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Psychology and Orthodoxy:
Complementary or Contradictory

Thursday, 5 January at 7 pm for 7.30 pm

at the Hellenic Community Centre, 24 Bay Road, Mouilles Point.

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The outline for the lecture reads:

There is no entry fee, but please call Erine on 021 433 2374 to reserve seats or Evgenia on 082 311 9885 for more details.

The name day of our Archbishop, Saint Sergios’ day, was celebrated at the Metropolitan Church of Saints Raphael, Nikolaos and Irene. On Thursday evening, 6 October, we celebrated Vespers and on Friday evening, 7 October, the Divine Liturgy for the Saint was celebrated.

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Saint Sergios

The holy Martyrs Saint Sergios and Saint Baccus were Romans of high rank in the service of the Emperor Maximian, to whom it was reported that they did not take part in the festivals of the idols. When he called them into his presence, they confessed their Faith in the one God. He had them arrayed in women’s clothes and paraded through the streets in mockery. They were afterwards scourged, from which Saint Bacchus died. This was about the year 296. Saint Sergios was then taken to Resapha in Syria, where he was tortured and beheaded. His tomb in Resapha became a very famous shrine, to which pilgrims came from as far away as Western Europe; Resapha was later renamed Sergiopolis in his honour.

Apolytikion in the Fourth Tone
Thy Martyrs, O Lord, in their courageous contest for Thee received as the prize the crowns of incorruption and life from Thee, our immortal God. For since they possessed Thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and wholly destroyed the demons’ strengthless presumption. O Christ God, by their prayers, save our souls, since Thou art merciful.

Kontakion in the Third Tone
As we gather, let us crown with sacred hymns of laudation those two brethren in the Faith, the great and valorous martyrs: Sergius was the Triune Godhead’s most steadfast warrior; and with him, wise Bacchus manfully suffered torments; and they both confessed Christ Saviour as God, the Maker and sacred Trainer of all.

Petros Khaya is welcomed by the Patriarch

Petros Khaya from the Eastern Cape has arrived in Alexandria to attend theological school. Seen here with His Beatitude the Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and all Africa THEODORUS II.
Petros has been attending Greek and catechism classes with Emmanuel Nicolaos under the guidance of His Eminence Archbishop Sergios, and was baptised at the Holy Metropolitan Church of Saints Raphael. He is the first student from the Diocese of Good Hope to attend theological school in Alexandria.

Baptisms of Philippi group

Saturday of Lazarus 2010

Pater Nikolaos baptised ten adults and three children at The Holy Metropolitan Church of Saints Raphael Nikolaos and Irene.
The Church has a specially constructed Baptismal in the Garden where adults are baptised, and the children are baptised in the Baptismal font of the Church.

Zulu Orthodox Mission Kwa Zulu Natal

Sunday of Orthodoxy 2010

Khayelitsha Cape Town

“Khayelitsha covers an area of about 47km² and is home to about 1.5 million people. It is the fastest growing and largest single township in South Africa.”

Khayelitsha is a mix of old and new, formal and informal and affluent and poor. There are housing projects which are continuously on the go, to alleviate the housing problems, but shacks are continuously being erected by the steady stream of people arriving from the Eastern Cape.
There are shopping centres, clinics, fire stations, schools, police stations, recreation centres, churches and post offices. There are also shipping containers which serve as shops, schools and hair salons. Anything goes and it is not strange to see goats or cattle roaming freely. The roads are in good condition and the government is endeavoring to deliver services to all the areas as soon as possible. Most people have electricity and access to fresh water and toilets.
The residents are warm, friendly and welcoming. The population harbours an untapped wealth of artists and craftsmen, actors and musicians. Tools of the trade are extremely innovative. There is a strong community spirit and once you are welcomed into the community, you become part of an extended family. www.nomvuyos-tours.co.za/township

Rastafarian Orthodox group

Visit to Khayelitsha with Pater George and Presvetera, and friends from Thessaloniki.

Father Joel (left greeting Pater George) is the leader of the Rastafarian Orthodox group in Khayelitsha. They have a small church in the centre of their group of shacks.
His Eminence, Archbishop Sergios together with Father Joel conducted a short prayer service, after which the children entertained us with their singing.

“Professor Renos Papadopoulos from Essex and Fotini Colbanis visit our Orthodox group in Khayelitsha.”

Christmas celebration

December 2010

The Orthodox groups from Khayelitsha were invited to the Holy Metropolis for a Christmas celebration.
They were treated to a meal which was generously prepared by members of the welfare committee and our youth. Members of the community responded to Pater Nikolaos’s request for clothing and dry food and canned foods. These were distributed amongst the group at the function.

Believe in God is difficult for some people today. God does not impose His presence and we need eyes of faith to see Him. Moreover, people also have false ideas of God and so we also need to understand what the Christian Church understands when it speaks of God.

We believe that there is one God. But God is not impersonal; rather, He is three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. These persons are not part of God but are fully God; they are distinct, but never divided from one another.

Therefore from the beginning, in His very being, God is personal and relates in love. He is a God of love, a God of love and communion. It is this love that comes down to us, and in which we are called to share.

The Fathers of the Church and the Ecumenical Councils used the terms ‘nature’ and ‘essence’ to refer to the oneness of God and the terms ‘person’ and ‘hypostasis’ to refer to the persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The former signifies what somebody is, whereas the latter signifies who somebody is. This fact that the Christian God is a community of persons is just as important as the fact that He is one God.

We can know God because He has revealed Himself out of love. He reveals Himself through creation, through human rationality, and through our conscience. However, our alienation from God has obscured our spiritual vision so that we may find it difficult to ‘see’ God, or even to believe that He exists. Therefore God chose to reveal Himself to the people of Israel, even though this was still in a partial way. His final and complete revelation occurred

when God the Father sent His Son in the Spirit to become man. We know God in Jesus Christ. No one has access to God the Father except through the Son [cf. John 14:6]. Great efforts have been made by religions and philosophers to conceive God and relate with Him. They are not always fully wrong, but they are at best incomplete, unsatisfactory, and misleading. They mainly represent man’s effort to reach the heavens. But even the most skilful and well-trained human being cannot jump that high.

We know God the Father through His Son Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ lives and acts in the Church, which Saint Paul call’s the Body of Christ. Through the Holy Spirit He removes our spiritual blindness so that we can see reality as it really is.

Having a reliable knowledge of God is of great importance, for our view of God shapes our own identity. Our knowledge of God is not simply theoretical, but is also a result of our communion and relationship with Him. However, our knowledge of God is not exhaustive and can never be fully expressed in language, and this stops us reducing God to an idol who we can fully understand.

We know that God is love, and this is true not only of the relationship of love that exists between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but it is also true of God’s relationship with us. God is the ‘Lover of Mankind’.

Father Bathrellos discussed several characteristics of God’s love. It is a free and creative love that respects our personhood and wants to give us life full of life, joy, peace and love. It is immeasurable and unconditional, totally unselfish and forgiving. He recalled the example of the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) which shows us how God always treats us as His children. God’s love is personal, caring and providential, but it also respects our freedom and God does not impose His love on us. It is also a teaching and correcting love and is not devoid of justice. It is a loving justice that permits those who have rejected Him to be separated from Him.

God’s love is humble and sacrificial and we see this in the way He took on human flesh and became what we are in order to make us what He is.

He died on the cross out of love for His executioners too, whom He had forgiven. Yet His perfect and sacrificial love proved eventually victorious. It brought about life. It led to the resurrection and opened the doors of everlasting life to the whole world.

The question can be raised of where God is when we suffer. How can He allow suffering in the world.

Suffering came as a result of misused human freedom and much, although not all, suffering is the result of human freedom. For Christians, God’s involvement in our suffering is that

Jesus Christ suffered and died on the cross. Although He alone was sinless, innocent and holy, He shared our suffering to the full. For our sins He paid the price.

We may experience much suffering, but God is with us when we suffer. We can endure the Cross because we know that God is with us, and ultimately we need to see the Cross in the light of the Resurrection. “Likewise, only in the Kingdom of God will the mystery of human pain and suffering be fully understood and answered.”

In his Epistle to the Galatians (VI:14) Saint Paul says that by the Cross of Christ the world is crucified unto him, and he is crucified unto the world. What does this mean? He was not physically crucified, neither was the world; but the image in the ancient language is a great deal clearer. In a crucifixion the two arms of the victim were spread on one side and the other, violently separated and nailed to the cross, so that they could never, never meet again. And this is what Paul speaks about. Through the Cross of Christ the world has been torn away from him and become totally alien, a world which he can no longer reach, which he does not want to reach any more, a world that is not only taken away from him, but which he rejects. And in the same way he has become alien to the world, because the world can no longer accept him on the new terms, Christ’s terms, by which he lives.

We should reflect upon ourselves when we hear such words and see such images. Paul was an enemy of Christ; Paul set out from Jerusalem to Damascus in order to annihilate His disciples as liars, as blasphemers, and on the way he met Christ face to face. At that moment Christ became his Lord, became his God, and there was nothing apart from Christ that mattered to him. His heart was vast enough, he was great enough to receive the message and to respond to it with all his being, all his life, all that would happen to him.

Indeed, for us, the story of the Crucifixion is a story which we have heard so often — most of us since our childhood, or at least when we were young. There was a moment when, with a child’s imagination, we responded with deep emotion, and then we became, as we all become, immune to this emotion — it has become a fact of our faith, it has ceased to be an event of our life … Saint Paul said in another passage that for him, Christ is all of his life; all, because if He was what He was — what could be put side by side with it? What could be compared? Think a moment, what would happen in someone whom you love, or you admire, fell victim to the violence, the murderous cruelty of other people because he stood for something that mattered to him more than life, perhaps your life, to save you, personally. Could you ever return to those things which caused his death? Could you, could any of us, play with life? Could we live foolishly? Could we choose evil, however we try to disguise it in one way or another? If we knew that because we had made this choice — perhaps a small choice, but a murderous one — a beloved person, or simply a person, had had to die because of it? A drunken driver is an example. But there are so many ways in which we are destructive of one another… And there are heroic ways in which people give their lives for others because the other one was foolish; not even so sinful as it appeared to him or her — just foolish! But this foolishness meant death.

Where do we stand? Can any one of us say earnestly the words which Paul spoke here, in this Epistle, or in another passage when he says that for him life is Christ and Christ is life, that he longs to die to be with Him, that life on earth is separation and that his only longing is to be reunited with Him? [Philippians I:21].

Let us reflect on this; these words of the Scriptures do not stand before us as an accusation, a condemnation, but they are a call; Paul says, ‘I know what it means to have discovered eternal life; I know what it means to have discovered Christ, to discover everything that in life that has a value in contrast to all the things which we serve slavishly. Discover them, he would say to us, go back into your soul, into your past, to the first moment when Christ entered into your life, into your heart, the moment of wonder, the moment of joy, the moment of liberation, and then live by it, leaving aside all that is dark, all that is deadly, lifeless, ugly! Choose for light, choose for life, choose for joy — all these things are contained in the Name of God and in the love of God in Christ.

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Lord warns us today of how difficult it is for a man who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God. Does it mean that the Kingdom of God is open only to destitute, to those who are materially poor, who lack everything on earth? No. The Kingdom of God is open to all who are not enslaved by possessions. When we read the first Beatitude, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven’, we are given a key to this saying: the poor in spirit are those who have understood that they possess nothing which is their own. We have been created as an act of God, loved into existence; we are offered by God communion with Him to which we have no rights. All we are, all we possess is not our own in the sense that we have not made ourselves, we did not create what is seemingly ours — every thing which we are and which we have is love, the love of God and the love of people, and we cannot possess anything because everything is a gift that escapes us the moment we want to have possession of it and say, “It is mine”.

On the other hand, the Kingdom of God is really the kingdom of those who are aware that they are infinitely rich because we can expect everything from love divine and from human love. We are rich because we possess nothing, we are rich because we are given all things; and so, it is difficult for one who imagines that he is rich in his own right to belong to that kingdom in which everything is a sign of love, and nothing can be possessed, as it were — taken away from others; because the moment we say that we possess something which is not given us either by God or by human care, we subtract it from the mystery of love.

On the other hand, the moment we cling to anything we become slaves of it. I remember when I was young, a man telling me: Don’t you understand that the moment you have taken a copper coin in your hand and are not prepared to open your hand to let it go, you have lost the use of a hand, the use of an arm, the use of your body, because all your attention will be concentrated on not losing this copper coin; the rest will be forgotten.

Whether we keep in our hand a copper coin, or whether we feel rich in so many other ways — intellectually, emotionally, materially is irrelevant — we are prisoners, we have lost the use of a limb, the use of our mind, the use of our heart; we can no longer be free, and the Kingdom of God is a kingdom of freedom.

On the other hand also, how difficult it is to one who has never lacked anything, who has always possessed more than he needs, to be aware of the poverty or the need of another: poverty — material, emotional or intellectual, or any other lack. It requires a great deal of understanding and sympathy, it requires from us that we should learn to be attentive to the movements of other people’s hearts and to their material needs in order to respond to them. One says in Russian ‘A satisfied person no longer understands a hungry one’; which of us can say that we are hungry in any respect? And this is why we do not understand the needs of people — of one another here, or of people beyond the confines of our congregation.

So, let us reflect on that; poverty does not mean destitution; it means freedom from enslavement to an illusion that we are self-sufficient, self-contained, the creator of what we are and what we possess. And also free from enslavement to what is given us to make husbandmen of God.

Let us reflect on this; because if we learn this, if we learn what Saint Paul said that whether he is rich, whether he is destitute, he is equally rich because his richness is in God and in the human love. Then we will be able, whether we possess material things or not, to be free of them, and to belong to God’s Kingdom which is a Kingdom of mutual love, or mutual solidarity, of compassion for one another, of giving to one another what we were given freely. Amen.