"Turn, O backsliding children says the Lord; for I am married to you"Jeremiah 3:14).
The soul of man is the bride and the Living and All-powerful God is the bridegroom of the soul of man. His bride, the soul, the Lord clothes in light and nourishes it with His Grace. And the soul, from God the groom, gives birth to good children and many children in the form of many and beautiful virtuous works. The soul, on its own, cannot give birth to one virtuous work. Only the soul made fertile by God, gives birth to virtuous works. However, the soul, made fertile by the world, either remains barren or produces sin and vice. That is why the Lord speaks to men: "I am married to you", so that the soul of man may know to whom it is betrothed and with whom it is wed in order that it would not stray and by adultery deaden itself and turn itself into ash.
God is a faithful groom of the human soul of men. He never betrays the bride, the soul. His love toward the soul never cools as long as the soul does not turn away from Him and does not commit adultery. But, even then, God does not abandon the soul immediately, but pursues it and returns it from the path of destruction. "Turn O backsliding children" the Lord then speaks to the souls of men. Repent and I will forgive you. Return and I will receive you. Penitents would know to say, how great is the mercy of God. They would be able to confirm how persistent the love of God is toward sinners, even to the last hour. God is faithful in His love and He is not swift to seek vengeance on the adulterous soul. He constantly tries to restore to the adulterous soul, the lost shame of sinning. Shame produces repentance and repentance leads to restoration and restoration leads to original love and fidelity.
O Lord, All-powerful, help us, that from your eternal love our souls may produce the good and abundant fruit.
To You be glory and thanks always. Amen.
Taken from Saint Nikolai Velimirovich's-"The Prologue of Ohrid"
http://agapienxristou.blogspot.ca/2013/09/the-divine-marriage-of-souls-of-men.html
One of the first things that strikes a non-Orthodox visitor to an Orthodox church is the prominent place assigned to the Holy Icons. The Iconostasis (Icon-screen) dividing the Altar from the rest of the church is covered with them, while others are placed in prominent places throughout the church building. Sometimes even the walls and ceiling are covered with them in fresco or mosaic form. The Orthodox faithful prostrate themselves before them, kiss them, and burn can-dles before them. They are censed by the Priest and carried in processions. Considering the ob-vious importance of the Holy Icons, then, questions may certainly be raised concerning them: What do these gestures and actions mean? What is the significance of these Icons? Are they not idols or the like, prohibited by the Old Testament?
Some of the answers to these questions can be found in the writings of St. John of Da-mascus (f776), who wrote in the Mid-Eighth Century at the height of the iconoclast (anti-icon) controversies in the Church, controversies which were resolved only by the 7th Ecumenical Council (787), which borrowed heavily from these writings.
As St. John points out, in ancient times God, being incorporeal and uncircumscribed, was never depicted, since it is impossible to represent that which is immaterial, has no shape, is inde-scribable and is unencompassable. Holy Scripture states categorically: No one has ever seen God (John 1:18) and You cannot see My [God's] face, for man shall not see Me and live (Ex. 33:20). The Lord forbade the Hebrews to fashion any likeness of the Godhead, saying: I7ou shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth (Ex. 20:4). Consequently, the Holy Apostle Paul also asserts: Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man (Acts 17:29).
Nonetheless, we know that Icons have been used for prayer from the first centuries of Christianity. Church Tradition tells us, for example, of the existence of an Icon of the Savior dur-ing His lifetime (the “Icon-Made-Without-Hands”) and of Icons of the Most-Holy Theotokos immediately after Him. Tradition witnesses that the Orthodox Church had a clear understanding of the importance of Icons right from the beginning; and this understanding never changed, for it is derived from the teachings concerning the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Holy Trini-ty — Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The use of Icons is grounded in the very essence of Christianity, since Christianity is the revelation by the God-Man not only of the Word of God, but also of the Image of God; for, as St. John the Evangelist tells us, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).
No one has ever seen God; the only Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known (John 1:18), the Evangelist proclaims. That is, He has revealed the Image or Icon of God. For being the brightness of [God's] glory, and the express image of [God's] person (Heb. 1:3), the Word of God in the Incarnation revealed to the world, in His own Divinity, the Image of the Father. When St. Philip asks Jesus, Lord, show us the Father, He answered him: Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father (John 14:8, 9). Thus as the Son is in the bosom of the Father, likewise after the Incarnation He is consubstantial with the Father, according to His divinity being the Father’s Image, equal in honor to Him.
The truth expressed above, which is revealed in Christianity, thus forms the foundations of Christian pictorial art. The Image (or Icon) not only does not contradict the essence of Chris-tianity, but is unfailingly connected with it; and this is the foundation of the tradition that from the very beginning the Good News was brought to the world by the Church both in word and in image. This truth was so self-evident, that Icons found their natural place in the Church, despite the Old Testament prohibition against them and a certain amount of contemporary opposition.
St. John Damascene further tells us that because the Word became flesh (John 1:14), we are no longer in our infancy; we have grown up, we have been given by God the power of dis-crimination and we know what can be depicted and what is indescribable. Since He Who was incorporeal, without form, quantity and magnitude, Who was incomparable owing to the supe-riority of His nature, Who existed in the image of God assumed the form of a servant and ap-peared to us in the flesh, we can portray Him and reproduce for contemplation Him Who has condescended to be seen.
We can portray His ineffable descent, His Nativity from the Blessed Virgin, His Baptism in the Jordan, His Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor, His sufferings, death and miracles. We can de-pict the Cross of Salvation, the Sepulcher, the Resurrection and the Ascension, both in words and in colors. We can confidently represent God the Invisible — not as an invisible being, but as one Who has made Himself visible for our sake by sharing in our flesh and blood.
As the Holy Apostle Paul says: Ever since the creation of the world [God's] invisible na-ture, namely, His eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made (Rom. 1:20). Thus, in all creatures we see images that give us a dim insight into Divine Revelation — when, for instance, we say that the Holy Trinity Without Beginning can be represented by the sun, light and the ray, or by the mind, the word and the spirit that is within us, or by the plant, the flower and the scent of the rose.
Thus, what had only been a shadow in the Old Testament is now clearly seen. The Coun-cil in Trullo (691-2), in its 82nd Rule, stated:
Certain holy icons have the image of a lamb, at which is pointing the finger of the Forerunner. This lamb is taken as the image of grace, representing the True Lamb, Christ our God, Whom the law foreshadowed. Thus accepting with love the ancient images and shadows as prefigurations and symbols of truth transmit-ted to the Church, we prefer grace and truth, receiving it as the fulfillment of the law. Thus, in order to make plain this fulfillment for all eyes to see, if only by means of pictures, we ordain that from henceforth icons should represent, instead of the lamb of old, the human image of the Lamb, Who has taken upon Himself the sins of the world, Christ our God, so that through this we may perceive the height of the ab-asement of God the Word and be led to remember His life in the flesh, His Passion and death for our salva-tion and the ensuing redemption of the world.
The Orthodox Church, then, created a new art, new in form and content, which uses images and forms drawn from the material world to transmit the revelation of the divine world, making the divine accessible to human understanding and contemplation. This art developed side by side with the Divine Services and, like the Services, expresses the teaching of the Church in confor-mity with the word of Holy Scripture. Following the teachings of the 7th Ecumenical Council, the Icon is seen not as simple art, but that there is a complete correspondence of the Icon to Holy Scripture, “for if the [Icon] is shown by [Holy Scripture], [Holy Scripture] is made incontestably clear by the [Icon] [Acts of the 7th Ecumenical Council, 6].
As the word of Holy Scripture is an image, so the image is also a word, for, according to St. Basil the Great (f379), “what the word transmits through the ear, that painting silently shows through the image” [Discourse 19, On the 40 Martyrs]. In other words, the Icon contains and professes the same truth as the Gospels and therefore, like the Gospels, is based on exact data, and is not a human invention, for if it were otherwise, Icons could not explain the Gospels nor correspond to them.
By depicting the divine, we are not making ourselves similar to idolaters; for it is not the material symbol that we are worshipping, but the Creator, Who became corporeal for our sake and assumed our body in order that through it He might save mankind. We also venerate the ma-terial objects through which our salvation is effected — the blessed wood of the Cross, the Holy Gospel, and, above all, the Most-Pure Body and Precious Blood of Christ, which have grace-bestowing properties and Divine Power.
As St. John Damascene asserts: “I do not worship matter but I worship the Creator of matter, Who for my sake became material and deigned to dwell in matter, Who through matter effected my salvation. I will not cease from worshipping the matter through which my salvation has been effected” [On Icons, 1,16]. Following his teachings, we, as Orthodox Christians, do not venerate an Icon of Christ because of the nature of the wood or the paint, but rather we venerate the inanimate image of Christ with the intention of worshipping Christ Himself as God Incarnate through it.
We kiss an Icon of the Blessed Virgin as the Mother of the Son of God, just as we kiss the Icons of the Saints as God’s friends who fought against sin, imitated Christ by shedding their blood for Him and followed in His footsteps. Saints are venerated as those who were glorified by God and who became, with God’s help, terrible to the Enemy, and benefactors to those advancing in the faith — but not as gods and benefactors themselves; rather they were the slaves and servants of God who were given boldness of spirit in return for their love of Him. We gaze on the depiction of their exploits and sufferings so as to sanctify ourselves through them and to spur ourselves on to zealous emulation.
The Icons of the Saints act as a meeting point between the living members of the Church [Militant] on earth and the Saints who have passed on to the Church [Triumphant] in Heaven. The Saints depicted on the Icons are not remote, legendary figures from the past, but contempo-rary, personal friends. As meeting points between Heaven and earth, the Icons of Christ, His Mother, the Angels and Saints constantly remind the faithful of the invisible presence of the whole company of Heaven; they visibly express the idea of Heaven on earth.
In venerating the Icons, then, the Orthodox are championing the basis of Christian faith — the Incarnation of God — and, consequently, salvation and the very meaning of the Church’s existence on earth, since the creation of the Holy Icons goes back to the very origins of Chris-tianity and is an inalienable part of the truth revealed by God, founded as it is on the person of the God-Man Jesus Christ Himself. Holy Images are part of the nature of Christianity and with-out the Icon Christianity would cease to be Christianity. The Holy Gospel summons us to live in Christ, but it is the Icon that shows us this life.
If God became man in order that man might be like God, the Icon, in full accord with di-vine worship and theology, bears witness to the fruits of the Incarnation and to the sanctity and deification of man. It shows him in the fullness of his earthly nature, purified of sin and partak-ing of the life of God, testifies to the sanctification of the human body and displays to the world the image of man who is similar to God by grace. The Icon outwardly expresses the sanctity of the depicted Saint, and this sanctity is apparent to bodily vision.
Thus, according to St. John Damascene, those who refuse to venerate an Icon also refuse to worship God’s Son, Who is the living image and unchanging reflection of God the Invisible. Be it known, he says, that anyone who seeks to destroy the Icons of Christ or His Mother, the Blessed Theotokos, or any of the Saints, is the enemy of Christ, the Holy Mother of God, and the Saints, and is the defender of the Devil and his demons.
Image Not-Made-by-Hands.
One of the earliest Icons witnessed to by Church Tradition, is the Icon of the Savior Not-Made-By-Hands. According to Tradition, during the time of the earthly ministry of the Savior, Abgar ruled in the Syrian city of Edessa. He was afflicted with leprosy over his whole body. At this time report of the great miracles performed by the Lord extended throughout Syria (Matt. 4:24) and as far as Arabia. Although not having seen the Lord, Abgar believed in Him as the Son of God and wrote a letter requesting Him to come and heal him. With this letter he sent to Pales-tine his court-painter Ananias, entrusting him to paint an image of the Divine Teacher.
Ananias went to Jerusalem and saw the Lord surrounded by people. He was not able logo to Him because of the great throng of people listening to His preaching; so he stood on a huge rock and attempted to produce a painting of the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, unable, however, to succeed. The Savior Himself called him by name and gave for Abgar a beautiful letter in which,’ having glorified the faith of the ruler, He promised to send His disciple in order to heal him from the leprosy and instruct him in salvation.
After this, the Lord called for water and a towel. He wiped His face, rubbing with the to-wel, and on it was impressed His Divine Image. The towel and the letter the Savior sent with Ananias to Edessa. With thanksgiving Abgar received the sacred object and received healing, but a small portion, only a trace, remained of the terrible disease on his face until the arrival of the promised Disciple of the Lord.
The Apostle of the 70, Thaddeus, came to them and preached the Gospel, baptizing the believing Abgar and all living in Edessa. Having written on the Image Not-Made-By-Hands the words, “Christ-God, everyone trusting in Thee will not be put to shame,” Abgar adorned it and placed it in a niche over the city gates.
For many years the inhabitants preserved a pious custom of venerating the Image Not-Made-By-Hands whenever passing through the gates. But a great-grandson of Abgar, ruling Edessa, fell into idolatry and resolved to take the Image away from the city walls. In a vision, the Lord ordered the Bishop of Edessa to conceal His Image. The Bishop, coming at night with his clergy, lit before the Image a lampada and then blocked up the niche with clay tablets and bricks.
Many years passed by and the inhabitants forgot about the Holy Object. But then, when in 545 the Persian King Chroses I besieged Edessa, the position of the city seemed hopeless. But the Most-Holy Sovereign Lady manifested Herself to Bishop Evlavios and commanded him to get from the enclosed niche the Image with which to save the city from the adversaries. Disman-tling the niche, the Bishop found the Holy Image; before it burned the lampada and on the clay tablets, with which the niche had been enclosed, was a similar image. After preceding with the Cross and the Image Not-Made-By-Hands around the walls of the city, the Persian army miracu-lously departed.
In 630, Edessa was seized by the Arabs; but they did not impede veneration of the Image Not-Made-By-Hands, glory of which extended out into all the East. In 944 the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus (912-59) requested that the Image be redeemed from the Emir — the ruler of the city of Edessa — and brought to the Capital of the Orthodox. With great honor the Image of the Savior Not-Made-By-Hands and the letter which He wrote to Abgar, were brought by the clergy to Constantinople. On Aug. 16 the Image of the Savior was placed in the Pharos Church of the Most-Holy Theotokos.
Concerning the subsequent fate of the Image Not-Made-By-Hands, there exists several traditions. According to one, it was carried away by Crusaders during the time of their dominion over Constantinople (1204-61), but the ship on which the Holy Objects had been taken, sank in the Sea of Marmora. According to another, the Image Not-Made-By-Hands was taken about 1362 to Genoa, where it was presented to and preserved in a monastery dedicated to the Apostle Bartholomew.
In the time of the iconoclastic heresy, the defenders of icon-veneration, shedding their blood for the Holy Icons, sang the Troparion to the Image Not-Made-By-Hands. The Image (the Holy Face) was put up as an emblem of the Russian armies, defending them from the enemy; and in the Russian Orthodox Church there is a pious custom that before entering a church, the faith-ful read together the prayers and the Troparion to the Image Not-Made-By-Hands. The Feast of this Icon is celebrated on Aug. 16, during the Afterfeast period of the Feast of the Dormition, and is popularly called the Third Feast-of-the-Savior in August.
“What unspeakable delight shall we know, when the King with great joy shall say: Come ye blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
Then my Brother, then shall you receive the fair dominion, the crown of all your desires, from the Hand of the Lord, and then you shall reign with Christ forever and ever. Then you will receive the gifts God has promised to those who love and serve Him. You will be safe from harm then, no longer filled with care. For then you shall no more have the sun for your light by day, nor the moon at night, but Christ will be your unfailing Light, and God your glory.”
St. Ephraim the Syrian
Christ is in our midst
History Of Asia Minor: 1894-1923
During 1894-1923 the Ottoman Empire conducted a policy of Genocide of the Christian population living within its extensive territory. The Sultan, Abdul Hamid, first put forth an official governmental policy of genocide against the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in 1894.
Systematic massacres took place in 1894-1896 when Abdul savagely killed 300,000 Armenians throughout the provinces. Massacres recurred, and in 1909 government troops killed, in the towns of Adana alone, over 20,000 Christian Armenians.
When WW1 broke out the The Ottoman Empire was ruled by the "Young Turk" dictatorship which allied itself with Germany. Turkish government decided to eliminate the whole of the Christian population of Greeks, Armenians, Syrians and Nestorians. The government slogan, "Turkey for the Turks", served to encourage Turkish civilians on a policy of ethnic cleansing.
The next step of the Armenian Genocide began on 24 April 1915 with the mass arrest, and ultimate murder, of religious, political and intellectual leaders in Constantinople and elsewhere in the empire. Then, in every Armenian community, a carefully planned Genocide unfolded: Arrest of clergy and other prominent persons, disarmament of the population and Armenian soldiers serving in the Ottoman army, segregation and public execution of leaders and able-bodied men, and the deportation to the deserts of the remaining Armenian women, children and elderly. Renowned historian Arnold Toynbee wrote that "the crime was concerted very systematically for there is evidence of identical procedure from over fifty places."
The Genocide started from the border districts and seacoasts, and worked inland to the most remote hamlets. Over 1.5 million Armenian Christians, including over 4,000 bishops and priests, were killed in this step of the Genocide.
The Greek Christians, particularly in the Black Sea area known as Pontus, who had been suffering from Turkish persecutions and murders all the while, saw the Turks turn more fiercely on them as WW1 came to a close. The Allied Powers, at a peace conference in Paris in 1919, rewarded Greece for her support by inviting Prime Minister Venizelos to occupy the city of Smyrna with its rich hinterlands, and they placed the province under Greek control. This action greatly angered the Turks. The Greek occupation was a peaceful one but drew immediate fire from Turkish forces in the outlying areas. When the Greek army farmed out to protect its people, a full-fledged war broke out between Greece and Turkey (the Greco-Turkish war).
The Treaty of Sevres, signed in 1920 to end WW1 and which provided for an independent Armenia, was never ratified. The treaty's terms changed not long after the ink dried as England, France and Italy each began secretly bargaining with Mustafa Kemel (Ataturk) in order to gain the right to exploit oil fields in the Mozul (now Iraq). Betrayed by the Allied Powers, the Greek military front, after 40 long months of war, collapsed and retreated as the Turks began again to occupy Asia Minor.
September 1922 signaled the end of the Greek and Armenian presence in the city of Smyrna. On 9 September 1922, the Turks entered Smyrna; and after systematically murdering the Armenians in their own homes, the forces of Ataturk turned on the Greeks whose numbers had swelled, with the addition of refugees who had fled their villages in Turkey's interior, to upwards of 400,000 men, women and children.
The conquering Turks went from house to house, looting, pillaging, raping and murdering the population. Finally, when the wind had turned so that it was blowing toward the sea so that the small Turkish quarter at the rear of the city was not in danger, Turkish forces, led by their officers, poured kerosene on the buildings and homes of the Greek and Armenian sectors and set them afire. Thus, any remaining live inhabitants of the city were flushed out to be caught between a wall of fire and the sea. The pier of Smyrna became a scene of final desperation as the approaching flames forced many thousands to jump to their death or to be consumed by fire.
The Allied warships and shore patrol of the French, British and American military were eyewitnesses to the events. George Horton, the American Consul in Smyrna, likened the finale at Smyrna to the Roman destruction of Carthage. He is quoted in Smyrna (1922, written by Marjorie Dobkin) as saying: Yet there was not fleet of Christian battleships at Carthage looking on a situation for which their governments were responsible." This horrible act unleashed the last phase of the genocide against the Christians of Turkish Asia Minor.
On 9 September 1997, a series of speakers and memorial services, honoring the memory of the 3.5 million Christians who were murdered by Turkish persecutions from 1894-1923, were held in the greater Baltimore Washington area. The memorial service was conducted by the choirs of St. Mary's Armenian Church, St. Katherine's Greek Orthodox Church, Fr. George Alexson of St. Katherine's, Fr. Vertanes Katayjian of St. Mary's and other Orthodox clergy.
The 75th anniversary of the Christian Holocaust was memorialized on 9 September 1997, the date in 1922 of the destruction of the city of Smyrna. This memorial honors the memory of over 3.5 million Christians who were murdered by Turkish persecutions from 1894-1923. Not only was this the memorial of the Holocaust of Smyrna (now Izmir) and the martyrdom of Smyrna's Metropolitan Chrysostomos, but also of the 3.5 million Christians who perished during the first Holocaust of this century. But the events of 1922 are not an isolated incident. The atrocities committed by Turkish forces against a civilian population began before WW1 and have never ended. This event seeks to expose the continuum of a Turkish campaign of persecution, deportation, and murder designed to rid Asia of its Christian populace.
GREEKS
1914 400,000 conscripts perished in forced labor brigades
1922 100,000 massacred or burned alive in Smyrna
1916-1922 350,000 Pontions massacred or killed during forced deportations
1914-1922 900,000 perish from maltreatment, starvation and massacres; total of all other areas of Asia Minor
TOTAL: 1,750,000 Greek Christians martyred 1914-1922
ARMENIANS
1894-1896 300,000 massacred
1915-1916 1,500,000 perish in massacres and forced deportations (with subsidiaries to 1923)
1922 30,000 massacred or burned alive in Smyrna
TOTAL: 1,800,000 Armenian Christians martyred 1894-1923
SYRIANS AND NESTORIANS
1915-1917 100,000 Christians massacred
The native population of Asia Minor traces its Christian roots to the early days of Christianity. the Armenians, an ancient people, trace their origins back 2500 years. In 301 AD. the Armenian King Dftad declared Christianity as the kingdom's official religion, making Armenia the first Christian political state in the world. The migration of Greek tribes to Asia Minor began just before 2,000 BC and the Greeks built dozens of cities such as Smyrna, Phocaea, Pergamon, Ephesus and Byzantium (Constantinople). The native inhabitants of Asia Minor, among the first to accept the message of Christianity, were later to be persecuted and uprooted from their lands because of that same faith. Turkish tribes plagued the region. Later another tribe, the Oyuz Turks who embraced Islam and ultimately produced the Ottoman Turks, conquered Persia, the Caliphate of Baghdad, and then the whole area presently occupied by Syria, Iraq and Palestine.
Under the Ottoman Empire the Christians suffered a steady decline. Forced conversions to Islam, the abduction of children to serve in the fanatical Janissary corps, persecutions and oppression reduced the Christian population. Oppression intensified, leading to Genocide. Christian clergy were a constant target of Turkish persecution, particularly once the 1894 policy of Armenian genocide had been declared by sultan Abdul Hamid.
Victims of horrible torture, many Orthodox clergy were martyred for their faith. Among the first was Metropolitan Chrysostomos who was martyred, not just to kill a man but, to insult a sacred religion and an ancient and honorable people. Chrysostomos was enthroned as Metropolitan of Smyrna on 10 May 1910. Metropolitan Chrysostomos courageously opposed the anti Christian rage of the turks and sought to raise international pressure against the persecution of Turkish Christians. He wrote many letters to European leaders and to the western press in an effort to expose the genocide policies of the Turks. In 1922, in unprotected Smyrna, Chrysostomos said to those begging him to flee: "It is the tradition of the Greek Church and the duty of the priest to stay with his congregation."
On 9 September crowds were rushing into the cathedral for shelter when Chrysostomos, pale from fasting and lack of sleep, led his last prayer. The Divine Liturgy ended as Turkish police came to the church and led Chrysostomos away. The Turkish General Nouredin Pasha, known as the "butcher of Ionia", first spat on the Metropolitan and informed him that a tribunal in Angora (now Ankara) had already condemned him to death. A mob fell upon Chrysostomos and tore out his eyes. Bleeding profusely, he was dragged through the streets by his beard. He was beaten and kicked and parts of his body were cut off. All the while Chrysostomos, his face covered with blood, prayed: "Holy Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Every now and then, when he had the strength, he would raise his hand and bless his persecutors; a Turk, realizing what the Metropolitan was doing, cut off his hand with a sword. Metropolitan Chrysostomos was then hacked to pieced by the angry mob.
Among the hundreds of Armenian clergy who were persecuted and murdered were Bishop Khosrov Behrigian and Very Reverend Father Mgrdich' Chghladian.
Bishop Behrigian (1869-1915) was born in Zara and became the primate for the Diocese of Caesarea/Kayseri in 1915. He was arrested by Turkish police upon his return from Etchmiadzin where he had just been consecrated bishop. Informed of his fate, the bishop asked for a bullet to the head. Deliberately ignoring his request, the police tied him to a "yataghan" where sheep were butchered an then proceeded to hack his body apart while he was still alive.
Father Chghladian was born in Tatvan. In May 1915, as part of the campaign of mass arrests, deportations and murders, the priest was tortured and displayed in a procession, led by sheiks and dervishes while accompanied by drums, through the streets of Dikranagerd. Once the procession returned to the mosque, in the presence of government officials, the sheiks poured oil over the priest and burned him alive.
Four of the martyred bishops who were murdered between 1921-1922 are today elevated to sainthood in the Greek Orthodox Church: They are, in addition to Metropolitan Chrysostomos, Bishops Efthimios, Gregorios and Ambrosios.
Bishop Efthimios of Amasia was captured by the Turkish police and tortured daily for 41 days. In the last days of his life he chanted his own funeral memorial until finally dying in his cell on 29 May 1921. Three days later a written order for his execution arrived from Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk).
Metropolitan Gregorios of Kydonion remained with his church until the end, helping 20,000 of his 35,000 parishioners escape to Mytilene and other free parts of Greece. On 3 October 1922, the remaining 15,000 Orthodox Christians were executed; the Metropolitan was saved in order to be buried alive.
Metropolitan Ambrosios of Moshonesion, along with 12 priests and 6,000 Christians, were sent by the Turks on a forced deportation march to Central Asia Minor. All of them perished on the road, some slain by Turkish irregulars and civilians, the remainder left to die of starvation. Bishop Ambrosios died on 15 September 1922 when Turkish police nailed horseshoes to his feet and then cut his body into pieces.
"I was five or six years old in 1922, and I still remember the songs of Akrita and the mourning of the Greek women who carried baskets full of severed heads down from the mountains. I will never forget the women who suddenly realized that one of the heads in the basket she carried was that of her son." - Constantine Koukides, refugee from Pontius
"I have given orders to my Death Units to exterminate without mercy or pity, men, women, and children belonging to the Polish speaking race. It is only in this manner we can acquire the vital territory which we need. After all, who remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" - Adolf Hitler, 22 August 1939
THE UKRAINIAN HOLOCAUST OF 1932-33
Sixty-five years ago, between seven and twelve million Ukrainians were systematically and deliberately starved to death in Ukraine, the "Bread Basket of Europe".
Long before there was a Russia, Kyivan Rus' (Ukraine) was a free and fiercely independent nation. Indeed, it was to Ukraine that Christianity was first delivered by St. Andrew - the First called Apostle - and only much later, from Ukraine, on to Russia. In the 13th century Kvivan Rus' was decimated by invasions from Asia; and by the time the invaders were driven back, the base of power had shifted North to Muscovy. For centuries thereafter, Ukraine was subjugated to Tsarist Russia. Then in 1918, following the murder of the Tsar and his family by the Communists, the Ukrainians declared Ukraine a free and independent country, just as it was centuries before there even was a Russia.
Communist forces eventually recaptured the land and once again, as in the time of the Tsars, Ukraine would become little more than a part of a larger whole. But as never before in their long history, Ukrainians would be forced to pay a dreadfully high price in their survival as a people. Probably more than other Bolsheviks, Stalin had an exceedingly low opinion of peasants; for he considered them to be incurably conservative and a major barrier to revolutionary change. And because Ukrainians were an overwhelmingly peasant people, among whom native nationalism was on the rise, they were doubly vulnerable to his designs. Ukraine continued to be a land of innumerable villages of peasants working the land, with the Orthodox Church and traditional values dominating their lives. Perhaps most galling for the Bolshevik revolutionaries was the fact that the peasant showed little inclination for sharing their dreams of a Communist utopia.
Stalin's plans for industrial expansion were based on the state purchasing cheap grain, from the peasants, which would be sold abroad at a profit; the proceeds would then be used to finance the industrialization of the nation. But the prices that the state offered, often at one eighth of the market price, were so low that the peasants refused to sell their grain. Infuriated by what he called "sabotage". Stalin ordered an all-out drive for total collectivization. All land and all property, including livestock, were to be taken away from private ownership and given over to the state. Small farms were to be incorporated into huge Collectives. The plan was accompanied by such brutality and horror that it can only be described as war waged by the regime against the peasantry. It was to be one of the most traumatic events in Ukraine history.
Those who resisted most stubbornly were shot. Others were deported to forced labor camps in the Arctic and Siberia. The rest were deprived of all their property - including their homes and personal belongings - barred from the collective farms, and told to fend for themselves. In the winter of 1929-30 hundreds of thousands of peasants and their families were dragged from their homes, packed into freight trains, and shipped thousands of miles to the north where they were dumped amidst Arctic wastes, often without food or shelter. In this way a large part of Ukraine's most industrious and efficient farmers ceased to exist.
When even these severe measures failed to have the desired effect, the government dispatched thousands of urban workers to implement its policies in the villages. Their efforts produced pandemonium and outrage; often officials were beaten or shot. The most common form of protest, however, was the slaughter of farm animals. Determined not to let the government have their livestock, peasants preferred to kill their animals instead. Between 1928 and 1932 Ukraine lost about 50% of its livestock. Because of poor transportation facilities, much of the grain which was produced either spoiled or was eaten by rats. Even more serious was the lack of draught animals, many of which had been slaughtered earlier. Government officials were confident, however, that they could provide enough new tractors to replace the missing horses and oxen. But the production of tractors fell badly behind schedule, and a very high percentage of those which were delivered broke down almost immediately. As a result, in 1931 almost one third of the grain yield was lost during the harvest. To make matters worse, a drought hit southern Ukraine in 1931.
The Ukraine continued to resist and to dream of a free and independent nation; and since Joseph Stalin could not kill that dream, he first decided to deport all Ukrainians to other parts of the Soviet Union. Discovering that there were too many of them to move, Stalin decided to kill the dreamers instead; and his weapon of choice was a man-made, artificial famine which was designed to eliminate the troublemakers and force the survivors into total, complete submission. The famine which occurred in 1932-33 was to be for Ukrainians what the Holocaust was to the Jews, and what the Massacres of 1915 were for the Armenians. A tragedy of unfathomable proportions, it traumatized the nation, leaving it with deep social, psychological, political, and demographic scars that it still carries to this very day. The central fact about the famine is that is did not have to happen. Food was available; but the state confiscated most of it for its own use. All crops were requisitioned by the Soviet government and shipped elsewhere. This confiscation of food included seed which was intended for spring planting. Any man, woman or child caught taking even a handful of grain from a government silo could be, and often was, executed. In Moscow a law was enacted stipulating that no grain could be given to the peasants until the government's full quota had been met. Gangs of party activists conducted brutal house-to-house searches, tearing up floors and delving into wells in search of any grain which remained. In fact, if a person did not appear to be starving, he was suspected of hoarding food.
Famine, which had been spreading throughout 1932, hit full force early in 1933. Lacking bread, peasants ate pets, rats, bark, leaves, and the garbage from the well provisioned kitchens of Communist Party members. Whole villages were erased and people were dying by the tens of thousands. Cannibalism existed. At first cannibals were shot on the spot, but later were thrown into concentration camps. The most terrifying sights were the little children with skeleton limbs dangling from balloon like abdomens. Cordons of troops prevented peasants from entering cities; those who managed to break through wandered about until they fell in the streets. Such people were loaded onto trucks, together with the corpses, and dumped into pits outside of the city.
With the climbing death rate during the famine, the publication of death statistics was forbidden by the Soviet government. When deaths due to famine took on major proportions in Ukraine in 1932-33, physicians certifying the cause of death were forbidden to name the killer - starvation. The word "holod" (hunger) was decreed as counter-revolutionary, and no one valuing his own life and those of his relatives dared use it publicly. When the results of the census of 1937, for example, revealed shockingly high mortality rates, Stalin had the leading census takers shot.
Elsewhere there was no famine - much of Russia proper barely experienced it - but the borders of Ukraine had been sealed by the secret police; there was no escape. The Ukrainians had been sentenced to death. And thus, the greatest genocide in history was systematically accomplished. A noteworthy aspect of the famine was the attempt to erase it from public consciousness; the Soviet position was to deny that it had occurred at all. To curry Stalin's favor, for example, Walter Duranty - the Moscow based reporter of the New York Times, repeatedly denied the existence of a famine in his articles (while privately estimating that about ten million people may have starved to death). For the "profundity, impartiality, sound judgment and exceptional clarity" of his dispatches from the USSR, Duranty received the Pulitzer Prize in 1932.
Yet, even to this very day, there are those who deny or minimize the Ukrainian Holocaust to such a degree that it is being referred to as "the hidden holocaust of the twentieth century". In 1984, for example, a documentary film entitled HARVEST OF DESPAIR was shown on Canadian television. This film won numerous prizes at World Film Festivals and a 1986 Academy award nomination; yet all three top commercial networks in America refused to show it. As recently as 1994, the New Jersey state legislators were being pressured to exclude the Ukrainian Holocaust from Resolution A-589 (The Holocaust Education Bill). Media coverage has been just as one-sided about the Greek, Armenian, Syrian and Nestorians Holocausts of 1984-1923 and, more recently, the Serbian Holocaust. The atrocities against Christians - especially Orthodox Christians - continue to this day!
ORTHODOX PERSECUTIONS TODAY
Of all the Christian confessions, it has been the Eastern Orthodox Church which has suffered the brunt of persecutions in the 20th century.
In the first two decades, there were massacres of Orthodox Greeks, Slavs, and Armenians in the Ottoman empire, culminating in the 1915 genocide of the Armenians in Anatolia and the near destruction of the ancient Assyrian community in Iraq. In 1923, the entire Orthodox population of Asia Minor was forced to leave their homes, bringing to a close a 2000 year Christian presence.
During the Second World War, two groups of Orthodox Christians were especially targeted for genocide by the Nazis and their allies - the Gypsies and the Orthodox Serbs of Bosnia and Croatia, while the population of Greece, Serbia, European Russia, and Ukraine were designated by the Nazis to serve as slave labor for the Third Reich. By special order of Heinrich Himmler (21 April 1942), clergyman from the East (as opposed to their counterparts from Western Europe) were to be used for hard labor.
At the same time the Orthodox suffered in greater proportion to any other Christian group at the hands of the Communists, who sought to completely eliminate religion.
First in Russia and Ukraine, then in Eastern Europe, in Greece during its civil war (1945-49), and in Ethiopia, the Orthodox Church was the principle target for attach, subversion, or destruction.
Finally, the Orthodox of the Middle East have found themselves caught in the crossfire of the conflicts between Muslim and Jew in Israel and the West Bank, and the civil war between Maronites, Muslims, and Palestinians in Lebanon.
Between the tolls exacted from prisons, concentration camps, forced marches and exiles, warfare, famine, and brutal military occupation, it is reasonable to conclude that up to 50 million Orthodox Christians have perished in the first eight decades of the twentieth century.
Even in the United States, where so many Orthodox have found refuge, the Orthodox Native Americans of the Aleutian Islands were forcibly interned during World War II and many of their churches deliberately destroyed by the U.S. Army.
Unfortunately, the depth and range of the Orthodox suffering throughout the world in this century, remains largely unknown and unappreciated in the West.
1987 - 1997
Harassment of the Orthodox Church in the former Soviet Union continued through the Gorbachev era. Many of the churches supposedly returned to the Orthodox between 1988 and 1990 were in Western Ukraine. This was part of an attempt by the KGB to sow open discord between Orthodox and Catholics - only 100 churches were returned in Russia itself. The KGB continued to target Orthodox clergymen involved in the struggle for religious freedom and democratization; in 1990 several prominent priests, among them Fr. Alexander Men, were murdered. It was only under President Boris Yeltsin that full freedom was restored to the Orthodox and other Russian based confessions. In other parts of the former Soviet Union, notably in Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan, the governments have continued to limit the rights of the religious and ethnic minorities.
The triumph of democracy in Poland has not led to full religious freedom for members of its 1 million strong Orthodox minority. Although the height of anti Orthodox activity seems to have peaked in 1991 after several Orthodox churches and an historic monastery were vandalized, Orthodox continue to be viewed as second-class citizens in Poland; where they are described in a secret Foreign Ministry report as an "alien body in Poland's state organism." Laws on religious education in the schools have virtually established the Roman Catholic Church to the detriment of both the Orthodox and the Lutherans; and Orthodox believers continue to complain of petty harassment endured at the local level.
In Slovakia, the government in 1991 announced its intention to review ownership of the country's 125 Orthodox parishes. Since that time, over 90 church buildings have been taken away from the Orthodox and given to the Catholics; and the Orthodox have been blocked by local officials from constructing new edifices, opening schools, or holding services. Even the official policy of the vatican announced 16 July 1990, which counseled Slovak Catholics to share disputed properties with the Orthodox, has been ignored.
The wars in the former Yugoslavia have been disastrous for the Orthodox. The Croatian government has all but liquidated the Orthodox Church in its territory, beginning with the dynamiting of the residence and library of the Orthodox Metropolitan of Zagreb on 11 April 1992. Following the Croatian offensive of fall 1995 and the departure of over 200,000 Orthodox Serbs in Diocese in Krajina. (which brought a total of over 800,000 displaced Orthodox Christians), four dioceses of the Serbian Orthodox Church ceased to exist. In Croat controlled territory in Bosnia, the Orthodox Bishop of Mostar was driven from his see, and most of the Orthodox population was expelled. Estimates are that over 154 Orthodox churches in the territory of Bosnia and Croatia were deliberately destroyed. On March 25, 1999 NATO began bombing of Kosovo in Serbia. It is one of the tragic ironies of History that Western "Christian" nations have joined forces to eradicate Serbs in Kosovo who are accused of "Ethnic cleansing". History repeats itself ----Kosovo was the site 500 years ago of the Christian Resistance to the Turks.
In Turkey and Turkish occupied Cyprus the position of the Orthodox continues to deteriorate. Despite international guarantees contained within the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the Turkish government continues to enforce the closure of the famous Halki Orthodox Theological Academy in Istanbul. Families of those Orthodox illegally expelled in the 1950's and 1960's have never been allowed to return to their homes, again in contravention of the 1923 treaty guaranteeing their right to do so. On Cyprus, 450 Orthodox Churches on the northern part of the island have been desecrated; some have become night clubs while others have been turned into public toilets. Other churches and historical monuments, some dating back to the 5th century, have been looted and left to rot away. There is a sustained campaign to remove entirely the last traces of the 2000 year old Orthodox presence from occupied Cyprus.
In Egypt, the Orthodox continue to suffer from the many restrictions placed on their ability to function in the economic and political life of the country. There are many rules hindering their ability to build and repair churches, and they are increasingly becoming targets for armed attacks by Muslim extremists. In the past two years, dozens of Orthodox villagers in Upper Egypt have been murdered by Islamic gunmen.
In India Orthodox Christians report increased harassment on the part of both Hindu and Muslim extremists, with isolated attacks and vehement rhetoric demanding their removal from the Indian landscape.
THE CURRENT ATTITUDE OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
The government of the United States prides itself on its commitment to defending religious liberty. In the Middle East and Eastern Europe, however, the United States is seen as supporting only those churches who possess sufficient "influence" in Washington, while ignoring the plight of the Orthodox. Events over the last ten years have tended to confirm that assessment.
During the 1980's, the Immigration and Naturalization Service gave refugee status to any Soviet citizen who applied on religious grounds - except for members of the Orthodox Church. The very church which had suffered the most under Soviet rule, whose churches continued to be closed and her clergy arrested until 1988, was not considered to be a "persecuted" church by the American government.
After 1989, Orthodox Christians in both Poland and Slovakia warned the United States government that they were "at risk" as religious minorities. In 1991 the Congress of Russian Americans prepared two reports for the Commission of security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE: July & september 1991) warning of the dangers and asking that guarantees be obtained for the rights of the Orthodox in those nations. No action was taken, and at this time there is no indication that the US has pressed to secure the rights of these minorities in either Poland or Slovakia. There is also no indication that the US has ever linked economic assistance to either country or entry into the NATO alliance with improvements in the situation of their religious minorities.
Despite the large amount of economic and military assistance received by Turkey, there is no indication that the US has ever been prepared to use this leverage to secure the rights of the Orthodox minority, even though Turkey is bound by its own constitution and its international obligations to allow the Orthodox to maintain schools and other institutions. In contrast, US senators have often publicly and vocally called for American assistance to Russia to be made conditional on Russia's acceptance of American Protestant missionaries.
Persecution and harassment of the Orthodox continues because of a belief that the United States is not interested in their fate, and that America will not undertake any effort (other than occasional lip service) to secure religious freedom for the Orthodox. I turn, Orthodox leaders around the world are watching closely to see whether or not future initiatives on religious freedom which emanate from the US are truly based on principle, or whether American policy will be selective in terms of who is faulted and who is exonerated.
The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Orthodox Church has suffered greatly in this century, and continues to be a martyr church in many parts of the world. If the US chooses to ignore this fact for political gain, then the cause of religious freedom - for all - will be gravely compromised.
Compiled by Rev. Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes
Boise, Idaho
U.S.A.
October 1999
Written by Reverend Father Raphael Moore
(Reprinted from Holy Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church )
Again we pray for the children of God condemned to death by the unjust judgement of men: that the Lord our God would soften the hearts of those who seek their violent destruction, and rescue those who are being led forth to the slaughter, we diligently pray Thee, O Lord, hearken and have mercy!
Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
Life is a precious gift of God. It is given to us so that we, while completing our earthly course, should acquire Divine Grace, should become members “of the household of God” and spiritual “fellow citizens with the Saints” (Ephesians 2:19). It is for this reason also that the Lord has established His Holy Church. In the life of the Church, of this Kingdom of God on earth, we are already destined for blessedness, and partake of it in proportion to our piety.
But the fall of our forefathers introduced sin deeply into our life. Sin has poisoned it, has become a property of this world: that is why the Apostle John can say that “the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 John 5:19). This evil surrounds us and lures us with particular force when the opposition to it on the part of the society around us weakens.
At present, society more and more is losing the distinction between good and evil; under the influence of materialism, more and more it is forgetting about the existence of man’s immortal soul, and sees in him only flesh. Disbelief nullifies the moral law, and man arrives at the principle which Dostoevsky so clearly demonstrated in his negative heroes: If there is no God, then all is permitted. And, indeed, what will a man not permit himself once he leaves the Faith and sinks into moral indifference…!
The growth of pornography, the open defense of unnatural sins, narcotics employed by the youth from an early age – all these things tend to convince men that there are no moral limits for man in his quest for fleshly pleasures.
The communion of men and women established in marriage for the sake of the multiplication of the human race and the mutual salvation of husband and wife, is frequently reduced to the satisfaction of lust, a lust which often exceeds that of even the brute beasts. According to the Apostle Paul, many men who are now “past feeling” “have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness” (Ephesians 4;19). The Apostle explains that these men act that way “in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:17-18).
A new manifestation of this “ignorance and blindness of heart” is the enacting in New York State of a law according to which freedom is given to arrest pregnancy by means of an operation. Thousands of women have already shown their desire to avail themselves of this law and to have such operations.
Termination of pregnancy by destroying the fetus growing in a woman’s womb is not a new crime, but one which was well known in antiquity. It is condemned as murder in one of the earliest written Christian documents, the Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. It is also condemned in the Epistle of the Apostle Barnabas, which was a very authoritative work until its’ text was distorted by heretics. In the second century, Clement of Alexandria wrote on the subject.
The very earliest rules of the Orthodox Church, beginning with the LXIII Canon of the Council of Elivira, A.D. 306, and the XXII Canon of the Council of Ancyra, 314 A. D. (Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that they fulfil ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees.), deprive the woman who has destroyed a fetus of Holy Communion for a period of ten years. The same provision is made in the XCI Canon of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and the II and VIII Canons of St. Basil the Great. In his VIII Canon St. Basil gives a succinct and precise definition of abortion: “Those who give potions for the destruction of the child conceived in the womb are murderers, as are those who take the poisons which kill the child.” The only difference between our age and former times is that now this murder is performed not by means of poison but by means of an operation, and that as a result of improved medical techniques, an abortion is now less dangerous to the mother’s life.
Defenders of the new law say that abortion cannot be considered as murder, inasmuch as it is not a child that is destroyed, but a fetus which has not yet been born, and which does not have a soul, and which is not a person. This is the principal argument by which those who seek moral justification for the New York law attempt to salve their consciences.
But that is not how the Orthodox Church looks at the matter.
St. Basil the Great in his II Canon writes, “We do not have a precise distinction between the fetus which has been formed and that which has not yet been formed.” This means that the fruit which is conceived in the mother’s womb passes, as is well known, through several stages of development before it appears on God’s earth with the soul that has been given it by a creative act of the Most High. But from the very beginning of the fetus’s growth life has already been conceived, and dwells in it as a great divine gift. Willfully to extinguish that life is to set oneself against the will of the Creator.
If, in the words of our Savior, even the hairs of our heads are numbered (Matthew 10;30; Luke 12:7), so much the more is it impossible for a fetus to be conceived and grow in the mother’s womb without the will of God. And we know that sometimes this will has brought children into the world when, according to the laws of nature, because of the parents’ age, it was by then impossible to expect the birth of children. Thus we have the birth of Isaac from Sarah, when, according to physical laws, such a thing was already impossible. Upon hearing that the Lord had announced the future birth of her son, she “laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord (=husband) being old also?” (Genesis 28:12). Thus also was the birth of the Holy Virgin Mary and of the Holy Prophet and Forerunner of the Lord, John the Baptist, both from extremely aged parents.
Arresting pregnancy by destroying the fetus is an act usually committed for particular reasons which the unhappy mother wold lie to believe re primary. One such reason might be the shame and fear of having her fornication discovered. Not long ago we read in the newspapers of an adolescent girl who became pregnant and wished to have an abortion. Because of her youth, the hospital required her parents consent, which, however, she was unwilling to request, not to reveal her sin to them. To attain her goal – abortion- she started a lawsuit under another name through a lawyer. Another frequent reason for abortion is fear of the material difficulties connected with the rearing of children. These and reasons of a similar nature may, depending on the circumstances, be sometimes more, sometimes less serious, but they do not change the essence of the matter, and can never serve as the justification of murder.
Indeed there are times when another person’s life can cause us great daily hardship and can be a burden to us. But does that mean that in such cases we can permit murder in order to free ourselves from responsibility for our actions, or from cares which are difficult for us? Cold our conscience, for example, justify the murder of, say, an extremely sick relative we are taking care of, so as to make our won life easier? We shall make no mistake if we say that every believing Orthodox Christian would answer this question in the negative, and would reject the very thought of such an act with indignation. Every Orthodox Christian would be clearly aware that whatever the circumstances it would be an immoral act, a violation of the sixth commandment. No believer would commit such a crime even if it were sanctioned by the civil law.
One must give their due to the various Roman Catholic hospitals, doctors, and nurses who, understanding the issues involved, have simply refused to perform abortions, primarily for religious reasons. One may hope that their Orthodox colleagues will show the same understanding – and the same firmness.
Let mothers who have conceived a new human life in themselves remember that to arrest it by destroying the fetus is to commit exactly the same murder for the sake of life’s outward conditions as the murder of a relative, even though the case is not so obvious, since the fetus is hidden from view and doctors do not show the women operated upon the terrible sight of the child which has been removed from their wombs.
Let women never forget that when they discover themselves to be pregnant, this means that a new human life has already begun in them. Not without reason do certain peoples of the East calculate a human being’s age not from the day of his birth, but from nine months before. And in New York State in the case of an abortion the hospital informs the mother of the death of her unborn child. Now they are trying to make this notification more “attractive” by informing the mother of a child of less than six weeks not of its death but of the “cessation of pregnancy”. With pregnancies of over six weeks, however, the mother is informed as before of the death of the fetus. But whatever the law may call it, the fact remains that we are dealing with an inflicted death, and the inducing of such a death is called murder.
Only in rare cases does the conscience of a mother who has agreed to abortion remain completely at rest, when she has been deceived by false rationalizations.
What spiritual director has not had occasion to note this sin of abortion as an act that weighs on the conscience of the woman who has committed it even into deep old age? Women often remember it with bitter tears on their very death-bed. Sometimes they realize too late that for a woman it is more natural to sacrifice her own life in order to preserve that of her child than to destroy that life out of cowardice, or for the sake of personal well-being.
The Church, on the contrary, expects that a pregnant mother will care for the child growing in her womb. In the case of a miscarriage the Church has a special prayer for the woman who has suffered it. That prayer refers to her as “being in sin” for having committed “an unintentional of involuntary murder”. The idea is that she may have not been careful enough in her pregnancy, and may have caused the miscarriage and death of her baby through negligence. An expectant mother must not only observe hygienic rules for preserving her baby’s life and for preparing for a successful delivery. She must also remember that the expected child is bound to her organism in the very closest fashion and that, therefore, for the formation of its future personality, her own spiritual mood when she is carrying it in her womb is not a matter of indifference. It is a time when she must be particularly diligent in prayer and must shield herself from all sinful impressions.
Her care not only for the physical welfare of the expected child but also for its spiritual condition will be rewarded in the future a hundredfold.
Protopresbyter George Grabbe
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