and offends against the benefactor, should be utterly deprived of divine adoption and the eternal inheritance….

But, O Christ our King, who can worthily extol the greatness of Your love for mankind? What was unnecessary for Him and what He did not do, namely, repentance (for He never needed to repent, being sinless, cf. Heb. 4:15), He granted to us as a mediator for when we sin even after receiving grace. Repentance means returning once again to Him and to a life according to His will out of remorse. Even if someone commits a deadly sin, if he turns away from it with all his soul, abstains from it, and turns back to the Lord in deed and truth, he should take courage and be of good hope, for he shall not lose eternal life and salvation. When a child according to the flesh meets his death, he is not brought back to life by his father, but someone born of Christ, even though he fall into deadly sins, if he turns again and runs to the Father who raises the dead, is made alive once more, obtains divine adoption, and is not cast out from the company of the just.”

St. Gregory Palamas, The Homilies, edited and translated by Christopher Veniamin, homily 58, “On the Sunday of the Fathers (Waymart: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2009), 475-476.

Selections from St. Gregory the Great: The Book of Pastoral Rule, “That sometimes lesser vices must be permitted so that greater ones can be purged”:

“But it is often the case that when two vices attack the same person, one oppresses him more lightly and the other more severely. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable to address first the one that would otherwise lead more quickly to death. And if this one cannot be prevented from causing an immediate death without allowing the other, which is its opposite, to grow, then the preacher must permit, by the careful management of his instruction, the lesser one to grow in order that the more dangerous one does not cause a quick death. When he does this, he does not aggravate the overall illness, but rescues the life of the one infected, thus enabling him to find a more fitting time to administer the [spiritual] medicine for the lesser fault as well. For example, it is often the case that when one does little to temper his gluttony, he will, at the same time, be pressed by the temptations of lust, nearly to the point of succumbing to them. Such a one is likely to be terrified, and so he will try to control himself by fasting. But [being unprepared for that discipline], he now risks falling into vainglory. In such a case, it is impossible to extinguish the lust without permitting the vanity. Which vice, then should be more strenuously pursued if not the one that is most immediately dangerous? Therefore, through the virtue of abstinence, the vice of arrogance must be tolerated in the short-term; otherwise through his gluttony he would fall into lust and lose his life entirely.” 204-205

St. Gregory the Great, The Book of Pastoral Rule, trans. by George E. Demacopoulos, Popular Patristics Series (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2007), 204-205.

Review the Self-Examiniation Before Confession from our Archdiocese Pocket Prayer Book.

60. The Mystery of Holy Marriage

Selections from Holy Scripture:

Two become one in marriage Genesis 2.19-24

The Mystery of Marriage & the Church Ephesians 5.21-33

Practical instructions concerning marriage 1 Corinthians 7.1-16

Character of the Christian Home Col. 3.12-4.5; Heb. 13.1-6; 1 Pet. 3.1-9

Selection from St. John Chrysostom (describing the beauty of conception), “Homily 12” on Paul’s Letter to the Colossians:

“How do they become one flesh? As if she were gold receiving the purest gold, the woman receives the man’s seed with rich pleasure, and within her it is nourished, cherished, and refined. It is mingled with her own substance and she then returns it as a child! The child is a bridge connecting mother to father, so the three become on flesh, as when two cities divided by a river are joined by a bridge. Just as the head and the rest of the body are one, since the neck connects but does not divide them, so it is with the child. That is why Scripture does not say, ‘They shall be one flesh,’ but that they shall be joined together ‘into one flesh,’ namely the child. But suppose there is no child; do they then remain two and not one? No; their intercourse effects the joining of their bodies, and they are made one, just as when perfume is mixed with ointment”

St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 12” on Colossians 4:18, On Marriage and Family Life, trans. by Catherine P. Roth and David Anderson, Popular Patristics Series (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 76.

Selection from Elder Porphyrios, “On the Upbringing of Children,” Wounded by Love:

“What saves and makes for good children is the life of the parents in the home. The parents need to devote themselves to the love of God. They need to become saints in their relations to their children through their mildness, patience, and love. They need to make a new start every day with a fresh outlook, renewed enthusiasm, and love for their children. And the joy that will come to them, the holiness that will visit them, will shower grace on their children. If the parents do not pursue a life of holiness and if they don’t engage in spiritual struggle, they make great mistakes and transmit the faults they have within them. If the parents do not live a holy life and do not display love towards each other, the devil torments the parents with the reactions of the children. Love, harmony and understanding between the parents are what are required for the children. This provides a great sense of security and certainty.”

“The medicine and great secret for children’s progress is humility. Trust in God gives perfect security. God is everything. No one can say that I am everything. That cultivates egotism. God desires us to lead children to humility. Without humility neither we nor children will achieve anything. You need to be careful when you encourage children. You shouldn’t say to a children, ‘You’ll succeed, you’re great, you’re young, you’re fearless, you’re perfect!’ This is not good for the child. You can tell the child to pray, and say, ‘The talents you have, have been given to you by God. Pray and God will give you strength to cultivate them and in that way you will succeed. God will give you His grace.’ That is the best way. Children should learn to seek God’s help in everything.”

Elder Porphyrios, Wounded by Love, trans. by John Raffin (Limni, Evia, GRE: Denise Harvey, 2005), 196, 207.