Recently in Orthodoxy Category

Shot to death in his own Moscow church:

A Russian Orthodox priest known for his outspoken criticism of Islam and attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity has been assassinated in his Moscow church.

A masked gunman shot Father Daniil Sysoyev in the head and chest after asking for him by name, police said. The choirmaster, Vladimir Strelbinsky, was seriously wounded in the attack at St Thomas Church in southern Moscow.

Father Daniil, 35, died of his wounds in hospital late last night. A Russian newspaper reported that he had recently told its journalists of 14 death threats by telephone and e-mail, which he had received as a result of his work among Muslim migrants from former Soviet republics.

"They've threatened to cut my head off 14 times," the priest told Komsomolskaya Pravda, adding that the Federal Security Service had contacted him last year after uncovering a plot to murder him.

He claimed to have christened 80 Muslims, "among them Tatars, Uzbeks, Chechens and Dagestanis". He said that other priests were unwilling to follow his lead because "they are afraid of revenge from the Muslim world".

But that doesn't mean he was killed by Muslims. More:

Father Daniil also had enemies among Russian nationalist groups and admirers of Joseph Stalin, whom he criticised on his blog for ignoring the murders of innocent people. The priest also made enemies among radical Russian pagans for his efforts to persuade people to leave religious cults.

Whoever his killer or killers, this priest almost certainly died a martyr for the Christian faith. RIP.

National Geographic has a report from Mount Athos, the Orthodox monastic redoubt in Greece. The story is lovely, but the photographs are stunning, and well worth a look. Excerpt from the text:

For better or for worse, the monastic brotherhood consists of men who finally cannot help but be who they are, fleshed out beneath their robes. Some are independent by nature and opt to live on their own in countryside cells. Some are small-minded--and indeed, as one monk says, "monastery life can be absolutely consumed with pettiness." However, the very best of them do not merely radiate goodwill but seek out where it's most needed. Father Makarios of the Marouda cell near Karyes is such a man, freely bestowing on strangers his spare coat, his spare room, all of the money in his pocket. "With real faith," the 58-year-old monk with animated green eyes says, "you have freedom. You have love."

I was so pleased to learn from this story that after a long 20th century decline, novices are once again flocking to Athos. I hope to visit one day. If any readers of this blog have made a pilgrimage there, please share with us all what it was like.

(H/T: Reader James)

John Kass pays tribute in the Chicago Tribune to Father Bill Chiganos, a Greek Orthodox priest celebrating his 50th year of service to the same parish. The years weren't always easy, and there were a few times when Father Bill nearly left the priesthood. Here's one of them:

"I walked the halls at Mayo Clinic at 3 a.m. and said, 'Hey, I'm a priest. Lord, why don't you give me a break? It's our daughter. Can't you do something?' And I was angry, and after she died, I became a little bitter. But it's part of the process. You go through all these emotions. Did it help me? I would later meet people in their own suffering. You don't give them theology when they're suffering. And then they would say, 'You know how it is, Father.' And I would say, 'Now I understand, Lord. Why should I complain? You gave your only son.' "

He and his wife, Presvytera Effie have three other children and 12 grandchildren.

"She's my caregiver," he said of Effie. "A few years ago, I had to replace a heart valve. Then it was prostate cancer. Now it's leukemia. I'm dead without her. And over the years, I sometimes feel I've abused time with her, too. That I should have spent more time with her and my kids. I didn't see their Little League games, and so on. But there are two sides to the coin.

"There has been so much joy here at Holy Apostles, I just can't leave."

You don't give them theology when they are suffering. Wise, that.

Immediately after 9/11, some Lebanese Maronite Christians I interviewed feared that they would be dragged into any Muslim-bashing that might come about because they're Arabs, and many people don't understand that not all Arabs are Muslims. I thought about them just now when I read this story from Florida:

A Marine reservist is facing charges after police said he attacked a priest visiting from Greece who he believed was a terrorist.

Police said that Lance Cpl. Jasen D. Bruce, 28, hit 29-year-old Alexios Marakis in the head with a tire iron, then chased him for three blocks.

According to reports, the incident happened when Marakis, who was visiting from Crete and speaks only limited English, got lost near a Channelside apartment complex after performing the blessing of another priest.

Police said Marakis drove into a garage and tried to ask Bruce for help, but that he was instead attacked. Bruce then called 911 during the ordeal and told the operator an Arabic man was trying to rob him, the report said.

Bruce said he was going to take the priest into custody, police said. When officers arrived, they said Bruce told them the priest was a terrorist.

Had Father Alexios really been a Muslim, his (alleged) attacker would have been merely wicked. But it turns out the dude's not only wicked, he's an idiot too.

UPDATE: Ruh-roh! Jasen, who is now implausibly and despicably claiming that the priest tried to sexually assault him, might have been a little on edge about that sort of thing because some beefcake photos of him have turned up on Mad About the Boys, a gay-oriented site (he's not naked, but this isn't really safe for work). To be fair, he might not have known these shots were going to be licensed to a gay site ... but the story does get curioser and curioser.

Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church (sort of like our Archbishop of Canterbury -- he's the figurehead, but he has no local jurisdiction, as the Pope does for Catholics), has long been called the "Green Patriarch" for his commitment to the environment. The other day, he published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about what our commitment to the earth should entail. Excerpt:

Climate change, pollution and the exploitation of our natural resources are commonly seen as the domain not of priests but rather of politicians, scientists, technocrats or interest groups organized by concerned citizens. What does preserving the planet have to do with saving the soul?

A lot, as it turns out. For if life is sacred, so is the entire web that sustains it. Some of those connections--the effects of overharvesting on the fish populations of the North Atlantic, for example--we understand very well. Others, such as the long-term health impacts of industrialization, we understand less well. But no one doubts that there is a connection and balance among all things animate and inanimate on this third planet from the Sun, and that there is a cost or benefit whenever we tamper with that balance.

Moreover, just as God is indivisible, so too is our global environment. The molecules of water that comprise the great North Atlantic are neither European nor American. The particles of atmosphere above the United Kingdom are neither Labour nor Tory. There can be no double vision, no dualistic worldview. Faith communities and nonbelievers alike must focus on the common issue of the survival of our planet. The natural environment unites us in ways that transcend doctrinal differences.

Not all Orthodox agree. From one priest's criticism:

As an Orthodox theologian, Patriarch Bartholomew knows that the human heart seeks not abstract unity but personal communion, not bureaucracy but communion, not the tyranny of sin but true and lasting freedom. In Orthodox theological terms all of this rests in the Most Holy Trinity itself although not on the level of ousia, that is, through the shared divine nature, but by the hypostasis, that is the union of Divine Persons--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Whether in the Holy Trinity or in the human family, personal communion is radically different then the union possessed by "molecules of water" or by "particles of atmosphere." The union of the physical creation is impersonal. There is no communion between molecules of water or particles of air.

Thus the comparison of the human to the non-human world in these terms makes all conversation about what is in our best personal or national interest meaningless. When particularity is subsumed into an abstraction, the differences between people ultimately have no meaning.

This seems wrong to me, by which I mean, I think Father is reading the EP's remarks in a mistaken way. Granted, I'm no theologian, but I don't see what's wrong with what the EP said, in terms of Orthodox metaphysics. Orthodox Christianity is panentheistic , meaning that God is seen as literally present, in his divine energies, in all aspects of Creation. It is a profoundly sacramental view of Creation. To my lay understanding, the EP is simply pointing to the environmental implications of Orthodoxy's panentheism. (Which, by the way, is not the same as pantheism; pantheism says that all things are God; panentheism says that God is in all things. Big difference.)