DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ST. JOHN, ARCHBISHOP OF SHANGHAI AND SAN FRANCISCO

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ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN WITNESS (USPS 412-260)
is published monthly by St. Nectarios American Orthodox Cathedral,
10300 Ashworth Avenue North, Seattle, Washington 98133-9410.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
OCW, 10300 Ashworth Ave. N., Seattle, WA. 98133-9410
Fr. Neketas S. Palassis, Editor Email: frneketas@stnectariospress.com
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JANUARY, 2005, VOL. XXXIX, NO. 1, (1544)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. THE LOST MILLENIUM
2. REPOSE OF MOTHER NECTARIA OF ST. NECTARIOS CATHEDRAL
3. SERMON OF METROPOLITAN PHILARET OF NEW YORK ON THE ENTRY OF THE MOST HOLY THEOTOKS INTO THE TEMPLE.
4. NEW TITLES FROM THE BOOK CENTER

If we are concerned with our salvation, there are many things the intellect can do in order to secure for us the blessed gift of humility. For example, it can recollect the sins we have committed in word, action and thought; and there are many other things which, reviewed in contemplation, contribute to our humility. True humility is also brought about by meditating daily on the achievements of our brethren, by extolling their natural superiorities and by comparing our gifts with theirs. When the intellect sees in this way how worthless we are and how far we fall short of the perfection of our brethren, we will regard ourselves as dust and ashes, and not as men but as some kind of cur, more defective in every aspect and lower than all men on earth.
-St. Hesychius the Priest

1. The Lost Millennium

By Stanley Casson

[The Atlantic Monthly, December 1931]

It is barely a generation since John Addington Symonds estimated the importance of Byzantine art in the following trenchant sentence: 'The so-called Romanesque and Byzantine styles were but the dotage of a second childhood fumbling with the methods and materials of an irrecoverable past.' That, indeed, was all he had to say on the subject. Dismissing its effete inspiration with the winged words and a distant roll of drums, he went on to consider the beauties of the Renaissance. And what he said has been said again and again by hundreds of honest folk.

I always knew that he was wrong; but life is short, and to explain to the deliberately unreceptive or to the devotedly prejudiced is all so much good time wasted. I have spent it instead scouring the museums of Europe for those precious relics of Byzantine art which he never troubled to look for; I have been to the great citadel itself, Byzantium the golden, and patiently searched for its hundred churches, content with a miraculously saved mosaic here or a lovely carved capital there. And I have been privileged to be the first infidel to excavate the soil of Stamboul itself, under the very shadow of St. Sophia, to find what I could of the broken fragments of those glowing centuries of Byzantine splendor. And it is all a heart-rending job. For the very thought that a thousand years of art have left hardly enough behind them to fill one museum is grim testimony to the destructive power of that barbarous virility which replaced the ancient stronghold of Constantinople with the warring states of Western Europe.

But when one has found the actualities of Byzantine art, the marvels of those fragile and intimate churches of Byzantium, the austere grace of her paintings, and the incredible delicacy of her jewelry, one is fortified against the vandal criticism of an Italomaniac. But ? and this is the mistake that so many of the now more vocal defenders of Byzantine art make ? defense is not here to be based on offense. To reinstate Byzantine art as the princess among the great periods that she deserves to be, one need take no other style of art into consideration. The claims of Byzantium are not made more strong by a denigration of Italy, of Persia, or of Islam. That is but to revive the disputes of old religions, to treat art as politics, to prostitute the compelling loveliness of a forgotten world. We can for once take the taste of our medieval ancestors as our guide; for they, illumined by their own achievements in Gothic or Romanesque or even early Renaissance, still searched and searched again for those priceless gems of Byzantine art which might come their way as imperial gifts, as Crusaders' loot, or as genuine purchase.

Such relics as these have now been brought together from the museums and the cathedrals of Europe into an exhibition of Byzantine art just opened in Paris-the very first of its kind. Without the predatory taste for the Byzantine which the western Barbarians of the Middle Ages possessed in so marked a quality, I doubt if this exhibition would ever have been held. For, as one of its organizers has rightly said: 'Our ancestors never missed an opportunity of acquiring an example of Byzantine art; and we can see that they were not mistaken in their choice.' Hommage aux barbares.

Seeing this exhibition as I have just done, I am fortified anew. For here, now that they are all brought together, the exquisite jewels of Byzantine taste recapture for a passing second the warmth and splendor of the most luxurious and exquisite period of history the world has ever seen. An hour in these quiet rooms in Paris, where so much is collected, and all the sour wit of Gibbon is sweetened. Here is no Decline and Fall; here is the very birth and flowering of a new and gracious and intimate art such as the world has never seen. Indeed, comparisons cannot be made. Byzantine art seems almost to have sprung fully armed from the head of Zeus. For it is Greek in its reserve, Greek in its decision, and Greek in its delicacy; and yet it owes no sort or kind of debt to Greek art at all. It is the Greek spirit working in a new way. It is-or at least Byzantine art of the tenth century is-a completely new contribution to that never-ceasing creative spirit which we call the art of this, that, or the other period.

What struck me here, as indeed it has always struck me in the contemplation of any masterpiece of Byzantine art, though never so forcibly before, is that the Byzantine artist is a master of whatever branch of art he adopts. He, like his ancient Greek progenitor, made into a work of art whatever he handled, so that the distinction into 'arts and crafts' becomes meaningless. To-day we live in a snobbish age, an age when artists are often the worst snobs of all. To them the 'crafts' or the 'minor arts' form a branch of the lower orders of creative inspiration to which they will not sink. As a result, industry has captured them and left the poor artist to earn a precarious livelihood with his 'easel pictures,' his statues, and his masterpieces. And precarious it is, for there are but few people who will buy them, while the whole world is waiting for art to be employed in the things of daily life or in the smaller adornments that give us a portable and more convenient form of expressing our artistic appreciation. Still, if the artists are determined to starve, that is no concern of mine.

Abolish this distinction of arts and crafts and the artist can be active wherever he wishes. And at Byzantium that is exactly what he did. Nothing was too small or too large for him. The same man could carve the lovely marble Madonna relief, eight feet high, that was found a few years ago below the old Palace of the Sultans at Stamboul, and with equal joy a small ivory box a few inches square. The painter of pictures could turn his hand to a small mosaic icon half a foot in length. The sculptor could cut gems and the architect make an inlaid pavement.

How far we are today from this creative freedom! What open snobs we have all become!

Seeing so much Byzantine art gathered in one place, I have gained certain impressions that I have never been able to arrive at before. For seeing the art of a thousand years piecemeal is an exercise in disjunctive absorption that only a fine synthetic brain can master. And I regret that I have a brain that is neither fine nor synthesizing.

I was struck first by the intimacy of Byzantine art. Just as its small and colored churches would warm the heart of the frostiest of worshipers, so its jewels and paintings and silks and ivories demand an instant attention from the most casual and convey an impression of immediate beauty to the most reserved mind. Like all great art, it needs no explanation: it arrives. But to one prepossessed by theories or prejudices it will fail to convey anything. Approach it simply and its answer will be simple.

Firstly its colors. The Byzantines were a subtle folk. They avoided the primary colors like the plague and they avoided subtle nuances as much. They were masters of selection. And they selected color in everything. In gems they were austere in their choice. Not a ruby or an emerald or a diamond will you see. They chose above all pale liquid blues-sapphirines and aquamarines. They seem to have had a passion for that strange sea blue that the ancient Greeks strove so often to describe. I have never seen any Byzantine jewel made of carnelian, or of amber, or of topaz. I think they thought such colors slightly vulgar, fit only for barbarians. But both in this exhibition and in all the museums and collections I have ever seen, two stones and two only are predominant - the sea-blue sapphire and dark green bloodstone, spotted with red. Here and there deep lapis lazuli or amethyst is used, but not often.

These same colors appear again and again in their paintings and mosaics. There is one painting in this exhibition of the Christ on the Cross, sent from Athens. Below the Cross is Mary mourning. Her tall, strange figure, as far removed from the manner of Italian art as Rubens from Cimabue, is of one color only, a dark and enraptured sea blue. And the rest of the picture is painted on a gold ground, glittering and vivid. The figure of Mary is the figure of Sorrow herself, unmoving, remote, inhuman. There is no appeal here, in the sense that emotion rushes to one's mind; this is the very transcendence of grief. Byzantine art is often called intellectual and inhuman, but here it seems far more human than emotional art in that its meaning cuts straight through the heavings of emotion and conveys the very Platonic Idea itself. Surréalisme if you will - immediate contact with the artist's mind. And all this is achieved by a strange color and a strange form. Art critics may rage, but it is formalism blending with realism.

Perhaps in Byzantine silks and tissues the blend of form and color is even more amazing. Think of a silk on which are lions and stags, odd and heraldic, and the only colors dark royal blue, turquoise, and two shades of cream. Or another in orange, tomato red, and white; or a third in blue, black, and purple-all alike in great lozenge designs with griffins and elephants and lions. Together these superb silks bring the court of Byzantium before my eyes ? that court which lives in the pages of Anna Comnena or in the dry manual De Cerimoniis of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.

Next, what impressed me most was the calm impersonality of Byzantine art in the sense that the personality of the maker himself is imperceptible. You can tell the difference between the good and the brilliant, between the able and the slick, between the firm hand and the weak. But there is no nonsense about detecting the sensitivity of the artist. All one can detect is his immense preoccupation with his task, his utter devotion to what he has to do, and his absolute integrity in doing it. Here is no artist who wants to convey his own character and ideas to you. Instead, he is the essential Greek, aiming at what all artists of genius always aim at-a complete satisfaction of their artistic intentions, no more. So worked the archaic Greeks, with never a thought for glory or recognition. That is why they hardly ever signed their works in archaic Greece and why the Byzantines never signed their work at all. You may search for signatures and all the fun that such things provide for the art critic, and at Byzantium you will search in vain. Romans signed their statues and their gems frequently enough. Romanesque and Gothic Frenchmen and Germans signed their statues as often as they could-Byzantines never. Byzantine artists spoke, in all probability, of the 'glory of God,' but I doubt if it worried them much! They carved or painted or wove because they loved to do so and because it was their proper profession. That is what I mean by integrity. Contrast it with the progression of the modern painter who starts signing his pictures as 'William Henry Smith,' later, perhaps, becomes better known as 'Henry Smith,' and in the full flush of glory ends up as SMITH, crudely daubed in a corner in an affected scrawl that all good critics recognize! Or, as with Whistler, the affectation can be even more advanced and he can dispense with a signature and merely paint a butterfly on the frame!

All this hocus-pocus is alien to a period when art forms part of the life of the time and artists are not segregated. Byzantines achieved a style that diverged but seldom into individual variations. The style was forged by generations of men of integrity and, once forged and refined, existed as a supreme standard to which men had to attain to be artists. As they attained it they altered it insensibly, and as time when on it changed in their hands as a world will swing inevitably on its axis away from or forward to the sun.

One can just detect the alternations of season, as it were, in the march of artistic production in Byzantium. In the fourth century you can see Roman art suddenly fade and die, to be replaced by a superb formalism, derived, I think , from those strange Syrian folk whose work we see at Palmyra; then for a century all was cold again and nothing stirred. With the building of St. Sophia came a second blaze of skill and genius, to be extinguished almost at once by the fearful assaults of external enemies and the withering blight of Iconoclasm. But the sun rose once more in the eighth and nighth centuries, and by the tenth Byzantine art touched heights of splendor that were never surpassed. The eleventh century and the twelfth saw the Empire a paradise for art and a blaze of wealth that poured in from all four quarters of the earth. Then in 1204, came the Crusaders and the envious Italians from Venice, with that archbrigand Enrico Dandolo. The Empire crashed, and her gold and jewels and paintings were scattered and burned and sold and bartered to every corner of Barbary-all in the name of Christ and the Holy Land, to which the Crusaders had forgotten to go. A century of darkness followed, with a series of French emperors as incompetent as they were illiterate. They passed, and Greeks again held their city, but it was impoverished and empty, ready only to fall a little later to the gathering vultures. But, in that brief renaissance, art grew and flourished anew, and Byzantine art of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is again a sunlit and vivid thing.

Vitality, then, is as strong as integrity with the Byzantine artist. He lives again and again, and his work is never the same. The commonest charge against Byzantine art is that it is repetitive, dull, and traditional, in the sense that there is no creation. To this there can be only one answer-that Byzantine art is perpetual creation, that it is variation within defined limits, and this is the severest test to which an art or an artist can ever be put. That was the secret of Greek art in ancient times. The endless repetition of Apollos and Aphrodites and the rest seems but dull repetition; and yet the greatness of art, as Polyclitus said, its most difficult stage for the artist, was when you came to the point of variation. That which made your Apollo differ from the Apollo of someone else was what decided whether you or he was the great artist. So with the Byzantines. Here are the Virgins, the Pantocrators, the Crucifixions, and the Saints, and in more secular art the great heraldic beasts and the intricate patterns, but the point wherein one saint or griffin differed from another was the point at which one artist could be identified as great and another as merely good.

Sometimes I read that Byzantine art is but a macédoine of various Oriental and some Occidental elements, a rehash of oddments garnered by a decadent and weary folk from the various lands of Asia and Europe into which their conquering arms had penetrated. This exhibition at Paris has taught me how far worse than a half truth this creed is, for it suggests the utter artistic sterility of the Byzantines.

Like all great art, Byzantine art drew inspiration from all sources. After all, early Greek art was a blend of Hittite, Assyrian, and Egyptian influences. But there is all the difference in the world between a blend which is a mere aggregation of elements and a blend which is a transformation into something new with a vitality of its own. Those who think that the accusation of being a 'blend' is derogative have the minds of grocers. They are thinking in terms of tea and tobacco. Byzantine art, like all great art, borrowed and blended and then moulded it all anew into a fresh creation. And behind the blending, though this is a point that critics mostly forget, was the mind that made the selection. To choose aright you have to have impeccable taste and wise judgment, and those are two precious qualities that make for great art. The swift draftsmanship of the Sassanian artist had the same appeal to the Byzantines that it has for us. The bright liveliness of the Hellenistic painter charmed Byzantine eyes-though it did not control their hands. Syrian austerity, and the ancient hieratic styles of the mighty monuments of Asia, Hittite and other, that still stood above ground, captured their fancy. Thus in their new synthesis we find austerity, freshness of color, and swift delineation faithfully renewed. The sweeping lines of a mosaic apse, the simple fall of drapery on a marble relief or an ivory box, and the massive strength of Byzantine sculptured animals show what were their inspiration. Yet there is no single work of art from Byzantium that one could for a single moment mistake for Sassanian, for Hittite, or for Hellenistic.

Seeing so much Byzantine art gathered together, I paused to think and to ask myself what particular emotions affected me. Strangely, I found them difficult to discover, or else so recondite as to be hard to identify. Yet there was no question that I was affected in some queer emotional way, and deeply affected. For there were works which drew my eye and held it by a fascination that I found it almost impossible to explain. I had some odd sense of exhilaration, some feeling of profound satisfaction that I could not analyze. Yet there was nothing overt in these lovely things that produced an immediate response with which I was familiar. There were none of the normal reactions: I did not feel myself charmed, delighted, envious, or overwhelmed-the conventional impressions which one derives from a group of masterpieces. There was something remote about these jewels and sculptures and paintings and silks which stirred something remote and unfamiliar in myself. I felt that I had been put in touch with a world that was not this world and yet not another, with something that mostly lies dormant in our ordinary experience. It is no use to explain it all by a facile belief in the 'hieratic' qualities of Byzantinism; Byzantine art may be 'transcendental' for all I know, but unfortunately I have never been able to understand what this word means. Sympathetic friends tell me that it implies a background of mysticism, which is but to explain the obscure by the incomprehensible.

Below it all, I think, really lies the fact that Byzantine art satisfies more than most forms of art because it is at once simple, intimate, and unreal. It reflects nothing, interprets nothing, and suggests nothing that is not more or less explicit. My emotional reactions to it are, simply enough, the satisfaction of emotions rather than their awaking. Byzantine art gives rather than takes. That is why I went away so profoundly refreshed. For an art that requires a whole system of responses from the observer is a troublesome art. It presupposes an educated public, and, in consequence, is simply the old snobbery all over again. And worse, it breeds art critics who act as midwives to the ignorant. As soon as art has reached the stage where it needs all this paraphernalia and all these high priests, it may as well shut up shop and produce merely for the delectation of artists. Byzantine art does nothing of the kind. It is understandable at once by the simple-minded peasant and by the emperor's retinue. Byzantium was, with all its courts and its glory, completely democratic. Emperors may have been half divine, they may have had the authority of a Pope and the despotism of the Medicis, but at any moment the populace of Constantinople was ready to hurl them from their thrones and replace them by a shepherd or a monk or a plain soldier. The history of the Empire is the history of democratic Athens all over again, with the same meteoric rises and falls of great men. And Byzantine art has that same democratic spirit. Greek blood and Greek mind do not change in a few thousand years.

Again I thank heaven that the art critics have not got at Byzantine art. There is no scope for their parrot talk of 'linear rhythm,' 'tactile values,' 'significant form,' 'life-communicating qualities,' and all the rest of the stock in trade. What a balderdash it all is, to be sure! A Byzantine ivory and a Byzantine cloisonné plaque of gold are just glorious creations, designed with the intention of conveying an impression of splendor and calm beauty. And there is a hint behind so many of them of the artist's desire to make you think how splendid he was to do such good work. Like Benvenuto Cellini, he seems to be trying all the time to show you that he was a fine artist, you a person of taste, and the work a thing of joy which pleased him, should please you, and will remain to please others. For every good artist must be proud, though that is no excuse for his being a snob.

Cellini is relegated to a lower order of artists by many discerning folk just because he talked too much about what he did and was obviously delighted with his own work. Nowadays the artist, having done his masterpiece, leaves the talking to the critics and is too proud to pretend that he is pleased with what he has done. He is expected to stand apart on a cloud like a minor Creator, with a take-it-or-leave-it expression on his divine brows. But Cellini produced his masterpiece, explained all about it, told you it was first-rate, and added that you were a fool if you couldn't see it-which is a very different thing from withdrawing from the plebeian crowd and fitting on a halo of gilded snobbery. Cellini, I think, was the greatest sculptor of the Renaissance after Michelangelo, not an effete follower of others generated at the fag-end of the High Period, as he is so often made out to be.

And Byzantines, I am sure, were of the stamp of Cellini. They worked with passion and joy, and, as a result, never produced mediocre works. The standard of all Byzantine art before the fall of Constantinople in 1453 is astonishingly high. They had the finger skill of the Chinese and the Japanese and a capacity of design worthy only of the ancient Greeks. What a blend that can be their art will show you. Imagine an onyx plate (which I have just seen in Paris) in the centre of which is a gold circular cloisonné plaque. That plaque is not more than an inch and a quarter in diameter, and yet the scene depicted on it is the 'Last Supper.' Just think what intricate work went to its making, for the designing of every one of the figures at the table in a thin strip of gold, the hollows filled with different-colored enamels! No one but an Oriental could do it to-day. And yet the same artists could carve the great figures of emperors in purple porphyry which have survived the destruction of the Imperial City. The same men made the colored marble revetments which enclose the entire interior of St. Sophia or St. Mark's at Venice. It is this refusal to despise small-scale work which marks the Byzantine as a true artist, devoid of pride. For the true artist sees art in whatever he handles. Such were the Greeks of ancient times and the Greeks of medieval times.

Today we are more inclined than we used to be to give Byzantine art its due place in the history of art. But this reinstatement has produced the inevitable exaggeration. Defenders of Byzantine art are often as ridiculous as its opponents. Those who cannot decide between the two should go to the fountainhead itself and examine dispassionately the quiet genius of Byzantine art, which seems to derive an added calm from the fact that it was generated in a turbulent and violent world.

2. REPOSE OF MOTHER NECTARIA OF ST. NECTARIOS CATHEDRAL

"Delight Thyself in the Lord, and He will Give Thee the Askings of Thy Heart"*

On December 2/15, 2004, Mother Nectaria (Lebo) reposed in the Lord at the age of 59, by God's permission, of pancreatic cancer. Mother Nectaria had been tonsured into the Great Angelic Schema on November 7/20, less than one month before her repose. One year ago at this time Mother Nectaria (then Laura) and her spouse Gregory (then Robert) had never heard of the Holy Orthodox Church. However, with all their hearts and for many years they had searched to find God and the correct way to love, glorify and serve Him. Having been raised Lutheran/Methodist, their lifelong search for the Truth lead them to many other types of Protestantism, always to feel inside that their thirst was never quenched and that their souls never felt truly united to our Saviour. From her childhood, M. Nectaria loved the Holy Scriptures and studied them ardently. Her favorite verse that she held tightly in her mind and heart and called out often to our Saviour was, "Create in me a clean heart O God, and renew a right spirit within me." (Psalm 50) With the wisdom that is naturally implanted in man, she grasped that God has given us teachers to come to know Him-Holy Scripture and the beautiful world that He created. With fervent love and ardent longing she spent much of her time pursuing after God through these two pathways, and crying out noetically with the Psalmist David, "My soul thirsted for God, the mighty, the living; when shall I come, and appear before the face of God?" Those who knew "Laura" all those years saw perhaps a person who had a drive to "live on the edge," what would be called "an adventurous spirit." Climbing mountains, motorcycle riding at high speeds and for long distances, rollerblading with her grandchildren, and loving to be outdoors, were truly some of her favorite things to do. But for her, who sought for God without yet having the guidance of the Holy Church, her love to be in nature was a way for her to try and get past what is hurtful, mundane, and inexplicable in life and try to find, in any way possible, the Creator, Who is evidently Eternal, Loving, and beyond the mind and thought of man. Her mind and her heart always turned to God, she was as a voice crying out in the wilderness of this sinful and empty world, "Dear God, I want to love You with my whole being, please show me how!" On Sept. 22, 2002, the poignant words of her journal entry read, "Stopped planning Mom's funeral, started planning my own." She had found out that she had pancreatic cancer, with a 4% chance of surviving, a couple of weeks after her mother died. She started chemotherapy treatments and for about a year and a half her condition was somewhat stable. She didn't want to die, but she knew it wasn't that she feared death; she knew in her heart that she wasn't yet in the arms of Him Whom she sought. In December of 2003, an old friend who had converted to Orthodoxy asked them to attend a service. They left the church feeling that finally, after a lifetime of feeling unfulfilled, there was hope. They returned to their home in Washington State and opened the yellow pages. "St. Nectarios American Orthodox Church" seemed to leap out at them. That name seemed familiar and Laura then remembered that several months previously someone in a Lutheran church they were attending had given them a little piece of paper with the name of a bookstore on it. She ran and found it, and the next morning, Jan 2 n.s., at 10:00 am they called St. Nectarios Church and Bookstore and asked if they could visit.

In looking back, it is evident that our loving God, Who desires that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the Truth, seems to have provided that her cancer go into remission just long enough for her to find the True Church. Another moving act of God's providence is that in October of 2003 the couple had bought a condominium in Seattle which was still under construction. Their purpose at the time in buying this condo was to be close to her doctors, but they often reflected in later months how, unbeknownst to them, God had providentially provided for them to be only 10 minutes away from St. Nectarios Church, where they had found their true home and spiritual hospital. Truly, in Mother Nectaria's last days, when she could no longer leave her apartment due to weakness, Metropolitan Moses, and Frs. Neketas and Ihnat were able to come and read prayers and bring her frequent Holy Communion, which wouldn't have been as possible had they lived far from the Church. Gregory and Nectaria became catechumens shortly after their first visit, and they were baptized in May 2004. They immediately embraced all the beauty of Holy Orthodoxy with the fervour of those who have been thirsting in the desert and have now found the fountain of living waters. In July, during a visit to the Convent of the Meeting of the Lord in which they had come to help the sisters with some outdoor work, Nectaria heard about the repose of the mother of one of the novices at Holy Nativity Convent. Mother Rebecca-Xenia also had pancreatic cancer, and before she reposed, had asked to be tonsured into the Great Angelic Schema. Realizing in the depths of her soul what an unfathomable blessing it is to receive this "second Baptism," and to be even more fully united to our Bridegroom Christ, the seed was planted in Mother Nectaria to also seek after this before her repose. Choosing a week between her chemotherapy treatments, she and Gregory made a pilgrimage to the Monastery and Convent in Boston, which then sealed for both of them their desire for monasticism. Upon returning, Mother Nectaria, in amazement and deep gratitude, related to the sisters in Stanwood how one day she had decided to go for a walk around the Convent in Boston. Right at that moment, one of the sisters called out to her, "Aren't you coming with us?" and she inquired, "Where are you going?" "Over to the cemetery." Mother Nectaria went with them, and it was only upon arriving that she realized that our Saviour had brought her to the graveside of Mother Rebecca-Xenia on the one year anniversary of her repose. M. Nectaria wept and wept at the profundity of that moment, knowing in her heart that God had arranged it. The seed that Mother Rebecca's example had sown in her heart was now going to blossom forth and she too would be "planted in the house of the Lord" with the Holy Angelic Schema.

Upon returning to Seattle, with the full support of her loving husband, plans started to be made for Nectaria's tonsure, who requested to retain St. Nectarios as her Patron Saint. Knowing the full gravity of this decision, their spiritual father, Metropolitan Moses, explained to them on five separate occasions that what they were asking would mean that their marriage would be dissolved, that they were both taking up a life of chastity, and should M. Nectaria miraculously get well, she would join her sisters in one of the Convents. The couple were firm and united in their resolution that at this time in their lives, the possibility to receive this gift and grace of God far surpassed any earthly enjoyments or consolations. Even up until the night before the tonsure it was thought that the service would have to take place in her home, but M. Nectaria once again showed the strength of her spirit and wanted it to be in church. She was tonsured at St. Nectarios Cathedral, by Metropolitan Moses, on the eve of the Feast of the Holy Archangels, two days before the Feastday of St. Nectarios. Everyone in attendance made the same observation, "Mother Nectaria's face was radiant!" Her own feelings in the ensuing month were, "I am the most blessed person on earth. What happened to me Saturday....it was the happiest day of my life. I don't know how all of this-finding the True Church and being surrounded by such love and then receiving the tonsure--could happen to such a sinner, but I know it's an incredible gift. It feels so right, it fits, it's exactly where I belong even though I'm so unworthy. Even with the cancer and the pain, I just feel so much peace inside of me, so overwhelmed with joy and gratefulness. " She had experienced that grace of the Tonsure, that when the Prodigal son or daughter returns home, the Heavenly Father runs out to embrace them, falls on their neck and bestows on them the best garment, rejoicing with all the Angelic orders. Mother Nectaria went peacefully to her Bridegroom Christ less than a month after her tonsure, on Dec. 2/15 at 5 minutes to Midnight. She was surrounded by the love of her monastic sisters, the clergy and parishioners of St. Nectarios, her brother in Christ Gregory, and four daughters, six grandchildren and a brother and nephew whom she also ardently loved. She was heroic and martyric in her sufferings and single-hearted in her love for our Saviour. Those who seek Him find grace. Mother Nectaria found all that her heart longed for, and even more, because that which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, God has prepared for those who love Him.

*From Psalm 36



Footnote: Throughout the centuries in the Church's history, many pious couples have mutually agreed to embrace the monastic tonsure, thereby becoming brother and sister in Christ. For edifying examples of this, see the Lives of Ss Andronicus and Athanasia (Oct 9), Ss Xenophon and Maria (Jan. 26), and Ss Peter-David and Febronia-Euphrosyne (June 25), who are revered as the Patron Saints of those newly-wed. Likewise, to receive the monastic tonsure later in life, or on one's deathbed is also a tradition with much precedent. Many pious Emperors and Empresses chose to meet the Sovereign of All clothed in the humility and poverty of monasticism, rather than in the royal purple. The Synodicon read on Orthodoxy Sunday (see True Vine, issue 27/28, pp 77-80) exclaims "Eternal Memory" to many such sovereigns of the Byzantine Empire. Countless other examples can be found, for instance in the Life of St. Alexander Nevsky, the Great Prince of Russia, we read: "..perceiving that his end was not far off, he desired to be tonsured a monk." Also, the venerable King of Serbia, Stefan Nemanja, after strengthening Orthodoxy throughout his realm, followed the example of his son, St. Sava, and was tonsured into monasticsm, along with his wife. He is known in the church as St. Symeon the Myrrh-gusher and is commemorated on Feb. 13.

3. HOMILY OF METROPOLITAN PHILARET OF NYC, OF BLESSED MEMORY AT THE ALL-NIGHT VIGIL OF THE ENTRY OF THE MOST HOLY THEOTOKOS INTO THE TEMPLE

translated by Dimitra Frost

The Holy Church now celebrates one of her great feasts -- a radiant and joyous event in the life of the Church. This is the entry into the temple of the Most-Blessed Virgin Mary, when her holy and righteous parents brought her into the holy temple when -Vie was still quite a three-year-old little Maid, in order to dedicate Her there to God according to the promise that they had given. Many, of course, know in what the essence of this feast consists.

I will point out some details, which are perhaps not known to all: First, when they brought Her into the temple, there also went with her maidens, little girls, with candles, accompanying Her with the chanting of Psalms, so that there went through the streets of Jerusalem a ceremonial procession, to which doubtless also other people joined. Finally, when they came to the temple of God, the Chief Priest, Zacharias, himself went out to meet them, knowing about the promise of the righteous parents. But here all were struck by the fact that -- while he was still at the top of the steps of the temple, and the steps were many, and they were tall -- the holy and pure Child, without any support, all on her own, climbed up all the steps. And then, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, the chief priest Zacharias did that which at [any] other time he never would have done: he brought the maiden Mary into the Holy of Holies. Now one must bear in mind that a person could not approach the Holy of Holies. Even the priests could not enter therein. And only one day a year, on the so-called day of atonement, did the chief priest enter with sacrificial blood, as though offering sacrifice on behalf of the whole people. But this was not the day of atonement; on this day the Chief Priest could not go into the Holy of Holies, but, illumined by the Holy Spirit, he went in -- and he brought therein the Maiden Mary, and She, as tradition says, remaining in the temple continually, stayed in the Holy of Holies and there an Angel brought Her food and conversed with Her. Therefore the holy fathers said that when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Her -- an already nearly grown young woman -- in Nazareth with the word of the annunciation, not the very appearance of an angel frightened or disturbed her. She was used to converting with angels -- otherwise it was an unusual greeting with which the heavenly Messenger addressed her.

And so, after her ceremonial entrance, the Virgin Mary lived at the temple, the temple was Her home. But one must bear in mind that then there was only one (temple], the temple of the True God in the city of Jerusalem. Those who lived in Jerusalem, of course, had the opportunity to visit the temple often; but those who lived on the outskirts of the Holy Land, Palestine, came to the temple only from time to time, mainly, as say tradition and the Sacred scriptures, on the days of the great feasts: Pascha and Pentecost. (There are of course other feast days as well.) But we, who live in the New Testament and are being saved in the New Testament Church, are concerned with the fact that, as you all know, we have many temples of the True God. Moreover, our temples, as the holy fathers say, in their grace and holiness are higher that the Old Testament temple, for there all were prefigurings, related to the future, while here the grace of God and the Truth Himself, rests on the throne and is communicated to all who reverently are prevent and with faith pray in the temple of God. But do we visit our temples zealously enough? How often do we hear about the fact that people: rarely go to church, especially in the evening; "there is no time," others are afraid -- "it is terrible to go." But it is bitter and sorrowful to hear these excuses! Time and again right in this holy temple [I have heard] about the fact that many of those very people who say that they are afraid to go into the temple are at dances, theaters, and other establishments of entertainment...

What has become of the (Russian) Orthodox people in this regard? I shall detain your for a few more minutes and pass on to you a story about how a certain believing man was present at a Divine Service in Soviet Russia. Those who belonged to the Catacomb, secret Church became convinced of his trustworthiness and invited him to their place, to Vespers. The service was like this: he comes to quite a large, furnished room; it is full of young people -- they are all sitting down, conversing quietly... A little later a man dressed in secular working clothes comes in. A very radiant face of noble lines; they speak quietly to the guest: This is our Batiushka. Quietly and reverently all went up to him to get a blessing, he reverently and unhurriedly blesses, then everyone sat down again in their places, having placed books in front of him; in these books was the Divine Office of Vespers. The young people put, on a phonograph record that played so that people on the outside would think that the young people were having a party and dancing. The priest pronounced the last part of his prayer audibly, they answered him softly, and gradually, under the sounds of worldly music, they finished serving Vespers. They asked him to the liturgy, too, but they said that one could not serve the liturgy that way -- it would in the church. They brought him to the outskirts of town, by outward appearances to some sort of completely deserted, torn down barn, in which, inside, everything was arranged as in a church. And there they had the liturgy. He says that one must see how they prayed at this liturgy, all these unfortunate people. Now here one may also say that the deeper the affliction, the closer is God. We here are lazy and do not go to God's temple, where there is no danger at all, while there people at terrible risk go and pray to God. This man asked one of these young people, "Aren't you afraid? There have been incidents where they have uncovered such "Catacomb Christians" -- and there followed the most cruel punitive measures!" They calmly answered him, we are not afraid of anything; faith is dearer for us than everything. We are prepared to die for the Lord; neither unpleasantnesses, nor deprivations, nor oppressions, nor tortures, nor death frighten us -- nothing terrifies us. But the Lord keeps us."

But we, here -- living in freedom and having the opportunity to go to the temples of God as often we please -- regrettably, we do not take advantage of this mercy of God as we ought. Here we are today: a great feast, however, are there many people here in the temple? I repeat- if it's to go to a place of entertainment, then there will be a far more people there than here... But the Mother of God lived in the temple of God and this is our lesson, that parents and educators and all on whose conscience the upbringing of children lies, before all else accustom them to the temple of God. Bishop Theophan the Recluse very profoundly and touchingly used to talk about the fact that everything to do with the church is akin to the essence of a child's soul, it quickly becomes used to it [church] and clings to it. And blessed is that child who from his childhood continues to visit the temple of God, for here he will receive such a spiritual "seasoning", such spiritual wealth as he will receive in no other place. Therefore, brothers, we must not only go to God's temple ourselves, but 4..... and concern ourselves that our children be there as often as possible. I knew a fine family, where the children used to get up for the early liturgy earlier than their parents, and pressed them to bring them to church quickly. And this was not in the "good old days," but in most recent years, after the revolution we had, in the Par East.

Once more I say: Blessed is that child who has the opportunity in his childhood years to receive as many holy impressions, grace-filled sanctifications, and illuminations in the temple of God as possible. The house of God is the house of prayer; in it the Lord, by His grace, is closer to people than anywhere else; therefore we ought to take pains ourselves in going to church, and continually accustom our successors, our children, to this. Amen.

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