Orthodoxy of the Heart - Chapter 86 from "Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works"
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.ย. 2022
- Today we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the falling asleep of one of the most blessed and saintly Americans: Hieromonk Seraphim of Platina. Memory eternal! Holy Father Seraphim, pray to God for us!
From chapter 86 of the biography by Hieromonk Damascene, “Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works”:
He never changed his basic, original philosophy; he was no closer to becoming an ecumenist, modernist, or a New Calendarist at the end of his life than he had been when he had first started printing The Orthodox Word. It was just that now, especially after witnessing the bitter fruits of “correctness disease” in the Church, he saw that there was something much more essential that he should be preaching in these last times, when “the love of many grows cold.” Above all, Fr. Seraphim became a preacher of Orthodoxy of the heart. Besides the resurrection of Holy Russia (of which more will be said later), this was his main theme during the last part of his life.
“St. Tikhon, therefore, gives us a start in understanding what Orthodoxy is: it is something first of all of the heart, not just the mind, something living and warm, not abstract and cold, something that is learned and practiced in life, not just in school.”
In preaching inward Orthodoxy of the heart, Fr. Seraphim warned against being calculating and critical. He identified this as the temptation of following “external wisdom.” “Sometimes,” he said, “one’s zeal for ‘Orthodoxy’ (in quotes) can be so excessive that it produces a situation similar to that which caused an old Russian woman to remark about an enthusiastic American convert: ‘Well, he’s certainly Orthodox, all right-but is he a Christian?’ To be ‘Orthodox but not Christian’ is a state that has a particular name in Christian language: it means to be a pharisee, to be so bogged down in the letter of the Church’s laws that one loses the spirit that gives them life, the spirit of true Christianity.”
Fr. Herman recalls how, when he and Fr. Seraphim were first honoring the memory of Fr. Gerasim in The Orthodox Word in the early 1970s, he had expressed his reservations to his co-laborer. “How can we present Fr. Gerasim as a modern giant of traditional Orthodoxy,” Fr. Herman asked, “when he had those nineteenth-century Western-style icons in his church?”
“Those very icons,” Fr. Seraphim replied, ”prove that he was in the tradition, because he accepted simply and lovingly what was handed down to him from his righteous fathers in the Faith.”
Fr. Seraphim also observed how we can be following “external wisdom” when we get caught up in exalted ideas: “It is the fashion now to learn about the Jesus Prayer, to read the Philokalia, to go ‘back to the Fathers.’ These kinds of things also will not save us-they are external. They may be helpful if they are used rightly, but if they become your passion, the first thing you are after, then they become externals which lead not to Christ, but to Antichrist.”
Even though monastics have a greater responsibility to pray for the world because of their greater opportunity, Fr. Seraphim made clear that this duty is common to all Christians. In his talks he counseled monastics and laypeople alike to go throughout the world in their minds, praying for those who were struggling and suffering. He especially asked them to pray for Christians who were being persecuted for their faith.
Fr. Seraphim’s love for others, expressed in his outward deeds and in his inward prayer, was both the means and the evidence of his going deeper into the Orthodox Christian Faith. As our Lord Jesus Christ has said, By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples: if ye have love one to another (John 13:35). Fr. Seraphim had truly been granted the prayer he had brought before the Mother of God in 1961, when he had asked her to let him enter “the heart of hearts” of the saving Faith of Christ. At the heart of true Christianity, he had found that on which hang all the law and the prophets (Matt. 22:40): love for God, and love for one’s neighbor. It was the first and second commandment of the incarnate God-of Him Who made of Love a law.
The original biography: Not of This World: The Life and Teaching of Fr. Seraphim Rose
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Read the text of this recording: orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/fsr_86...
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Lord have mercy
Please pray for my wife, Cathy. She is against Orthodoxy. I wish to convert. I can't without her. Thank you for your prayers.
Daniel Galey
Lord, have mercy.
A word for all us 'Ortho Bros' for sure.
We just gotta work on it maybe encourage other traditionalist to be more understanding and don't think everyone has bad intentions for the church some do but god wins
Literally what did you even say
Like Fr. Seraphim said, no matter where we are in our spiritual life, start NOW to live the Orthodoxy of the heart and I shall listen. This really, really hit home. Lord have mercy.
Glory to God for Fr Seraphim Rose, for communicating to us the true Orthodox Faith worth dying for!
Blessed 40th year repose of Fr. Seraphim Rose!!
Glory to God.
Orthodox wisdom indeed.
Very good. Thanks ☦️ if there's anyone out there like me who maybe has plenty of time on their hands, this is what I did. I prayed to God to give me the heart and the opportunity to do some kind of volunteerism. That was three or four months ago and I have found a great deal of blessedness and satisfaction and volunteering at the local Senior center just washing dishes and preparing meals. Most people don't suffer from an excess amount of free time, but if you do and your orthodox, I can't stress enough the importance of doing something like that
Thank you Father Seraphim.
Now THESE sound like the words of a saint 👍
He is a very dynamic man, indeed.
Thank you☦️
Lord have mercy on me, a sinner🙏
These words are so true. I pray many be persuaded rightly than superficially grasping straws of deceptions that seems right but is not.
Offence is like a brick and morter wall glued together with slime.
Lord have mercy🙏
Thank you so much for sharing this reading. I am so hungry to get my hands on this book but it is difficult to track down. You do so much good sharing Father Seraphim with us. This reading was an especially heart softening look in the mirror. Father Seraphim please pray for Orthodox Wisdom and us!
God Bless you. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has spread the Gospel far and wide from 34 AD also in Africa. But we should have done and should do more. እግዚአብሔር ይባርክህ 🙏
❤️
The Lord bless you
Orthodoxy at it's very heart.
We are so ignorant. The best we can do is focus on allowing Christ's love to transform us. We can't go wrong loving each other, instead of condemning. I am a transgender man, and although one day I may know whether that aspect of my life is a sin, we are all sinners anyway. I feel Christ's love in my heart so powerfully, I feel like I might physically die if He were to increase it! I love everyone, and work hard to release my judgement of others, because I don't know their hearts and history. Only God has complete Truth, it's not our job to condemn in our ignorance. I love you all 🙏
I wont bow to nothing but my lord Jesus when I see him . And I have one mediator between me and God and that's the man Christ Jesus.But I believe he was saved.
+Em's DIY Christ is Fully God and Fully Man, that's his meditation. Christ isn't only a man who helps you to get to God the Father to make you his Son by grace, as God the Father and God the Son are equal with their Divine nature, as well as Holy Spirit.
You can ask anyone to pray for you, as God "is not the God of the dead but of the living" (Matthew 22:32).
That's why we ask Saints to pray for us, because their prayer has a great power.
@@user-ig3lm4hb7q Thank you for commenting so kindly, I just dont see any example or command to praying to poeple who have passed on in life .And Jesus has been raised and Glorified. Everyone else is waiting.i believe it's in Timothy Paul say "we have one mediate between God and man ,the man Christ Jesus.?right, thanks .
@@emsdiy6857 Do you ever wonder how christianity survived 1600 years without what we call now the bible?
@@soare5182 With the spirit, I am saved I know it works. You dont need a bible to be saved you just need to listen to the spirit, and I think we had the bible complete in 200 a.d and i know not everyone had one of course but, by the spirit.
@@emsdiy6857 😂😂😂
Debate me bro
Why didn't he pray to Jesus Christ himself?
Lol, he did.
Praying to the Lord is always the most important. Intercessions of the Saints can be a tool to help us, but it definitely isn't the main goal. No Saint is greater than the good Lord Jesus Christ!
FSR,is very attractive to converts however IMHO, he had some weird views and one should be discerning in how he influences them. An example is his book on the soul after death. This book is diliberatly dishonest and basically it is an occult text . It denies Christs triumph over death and reinstated the power of the devil over humanity after repose. A cruel and merciless outlook denying Christ's mercy, not very Orthodox at all.
You clearly haven’t read the book, or haven’t read it very well. I’ve noticed that the people who reject the Patristic understanding of the soul’s travels after death have either misunderstood the nuance and fallen into extremes, or have simply not read enough of the fathers with a humble mind. A full treatment of the issue is given by St. Anthony’s Monastery in “The Departure of the Soul” and it’s in harmony with Fr. Seraphim’s teachings since both founded their teachings in the Holy Tradition. Christ will judge us according to our faith and our works, both together, inseparable, and nothing the demons are allowed to do override God’s mercy and judgment.