Month: February 2010

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class="post-5972 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog-archive tag-economics tag-greece entry">

Greece as Political Time Bomb

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David P. Goldman posted this today on First Things’s blog First Thought. He describes the economic situation in Greece and sketches out some of the social causes and possible outcomes. In my heart I want what I read here to not be true–but I suspect my hopes are misplaced.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

On Feb. 12, I posted this item at my “Inner Workings” blog at Asia Times and on the Spengler blog at First Things:

Although Greece is an EC member, its finances and political system have the character of a banana republic. EC membership, though, enabled Greece to borrow far more money than any banana republic, such that the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is about triple that of Argentina just before the latter’s bankruptcy in 2000. And because Greece is an EC member, the size and adumbrations of a bankruptcy would be much, much larger than that of any Latin American country.

Earlier I had assumed that we were watching a negotiation: Brussels would shout “Never!,” the Greeks would throw tantrums, and eventually some compromise would be reached and the situation would be stabilized.

Closer examination of the political situation in Greece makes me less optimistic. Greece may be suffering from an inoperable cancer, in the form of a degree of corruption that make a resolution without bankruptcy very difficult to implement.

Here are some comments by a political observer in Athens who has written to me privately: Continue reading →

St. Tikhon: Sunday of Orthodoxy Sermon

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H/T: Orthodox History

Tikhon, Bishop of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska

St. Tikhon delivered the following address on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, February 23, 1903, in San Francisco. It was reprinted in Holy Trinity Cathedral LIFE (the newsletter of the San Francisco OCA cathedral) in March 1995, and may be found in the fantastic Holy Trinity Cathedral online archives. We are reprinting it below in its entirety:

This Sunday, Brethren, begins the week of Orthodoxy, or the week of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, because it is today that the Holy Orthodox Church solemnly recalls its victory over the Iconoclast heresy and other heresies and gratefully remembers all who fought for the Orthodox faith in word, writing, teaching, suffering, or godly living.

Keeping the day of Orthodoxy, Orthodox people ought to remember it is their sacred duty to stand firm in their Orthodox faith and carefully to keep it. For us it is a precious treasure: in it we were born and raised; all the important events of our life are related to it, and it is ever ready to give us its help and blessing in all our needs and good undertakings, however unimportant they may seem. It supplies us with strength, good cheer and consolation, it heals, purifies and saves us. The Orthodox faith is also dear to us because it is the Faith of our Fathers. For its sake the Apostles bore pain and labored; martyrs and preachers suffered for it; champions, who were like unto the saints, shed their tears and their blood; pastors and teachers fought for it; and our ancestors stood for it, whose legacy it was that to us it should be dearer than the pupil of our eyes. And as to us, their descendants,? do we preserve the Orthodox faith, do we keep to its Gospels? Of yore, the prophet Elijah, this great worker for the glory of God, complained that the Sons of Israel have abandoned the Testament of the Lord, leaning away from it towards the gods of the heathen. Yet the Lord revealed to His prophet, that amongst the Israelites there still were seven thousand people who have not knelt before Baal (3 Kings 19). Likewise, no doubt, in our days also there are some true followers of Christ. “The Lord knoweth them that are His”. (2 Timothy, 2, 19) We do occasionally meet sons of the Church, who are obedient to Her decrees, who honor their spiritual pastors, love the Church of God and the beauty of its exterior, who are eager to attend to its Divine Service and to lead a good life, who recognize their human failings and sincerely repent their sins.

Continue reading →

Jacobse: Sunday of Orthodoxy sermon

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Yup, it’s a bit long and even though I am a believer in short sermons, it held the audience nevertheless. I gave it yesterday at the Sunday of Orthodoxy Vespers at St. Paul Antiochian Church in Naples, FL.

Sunday of Orthodoxy
February 21, 2010

On this day we celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy, the commemoration of the defeat of the heresy of iconoclasm. The word “heresy,” as we know, means “false teaching” and the false teaching that was finally vanquished was iconoclasm.

The Triumph of Icons

“Iconclast” comes from the Greek work that means “icon-breaker.” The iconoclasts were those who smashed the icons because they believed that the Orthodox faithful, in venerating icons, were breaking the first commandment that says, “Thou shalt not make unto yourself any graven image.”

Of course the objection ran deeper than that. Look at it closely and you see that the false teaching – the heresy – of iconclasm taught something else too. It taught that Jesus Christ never really existed. The second person of the Trinity, the Word — capital W — of the Father never really became flesh and dwelt among us.

And that is why the Orthodox leaders fought the heresy. If the Word did not become flesh and dwell among us, then we believe a lie. Salvation does not really exist. We are deceivers who are deceived.

The iconoclasts were wrong in this way: When the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, you could make an image of Him because He existed just like you and I do – in space and time. Jesus had flesh and blood – just like you and me. He was not a phantom or just a figure in our imagination.
Continue reading →

St. John Chrysostom on fasting

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DO YOU FAST?
Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works.
If you see a poor man, take pity on him.
If you see a friend being honored, do not envy him.
Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eye and the ear and the feet and the hands and all the members of our bodies.
Let the hands fast, by being free of avarice.
Let the feet fast, by ceasing to run after sin.
Let the eyes fast, by disciplining them not to glare at that which is sinful.
Let the ear fast, by not listening to evil talk and gossip.
Let the mouth fast from foul words and unjust criticism.
For what good is it if we abstain from birds and fishes, but bite and devour our brothers and sisters?
May He who came to the world to save sinners strengthen us to complete the fast with humility, have mercy on us and save us.
St. John Chrysostom

THE EVIL SPEAKER

“The evil speaker eats the flesh of his brother and bites the body of his neighbor. Because of this Paul utters the fearful saying, “If you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed by one another (Gal 5:15). You have not fixed your teeth in his flesh, but you have harmed in a thousand ways yourself and him and many others, for in slandering your neighbor, you have made him who listens to the slander worse…Besides this, you have struck at the common welfare of the Chruch herself, for all those who hear you will not only accuse the supposed sinner, but the entire Christian community….”
St John Chrysostom

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Met. Jonah addresses St. Tikhon’s seminarians

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Practical, pragmatic, teaching drawing deep from the Orthodox tradition yet contexutalized to our present circumstances, particularly our interior life. This man fulfills his apostolic calling to teach and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

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