TONIGHTS PRESANCTIFIED LITURGY IS CANCELED DUE TO SNOWY CONDITIONS!
ON SUNDAY, MARCH 26, 2017 AT 1:30 P.M. WE WILL BE MARCHING IN THE GREEK INDEPENDENT DAY PARADE. PLEASE JOIN US AGAIN THIS YEAR IN MAKING ANOTHER GOOD SHOWING. MORE INFORMATION TO FOLLOW SHORTLY.
IF YOU HAVE NOT AS OF YET SENT IN YOUR 2017 STEWARDSHIP PLEASE DO THAT TODAY!
I HAVE BEEN ASKED BY HIS EMINENCE ARCHBISHOP DEMETRIOS TO REACH OUT TO OUR PARISHIONERS IN HOPES OF RAISING AN OFFERING FOR THE REBUILDING OF ST. NICHOLAS. PLEASE BE AS GENEROUS AS YOU CAN IN YOUR OFFERING FOR THIS VERY IMPORTANT REBUILDING EFFORT OF OUR GREEK ORTHODOX ARCHDIOCESE AND OUR FAITH.
WE HAVE RECEIVED SO FAR ALMOST $8,000. PLEASE CONTINUE TO SEND YOUR DONATION TO ST. JOHN'S SO WE CAN REACH OUR GOAL OF $10,000.
Distorted History!
While at home last week I had the pleasure of watching a movie entitled “The Water Diviner.” The lead actor was Russell Crowe and supporting actor Olga Kurylenko. The story begins in Australia, where Russell Crowe was a farmer with a wife and three boys. It was enthralling and captivating, since the movie took place in both Australia and Turkey. However, it had little resemblance to the history that Greeks and Turks went through during that period. Rewriting history is once again in vogue with political pressure from those who feel it is their duty to defend what is indefensible.
According to Peter Travers’ film review, “Crowe also takes the lead role, Joshua Connor, an Australian farmer who treks to Turkey four years after the World War I battles at Gallipoli to find his three MIA sons. It was the dying wish of his wife, Eliza (Jacqueline McKenzie), to bring the boys home, even if just for burial on their farm.” The storyline was taken from the true story about the Battle of Gallipoli during World War I.
The movie was every touching and moving, but the entire scenario was slanted and biased toward the Turks. The Turks are seen as very aristocratic, sophisticated, and compassionate. On the other hand, when Greeks appear in a few scenes they are portrayed as barbarians, and marauders who kill the Turkish people of the countryside for no reason. This is so far from the truth that it is almost laughable, if it was not so serious.
For almost five hundred years the Greeks were subjugated, dominated, and killed by the compassionate characters seen on the screen. Somehow the truth was distorted and surmounted by a fallacy, and we are lead to believe that Greeks were the invading force killing every Turk that gets in their way. I know that most of you know what followed historically between 1918 and 1921, “the Great Catastrophe.” Need I say more!
Likewise a great and humbled monk of Mount Athos was faced with outside forces trying to distort the practice of the Eastern Orthodox Monastics. In the 14th Century a monk named St. Gregory Palamas encountered the antithesis of his teaching and practices labeling him a heretic. This humble monk later became the Archbishop of Thessaloniki, Greece, and he fought to defend the distortions and false teachings that were running rampant in the 14th Century caused by Barlaam.
Furthermore, St. Gregory’s nemesis was a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy who claimed that the practice of the hesychastic fathers was heretical. Barlaam based his theology on the education he received in Western Scholasticism in Calabria, Italy. He was Greek by birth, became a monk and decided to travel to Mount Athos the time that St. Gregory was there. Barlaam also defended the practice of reciting the Creed with the Filioque (i.e., double procession of the Holy Spirit) in it. Along with this Barlaam fought against contemplative pray that leads to a vision of the “Uncreated Light” that monks experienced during the repetition of the Jesus Prayer.
Moreover, one of the dangers Barlaam saw in practicing the Jesus Prayer was seeing the “Uncreated Light” of God. Barlaam believed that the hesychasts doctrine of the “Uncreated Light” was polytheistic in nature, since God contained two different eternal substances, a visible and invisible. St. Gregory’s reply to Barlaam’s accusation leads St. Gregory to define the difference between of God’s essence and energy. St. Gregory put to pen his most important work entitled, “Triads in defense of the Holy Hesychasts.” There he make the distinction between the essence of God that can never be known and is always unseen by us, and God’s uncreated energies, which are God Himself, that permeate all things and can be directly experienced and seen by man in the form of deifying grace.
Finally, so the practice of contemplative prayer that leads to the vision of the “Uncreated Light” (energy of God) can be perceived and understood as part of God Himself, but not His essence which we can never be known to us. Distortions and falsity of what is real has been going on forever, but it takes people to stand up and speak the truth in defense of it. Those who have no idea about the past will eventually repeat the mistakes made there. So that is why it is so very important to study and read who and where we came from. The movie, “The Water Diviner” truly misleads the viewer into believing that events happened as they portrayed them. Meanwhile, those who have no idea about it are left with a distorted history of the events that took place almost a hundred years ago. So what will and have they done to the “Greatest Story Ever Told?” I fear to ask. Amen!
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