After His glorious Resurrection, Jesus Christ gave authority to his disciples to forgive sins (John 20:23). This grace has been preserved by the Church through the unbroken link of Apostolic Succession, and is maintained in our own days through the priesthood.
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If you think about it, there is nothing we can be more certain about than the fact the we are aware of our own existence, that we have our own first person perspective, that we have feelings and we are aware that we have these feelings, or that there is a certain “inner feel”, a “me-ness” about us. The vast majority of people believe that this is due to our soul; indeed this seems very obvious to most of us, it is “primordial data”.
The previous articles (Part 1 and Part 2) discussed why we pray, what prayer is, when we pray and where we should pray, all important practical questions for living in an Orthodox Christian manner. This article deals with how we should pray, and goes very briefly into certain ways to make our prayer more effective.
The previous article discussed what prayer is and why we pray. Now we turn to when and where we should pray, both important practical questions for living in an Orthodox Christian manner. Again, this article will draw heavily from the Church Fathers and Saints.
So much could be said about this topic. This article will start off by answering a couple of basic questions about prayer in order to get the ball rolling.
Just a short disclaimer here, this article doesn’t come from some great authority on prayer and the ascetic struggle. It comes from a struggling student. However, I will quote from real experts, saints who lived the words of St Paul to “pray unceasingly” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). We had a question from a reader on the previous week’s article about the warfare and the violence in the Old Testament. If you have any questions about any of the articles or any questions about Orthodoxy in general, go to the “Contact” section of the website and we’ll do our best to provide you with an answer from the author of the article. This can also be done anonymously, and the response will be in an article like this one. Personal questions should, first and foremost, be put before a spiritual father and not a university Orthodox fellowship.
This second article on warfare and Orthodoxy plans to focus on the warfare that every baptised Orthodox Christian is called to engage in, the spiritual warfare. Many great books have been written on this very subject, and this author would recommend the four volumes of the Evergetinos, Unseen Warfare by St Theophan the Recluse, and The Field and The Arena by St Ignatius Brianchaninov. These provide step by step methods by which we can start to take our spiritual lives seriously and engage in spiritual exercise. First among these books is the Ladder of Divine Ascent of St John Climacus, which is traditionally read during Great Lent. What follows is but a brief summary of the idea of spiritual warfare.
The Orthodox Church has a very complicated relationship with warfare. On the one hand is the spiritual warfare we must all engage in to fight our passions, knowing that “the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). On the other are the battles to the death which have been around since time immemorial. This is the warfare that we read about in history books and see on our television screens in Syria at this moment.
This passage, given below, describes an encounter between Christ and two men who were travelling to the town of Emmaus (possibly derived from the Semitic word for “hot-spring”). One, Clopas or Cleopas is named, and it is traditionally understood that the unnamed man was St Luke the Evangelist himself. This article will answer a few questions which people may have about this passage.
St John of Damascus was born in 675 or 676 in Damascus to a family of civil servants. His father and grandfather were notable administrators in the Muslim court at that time and it is possible that St John also occupied this role for a time. Brought up with a Hellenic education as well as one in the culture of the Muslim Caliphate, St John used both in the service of Christ. The first was used to defend the veneration of icons when he was a monk at the Mar Saba Monastery near Jerusalem, and the second used to critique and highlight the inconsistencies within Islam. He reposed in the Lord in the year 749 at the Mar Saba Monastery.
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