sanctity of life

Fr. Rosselli. To men confused about abortion: Consider becoming a man [VIDEO]

Benjamin Peck: The Gift of “No”

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Benjamin T. Peck

Benjamin Peck is the son of Fr. John Peck, contributer to the AOI Observer and editor of Preachers Institute and Journey to Orthodoxy. Fr. John is the priest at St. George Greek Orthodox Church of Prescott, Arizona. Ben participated in a conference called the Festival of Young Preachers where he gave the sermon below. It’s good, very good in fact. Both son and father should be proud.

Source: Preachers Institute | Sermon by Benjamin T. Peck given at the 2011 Festival of Young Preachers

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ!

For He is the one who has given us a gift that cannot be matched by anyone on this Earth, or anything in Heaven. Through His death and resurrection, Christ has given us the power to say the word “no”.

We have all been called here today to speak on behalf of our Lord and Savior, about His commandments to us. Speaking specifically of the 10 Commandments. But what we must ask ourselves today is “why?” Why did God choose these specific ten things to ask of us? Why are these things singled out more than any other laws? We do not ask because we feel the need to second guess our Lord, or doubt His laws. Far from it in fact. But instead it is to understand the Law of the land, for we all know that to understand is to have knowledge and to have knowledge is to have power. And to truly preach the Gospel, we must have that knowledge. We must know the rhyme to His divine reason in order to achieve the one thing we are to have passion for; to be like Jesus Christ and be free of the world, free of the passions, and just free in general.

Our sins are like a maelstrom; one sin, one fault sends us into that maelstrom without a raft, and the longer we stay in that storm the harder it is to get out. It’s like trying to swim in a hurricane, which no one here has done because if you had swam in a hurricane you would probably be dead.

We know that to tell one lie begets a second, which begets a third and a fourth to cover the first lies. Eventually we are caught in that storm of sin because we’d rather lie to a friend’s face than merely tell them the truth. But lying isn’t so bad right? It can help a friend feel better because of a little white lie, it can get you out of trouble with you parents. I believe I can safely say that we’ve all been in the position where our parents discovered our lie, came to us and said “if you had told us the truth first, your punishment would not have been as severe as it is now.” God, is that parent. He is our Father coming to us saying “why did you not tell me first? Because now I have to punish you not only for the first offense, but for the lie as well.”

And brethren, this doesn’t just apply to lying. Even if you have remained abstinent to this day we all know that sex is supposed to feel really good. Sometimes so good it becomes addicting. Some of us, myself included, probably know someone who is addicted to their lust, and that lust burns the wings of the angels to dust. These people fall under a guise of “personal freedom”, but they are not free. Rather they are slaves to their passions! Slaves! And right now they are the kind of slaves that have been tricked by their masters into thinking “it’s not so bad, being a slave.”

When Jesus said “if a man slaps you, turn your cheek so he may slap the other side,” He was not telling us to let the world walk all over us in attitudes of pacifism. He was not telling us not to defend our family and friends if they are in harms way. The modern context of what He said that day is “if a stranger replies to you with ‘your mom’ don’t punch him in the face for it!” God doesn’t want us to rise, or rather lower, ourselves to petty anger because to do so is to not only become slaves to our passion, but now we are slaves to the passion of the one who insulted us. Which is harder to do? To meet the insults of the stranger, or to simply walk away? We know the it is the latter, because it is easier to succumb to our passions.

St. Isaac the Syrian wrote “Death to the World!” Not because we as Christians are called to homicidal tendencies about the world, but because the world is a representation of our passions. The world is a thorn in our side that we must continually try and yank from our flesh. So when we say “Death to the World” we are saying death to passion, death to sin! So that one day we may say death to death itself, for we shall live forever. As we live, our sins and passions are like diamonds; they sparkle, they’re pretty. They feel nice when we’re surrounded by them. But one day those diamonds will lose all of their luster, and they will split the sky in half! Imagine that, one lie, capable of tearing the sky apart.

Yes, it’s hard. It’s hard to resist those diamonds, but we know it can be done. Because it has been done time and time again before us. The Saints and Martyrs of Christianity were men and women and CHILDREN who were tortured, cut, burned and mercilessly executed all for believing in Christ. They died because they said “yes” to God, and “no” to the world. These were sometimes children who were no older than 16 years old, who had such incredible strength in Christ, that they went through the most gruesome torture imaginable.

So now, I ask that you compare the pain of telling the truth, compare your sexual attention your irritation with those who insult you, to the pain suffered by the Saints. Compare your passions to the torture suffered at the hands of those who were so faithful, they said “Kill me, because I will never renounce Christ.” Suddenly saying “no” isn’t that hard, is it?

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His Saints ~ Psalm 116:15.

This does not mean that God is a childish masochist who enjoys watching us suffer and die. It means that God looks upon us always, and when He sees us die for Him; when we take that bullet for Christ, He knows that we have made ourselves free of the world and of our passions. He sees us saying “yes” to him and “no” to the world. He sees that dying on the cross was not in vain.

And why did He choose to die? For the One who created everything, every tiny detail of our universe, it would have been so easy to just snap His fingers and make everything right again. Make it possible for us to enter the gates of Heaven once more. Instead He chose to become flesh and blood, be tortured, spat on and humiliated, and then ultimately killed in the most brutal way the Romans could conjure. The crosses we bear on our necks, at one time, were symbols of pain, torture and hopelessness. And Christ has made this now an avatar of hope, freedom and love. He has made this our key to the iron shackles that we bear as our sins. When He died for our sins, He created a key to relieve us from our bondage.

We have all seen and heard the story of A Christmas Carol, and we know the scene where Jacob Marley comes to Scrooge and says “these are my passions in life! My lust, my greed, my anger and my lack of love. Now they are iron chains that I must bear for all eternity, and I have no escape.” Brethren, we are like Scrooge. We are still alive, and are chains are still invisible to us. We still have the chance, the choice to escape those chains. Christ gave us the key, now all we have to do is use it.

The only thing we have to do is use the key that Christ has put in our hands and said “this is my gift to you!” And we will sit on thrones in Heaven next to God, Christ, the saints and even the angels.

In all you do, remember the end of your life and you shall never sin ~ Sirach 7:36.

That is our parted Red Sea to freedom. Our Savior has already made the wet land dry and made the path clear, now all we have to do is step onto it.

WAPO: Eastern Orthodox believers hit the streets

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Source: Washington Post | Julia Duin | HT: Byzantine, TX

To be on the Mall around noon Monday was to be confronted with a vast crowd of what appeared to be mostly Catholics assembled for the annual Right to Life March. There were students wearing hats and scarves bearing the name of seemingly every Catholic academy on the Eastern seaboard; crowds of nuns clad in all manner of habits and scores of dark-suited priests and seminarians waving banners and signs.

Closer to the stage one could spot several Orthodox Jews and several who appeared to be evangelical Protestants. Then the crowd parted and up on the stage marched a phalanx of black-cassocked Eastern Orthodox clergy led by Metropolitan Jonah, leader of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). Carrying a bejeweled walking stick and wearing a white crown-shaped miter, the metropolitan and the five bishops lined up beside him provided quite a contrast to the informally dressed crowd.

Talking with these Orthodox afterward, I learned that Jonah had put out word that every bishop who could make it to Washington for the march was expected to be there, along with 80-plus seminarians from two Orthodox seminaries: Saint Tikhon’s in Pennsylvania and Saint Vladimir’s in New York. The seminarians and their friends stood in a large clump off to the side, waving a large Orthodox Christians for Life banner.

All of the bishops present belonged to the OCA, the second-largest of three major Orthodox bodies in the United States. I was told there was no official there from the much larger Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America nor from the third-largest body: the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America.

Unlike evangelical Protestants and Catholics, the Orthodox in this country haven’t been known for taking to the streets as antiabortion activists. What I did find on the official Greek Orthodox Web site was a statement calling abortion “immoral” and “murder.” Likewise, the Antiochans condemn it in this statement on their site, adding that church fathers from apostolic times opposed it as well. They also posted an encouragement to take part in Monday’s march. Plus, Frederica Mathewes-Green, one of the best-known antiabortion activists of any denomination, is married to an Antiochan Orthodox priest.

So, why weren’t higher-ups from other Orthodox bodies out there braving the 25-degree weather Monday? It might have to do with Metropolitan Jonah making it a priority. Not only did he show up at the march soon after flying back from a visit to Moscow, he also officiated at a Divine Liturgy Monday morning at St. Nicholas Cathedral on Massachusetts Avenue for those involved in the march. Standing in front of the congregation in elaborate gold brocade vestments, he challenged listeners to oppose abortion “whatever the cost.” He added, “being a Christian is not about what you do in church on Sunday.” One can perform the rituals, he said, “But if you don’t live according to the Gospel, that will condemn you to hell.”

I asked Jonah why he felt it necessary to call out the troops instead of leaving the heavy lifting to the Catholics and evangelicals.

“The church’s responsibility is to be the conscience for the culture,” he said. “The Orthodox Church in this country is emerging from being an embassy of foreign cultures to being an authentically American church.”

And there’s nothing much more American than taking part in street protests.

On Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Obama Corrupts Political Language

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Source: Contentions | Peter Wehner

On the 38th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s pro-choice decision in Roe v. Wade, President Obama said in a statement that Roe “affirms a fundamental principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters.”

To which one might ask: since when is lethal violence used on the defenseless and the most vulnerable members of our society considered an intrusion on “private family matters”?

This line of argument is absurd. Would the president argue that our laws should be silent on matters of spousal and child abuse? After all, based on the Obama Criterion, those, too, might qualify as “private family matters.”

The president’s statement that abortion on demand affirms a “fundamental principle” is evidence of a man who is willing to corrupt the English language in order to advance an ideological agenda — and in this instance, a particularly vicious and brutal agenda.

In his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote, “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.” He spoke about “the decadence of our language” and how “language can also corrupt thought.” And he alerted his readers to the fact that “Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Pure wind is not solid — and taking the life of the innocent unborn is neither a “fundamental principle” nor a “private family matter.”

Orthodox Priest to Conduct March for Life Benediction

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Source: The Times-Tribune

An Orthodox priest from Jermyn will have a key role at Monday’s annual March for Life in Washington, D.C.

The Very Rev. Archpriest John Kowalczyk, pastor of St. Michael’s Orthodox Church in Jermyn and chancellor of the Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania, will conduct the benediction preceding the anti-abortion march.

The Rev. Kowalczyk said Thursday he was humbled that organizer Nellie Gray asked him to participate and called it the “surprise of my life.”

He will give the benediction – the final message before the march starts – on stage at the Ellipse facing the Washington Monument.

“I pray that whatever message is sent out there, that it will resonate into the hearts of people,” he said.

The annual March for Life marks the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion. About 300,000 to 400,000 people are expected this year because the political climate has shifted to the conservative side, the Rev. Kowalczyk said.

The Rev. Kowalczyk considers himself an anti-abortion activist and has been involved with and attended the march for more than 25 years. He was in the seminary when Roe v. Wade was decided and wrote his dissertation on the Orthodox view of abortion.

“I couldn’t understand how a nation that’s really based on life principles … cannot defend the most vulnerable,” he said.

The Rev. Kowalczyk also will introduce the Orthodox delegation at the march, of which there will be many members from Northeast Pennsylvania. He said all students and staff at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in South Canaan and other church members, including the Right Rev. Tikhon, bishop of the Diocese of Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania of the Orthodox Church in America, will attend as well.

The Orthodox church has a history of opposing abortion, the Rev. Kowalczyk said, “so for me to give the benediction is sort of like echoing not what Father Kowalczyk says but what the Eastern Orthodox Church has said throughout the centuries.”

Read more: http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/jermyn-priest-to-conduct-march-for-life-benediction-1.1094266#ixzz1C18Qbx9U

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