JESUS CHRIST
AND THE EARLY
CHURCH
AM THE DOOR," said
Christ. "By me if any man enter in, he shall be
saved." Christ is the Door to the Kingdom of
Heaven, which we can find within us even during
this life and which continues for eternity. But
how do we find that Door amidst thousands of
different sects and philosophies, all of which
present a different image of Christ? If we look
into the history of the Church He founded, we
find one unbroken line in which His image has
been kept pure and undistorted. That line is
ancient Orthodoxy, the measuring-stick of true
Christianity.
Come to the Door! Find it through the
ancient historic path…
AT A TIME IN HISTORY
when mankind had fallen far away from Paradise
and was in desperate need of God, the very God
Who created man took flesh and became man. This
was Jesus Christ, the One Whom the prophets had
foretold and the One Whom the whole world was
anticipating. Until then all religions were only
man's fragmented attempts to understand God. In
Christ, for the first time in history, God
Himself became man. One of the many things that
Christ revealed while in this world was the
possibility of a personal relationship with God
for those who believe. He brought those
believers together and promised that nothing
would ever prevail against His Church (Matthew
16:18). This Church was founded first upon the
sufferings of Christ, then upon the sufferings
of His Apostles, and finally upon the sufferings
of the martyrs throughout the ages (I Peter
2:21, Colossians 1:24). Thus began Christianity.
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Annunciation
Cathedral in the ancient Kremlin,
Russia
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After Christ's crucifixion, resurrection,
and ascension into Heaven, His disciples were
gathered together with thousands of people from
all over the known world for the feast of
Pentecost. Then, just as the Holy Scriptures had
prophesied and just as Christ had promised,
suddenly there came a sound from Heaven as of a
rushing mighty wind, and the disciples were
filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:2-4).
They began to preach the Way, the Truth and the
Life to all those present at the feast in their
native languages. Those who received this
revelation and followed Jesus Christ began to be
known as Christians.
From that day forward Christianity was
endowed with power and began to spread to the
ends of the earth. From Jerusalem the disciples
of Christ traveled all over the known world: the
Apostles Peter and Paul went to Greece and Rome,
Andrew went to Russia, Mark went to Egypt, Simon
went to England and Africa, Thomas went as far
as India, and Matthew went to Ethiopia. Although
they were in different parts of the world they
were of
one heart and one soul (Acts
4:32) and
taught one Lord, one Faith, and one
baptism (Ephesians 4:5). Everywhere they
went they appointed bishops, presbyters and
deacons and ordained them, by the laying on of
hands, to be shepherds of Christ's flock. In a
short time the Apostles brought multitudes of
pagans to Christ—simple people as well as
philosophers, beggars as well as kings. Although
the Apostles experienced persecution, torture
and even death for their beliefs, nothing could
stop the Faith from spreading like fire to the
ends of the earth. Nearly every Apostle died a
martyr's death, and many of their remains are
preserved in Orthodox Churches to this day.
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Icon of the
Apostles of Christ.
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It was during these difficult martyric
times that the early Church was formed and
established, and where the worship, the arts,
and the music of the Church found their
beginning. These naturally sprang out of the Old
Testament and flowed into the New. The form of
worship began in the time of Moses, as it was
revealed to him by God. The arts originated in
the mosaic depictions in the Temple of scenes
from the Old Testament, and in the pre-Christian
arts. This tradition of sacred art was continued
by the Apostle Luke, who painted the first
iconographic depictions of the Virgin Mary
holding the Christ Child. The music (chant) had
its beginning in the Psalms of David. Even the
Liturgy (communion service) finds its beginning
in the Old Testament, Christ's Body and Blood
being the New Testament sacrifice (John
6:48-58). The first communion service composed
by the Apostle James, the brother of the Lord,
was based on the Apostles' experience at the
Last Supper, and is still used in the Orthodox
Church today.
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One of the
original icons of the Virgin and
Christ painted by the Apostle Luke
which is preserved in the Iveron
Monastery on Mount Athos, Greece.
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THE
APOSTOLIC SAINTS
FTER ALL THE APOSTLES had died, the believers
looked to their successors to continue their
work. These successors were those disciples who
had actually traveled and preached with the
Apostles and
held fast to the Traditions that
had been given to them by word or epistles
(II Thessalonians 2:15). One of these successors
was a disciple of the Apostle John named
Ignatius (†106). He was a little boy at the time
of Christ. It is recorded that he was the little
child that Christ set in the midst of the
disciples when He said:
Except ye be
converted, and become as little children, ye
shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Whosoever shall humble himself as this little
child, the same is greatest in the Kingdom of
Heaven (Matthew 18:2). When Ignatius grew up
he became the Bishop of Antioch, the city where
the disciples of Christ were first called
Christians (Acts 11:26). Eventually he was
imprisoned for refusing to worship the pagan
gods. Although he was a prisoner facing death,
he wrote several epistles to the churches to
which Paul had written earlier, such as the
Ephesians and the
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Icon of St.
Lazarus, portraying him in bishops'
vestments.
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Romans. Soon afterwards he was taken to the
arena where he was eaten alive by wild beasts,
and gave his soul into the hands of God.
Another of the Apostles' successors was
Lazarus, whom Christ raised from the dead (John
11:1). After the day of Pentecost, Lazarus
traveled with his two sisters, Mary and Martha,
throughout the Mediterranean and settled on the
island of Crete. Here he spread the Christian
faith as one of the first bishops of the Church.
Later he and his sisters went to preach the
Gospel in France. Lazarus was known to have said
that ever since he was raised from the dead he
had a bitter taste in his moth that reminded him
of death and the final judgment, which every
soul will face. He died peacefully as a saint,
no longer tasting any bitterness, for there is
no bitterness in Heaven.
Mary Magdalene was another disciple of
Christ who became an equal to the Apostles.
After the day of Pentecost she traveled to Rome
and appeared before the Emperor Tiberias Caesar,
greeting him with the words: "Christ is Risen!"
referring to the resurrection of Christ from the
dead. She then presented him with a red egg as a
symbol of the new life that was given to the
human race through the crucifixion and
resurrection of Christ. From that day on eggs
were always used in the celebration of the great
feast of Pascha (commonly known as Easter).
Before the Emperor she also
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Icon of St. Dionysius.
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denounced Pontius Pilate for his unjust
condemnation of Jesus Christ. Caesar heeded her
and transferred Pilate from Jerusalem to Gaul,
where he died from a terrible illness. Leaving
Rome, she traveled to Ephesus and helped the
Apostle John. Here, she peacefully went to the
Lord Whom she had served so faithfully.
Other disciples who continued the work of
the Apostles were St. Clement (Philippians 4:3)
of Rome and St. Polycarp. St. Clement was
brought to the Faith by the Apostles Barnabas
and Peter, who later appointed him bishop of
Rome, where he died a martyr's death. St.
Polycarp was a pagan who had been brought to the
Faith and baptized by the Apostle John. Both
Clement and Polycarp wrote many epistles that
still exist today.
Also at that time there was a man named
Dionysius in Athens, Greece (Acts 17:34). When
Christ breathed His last on the Cross, St.
Dionysius beheld the sun darkened although he
was miles away, and said: "Either God the
Creator of the world is suffering or the world
is ending." Years later the Apostle Paul was in
Athens and saw that
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Icon of St. Ignatius depicted
with the lions in the Roman arena.
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the people there had an altar to "the unknown
God." Paul then openly said to those gathered:
The One Whom you ignorantly worship, Him I
proclaim unto you (Acts 17:23), and began to
tell them about the One True God Who gave His
life for the world. Dionysius happened to be
present and was moved in his soul to embrace the
Christian Faith. He was then baptized by Paul
and became a bishop of Gaul (France), residing
in Paris.
Through these holy men and women the
continuity of the Orthodox Church was preserved,
even during those times of great persecution.
THE
CATACOMBS
HE FIRST CHRISTIANS were rejected by the world
and were persecuted unto torture and death,
fulfilling Christ's prophecy:
If the world
hate you, know that it hated me before it hated
you. If you were of the world, the world would
love his own, but because you are not of the
world, but I have chosen you out of the world,
the world hates you (John 15:18). To escape
persecution Christians fled to the
catacombs—underground caves where they buried
their dead—and conducted their secret prayer
services there in hiding, totally cut off from
the world. They lived in constant expectation of
martyrdom
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Picture of one of the underground
catacombs in Rome.
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and so were always vigilant, preparing
themselves for the other world. Earthly wealth,
comfort, and honor had no meaning for them since
suffering stripped them bare of such things. The
spread of the Christian Faith among the pagans
provoked persecution against the early
Christians because they refused to worship any
God other than the One living God. Thousands of
men and women died by courageously undergoing
the cruelest forms of torture imaginable. They
were beheaded, burned, drowned, lacerated and
crucified for their Faith; the countless records
and histories of the martyrs attest to their
undying love for God. The early 4th-century
historian Eusebius wrote: "I myself was an
eyewitness of it. The iron implements would
become blunt and broken, and the executioners
themselves would become wearied and have to take
turns to relieve each other."
The call to a violent death was a great
reality for those who believed in God and His
Christ. Martyrdom was considered the ultimate
act of renunciation of the world and the highest
form of confession of one's Faith. While in the
world's eyes it was total dishonor, in the eyes
of the believers it was the greatest glory. For
the early Christians, the body, which is a
temple of God, could also become a sacrifice for
God in enduring unto death for the Truth. Only
God and His Spirit dwelling deep within the
martyrs enabled them to overcome a death that
was for them True Life.
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Icon depicting martyrs undergoing
torture for Christ.
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From the world's point of view it seemed
that the Christian Faith was dying along with
its martyrs, but this was not so. Many pagans,
seeing the faith and confession of the martyrs
and the miracles that they performed were
themselves convinced of the Truth of the
Christian Faith and became Christians. The more
the Christians were persecuted, the more the
Christian Faith grew.
The earliest account of martyrdom is that of
St. Stephen who was a deacon of the Church (Acts
6:5). He was stoned to death for preaching in
the Jewish temple that Jesus Christ was the
Messiah. As he was about to die he looked up
towards Heaven and saw
the glory of God and
Jesus standing on the right hand of God
(Acts 7:55).
Another account of a martyr of the catacomb
period of Christianity is the life of St.
Catherine (†305). She was the daughter of a
ruler in Alexandria, Egypt. From childhood she
was well educated. She loved the wisdom of this
world until she encountered Christ, Who is True
Wisdom. She then became a Christian and
fearlessly taught others of the one true God Who
became incarnate to save the world.
For this she was placed under heavy guard to
be tortured. When the arena was filled with
spectators, she was brought out before the
wisest men of the empire in order for them to
challenge her in her Christian Faith. Her
answers left everyone speechless, and many
believed her words, becoming Christians
themselves. This enraged
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Icon of St. Catherine portrayed
with the wheel of torture that was
used on her and other Christians.
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the emperor to such an extent that he had
everyone burned alive who was found to be a
Christian. After imprisonment St. Catherine was
taken to the place where she would be executed.
She then prayed: "Stretch out Thy hand, which
was nailed to the Cross for my sake, and receive
my soul." After enduring much torture she was
finally beheaded.
The number of martyrs who died in these
first centuries of the Church is endless,
attesting to the power that is within the
Christian faith. Many of the actual accounts of
the lives and deaths of these martyrs still
exist thanks to the believers who courageously
preserved their memory in the catacombs.
THE
BYZANTINE EMPIRE
HEN SUDDENLY, in the midst of all the sufferings
of the early Church, the persecution ceased. In
the year 312, Constantine the Great, the emperor
of the Roman empire, which comprised all of the
civilized world at that time, was conquered by
the sign of the Christian Faith. Just before a
decisive battle, he and all of his soldiers saw
a Cross of light in the sky with the
inscription, "By this sign you will conquer."
The
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Icon of St. Constantine.
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following night Christ appeared to him with the
Cross in His hand and told him that by this sign
he would defeat his enemy, directing that each
soldier's shield bear the sign of the Cross. The
emperor fulfilled the command of God and
conquered. Seeing the power of the Cross he
abandoned paganism and embraced the Christian
Faith, placing his entire empire under the
protection of Christ and His Cross. Constantine
legalized Christianity and then moved the seat
of the empire from Rome to Constantinople to
make a new beginning, calling this city the
second Rome. Thus arose the Byzantine empire—the
first Christian society that was governed by
Christian principles.
Now that the Church was free to come out of
the catacombs, churches began to be built above
ground. Some
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The Church of Hagia Sophia (Holy
Wisdom) in Constantinople
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of the first churches constructed were over the
holy sites in Israel where Christ had lived.
Also, later on in the sixth century a monastery
was built on Mount Siani over the site of the
burning bush (Exodus 3:2), near the place where
Moses received the Ten Commandments. Most of
these churches still remain to this day as
Orthodox churches and monasteries.
With the Church above ground, Christianity
began to flourish. The Christian religious art
of iconography began to be redefined, church
music (chant) began to thrive and the amount of
Christian literature began to grow. In short,
the Church became the center of every aspect of
life. This period of freedom and rest for the
Church became the time to articulate the beliefs
of the Christian Faith and to choose the books
that would comprise the standard of Scripture.
Emperor Constantine called a council of
bishops to gather
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Gold case preserved in an
Orthodox monastery on Mount Athos,
Greece, that contains a piece of the
actual Cross of Christ.
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from the four corners of the world. This
council, held in 325, was the first of seven
Ecumenical Councils in the history of the Church
and was modeled after the council in the time of
the Apostles (Acts 15). This council of
Constantine's
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Icon of St. Athanasius the Great
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articulated the Creed of the Christian Faith so
that there would be one confession of the Faith
and not different interpretations. Before this
council there was no universally accepted New
Testament canon of Scripture, and, thus, no
Bible. There were simply the accounts of
Christ's life by the Apostles Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John, and many epistles (letters) from
several of the Apostles such as Paul and Peter.
There were also the letters and writings of the
disciples of the Apostles such as Sts. Ignatius,
Clement, Dionysius and others. One of the
persons who was instrumental in this council was
St. Athanasius of Alexandria. He was the one
responsible for the canon of Scriptures that
comprise the New Testament that we have today.
With the founding of the first Christian
empire—the Byzantine empire—came the Bible, the
Creed, and a whole Christian experience that
would change the face of the world forever.
THE MONASTIC
IDEAL
HIS TIME OF FREEDOM in the Church gave rise to
one vital problem. Without the suffering of
persecution and martyrdom as a means to
Christian perfection, many of the Christians
began to conform to this world. In their freedom
and wealth they began to forget that the
Christian life is about leading the soul from
this world to the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a
path of suffering in this life in order to
obtain peace in the next. Consequently, men and
women seeking spiritual perfection instead of
the pleasures of this world, fled into the
deserts and wildernesses of Palestine and Egypt.
Like the walls of the catacombs, the wide
expanses of the desert isolated them from the
influence of the world and provided the
opportunity for a more God-centered life.
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Icon of St. Anthony the Great.
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Through a life of prayer, fasting, self-denial,
chastity and vigilance these ascetics became
voluntary lifelong martyrs and were known as
monks and nuns (Mark 8:34).
Although it was in the fourth century that
monasticism developed, its origin is in the Old
Testament times when God revealed to Moses the
vow of the Nazarite—a vow of celibacy, the
consecrating of one's life to God (Numbers 6:2).
Then from Elijah to John the Baptist, the
prophets set examples of this vow. Later this
was perfected in the life of Christ. After
having witnessed Christ's example, the Apostle
Mark, who established the Church in Egypt,
started the first ascetic communities which
continued this way of life. These communities
had as their models the prophets of the Old
Testament, and operated on the principles set
forth in Acts 4:32. They came to be known as
monasteries, and their inhabitants began to be
called monks. The term "monk" was derived from
the Greek word
monos, which means single
or alone—one who chooses to be
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The sixth-century monastery of
St. Catherine at Mount Siani, Egypt,
where Moses received the Ten
Commandments.
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alone with God. From these communities arose the
great monastic saints of fourth-century Egypt.
One of the earliest records of a monk is the
life of St. Anthony the Great (†356). When he
was young his rich parents suddenly died and
left all their wealth to him. Saddened by their
death, he went one day into the church and heard
the priest read from the Scriptures these words:
If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that
thou hast, and give it to the poor, and
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Icon of St. Mary of Egypt, a
former prostitute who went into the
desert to live a life of repentance.
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thou shalt have treasure in Heaven: and come
and follow Me (Matthew 19:21). Hearing this
his heart began to burn for Christ. He then went
home, gave away all his inheritance to the poor
and went off into the Egyptian desert to be
alone with God. He lived there until he was over
a hundred years old—praying, fasting, denying
himself normal pleasures and reading the Holy
Scriptures ( Mark 8:34-38). Hearing of his way
of life, thousands of others followed his
example, and monasticism began to spread far and
wide. After St. Anthony died, the bishop of
Alexandria, St. Athanasius the Great, who was
close to him, recorded his life for the
inspiration of others. This was the same
Athanasius who was responsible for the Holy
Scripture known as the Bible that we have today.
Athanasius brought this life of a saint
throughout the world and changed the face of
history with the story of St. Anthony, the
illiterate monk who lived in a cave.
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Photo of monks at a monastery on
Mount Athos, Greece.
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This way of life called monasticism quickly
spread throughout the world, preserving the same
genuine spirit of the early Church. Entire
cities and societies found their beginnings in
the simple poverty of these monks. First a monk
would settle in some uninhabited place, then
people would settle nearby to be close to him,
and in time villages would grow. In this way,
monasticism and civilization spread throughout
Egypt, Israel, Ethiopia, Greece, Italy, Ireland,
France, Romania, Serbia, Russia and to the ends
of the world.
THE GREAT
SEPARATION
N THE VERY BEGINNING of the Christian Church the
Apostles appointed successors to guide and guard
the Church. These leaders were called
presbyters, bishops and patriarchs. Presbyters
were appointed as pastors of single churches,
bishops were appointed as pastors over
geographical areas that encompassed often
hundreds of churches and patriarchs were
spiritual advisors over the bishops and
presbyters and all the churches. This form of
hierarchy was carried over from the Old
Testament times of Moses (Exodus 18:13-21, II
Timothy 2:1-7).
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Icon of the First Ecumenical
Council of bishops, in 325 A.D.
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Although there were hundreds of bishops
throughout Christendom, there were only five
Patriarchs—one for each of the five important
cities in the empire: Jerusalem, Alexandria,
Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome. All took
counsel with one another, having Christ as the
head, and there was no one person who ruled the
Church. All significant decisions were made only
in council (Acts 15), no one patriarch or bishop
having absolute superiority over another, but
all working together in equality. Through this
hierarchy the Church had succeeded for centuries
in maintaining unity.
In the ninth century, however, the East and
the West began to drift apart. The Patriarch
(Pope) of Rome began to introduce new and
foreign ideas into the Faith. One of these ideas
was the supremacy of the Roman Pope over the
rest of the Orthodox Church. The other four
patriarchs of the Church in the East, knowing
that having one supreme ruler over the entire
Church would divide and corrupt the Church,
unsuccessfully pleaded with the Pope of Rome not
to introduce this new idea.
Another new idea that the Pope of Rome began
to introduce was the changing of the age-old
Christian Creed that had been established by the
early Church. The Creed is a summary of the
beliefs of the Christian Faith, established
since the times of the Apostles and based on the
Scriptures. The Church in the East warned the
Western Church of the dangers of changing any
part of the Faith and especially the very Creed
itself. But the changes were already in full
swing, and the bishops in the West had already
began to adopt these new ideas, even though the
believers resisted.
In these difficult times of division much
dialogue took place between the Eastern Church
and the Western Church in an attempt to work out
their difference. Since the Orthodox Church
would not compromise and allow any changes to be
made in the Faith, in 1054 the Roman
Patriarchate officially severed itself from the
rest of the Church.
The division was based on issues of
authority and theology, and underlying both
these issues was the following dividing factor:
In the East the Church was always looked at as
something otherworldly which pointed believers
towards Heaven, while in the West the Church
began to become this-worldly, pointing believers
towards an earthly organization rather than the
one spiritual organism of the Body of Christ.
Thus began "Organized Religion."
Although the rest of Christendom tried to
call Rome back to the orthodox understanding of
Christianity, Rome had already made its decision
to part ways and would not turn back. This was
the first denomination (division) in Western
Christendom, which later proved to be the first
of thousands.
Throughout the years after this devastating
schism, the West experienced tremendous turmoil
and corruption. The Crusades began, which
evolved into an attack on the Church in the
East. Then came the Inquisition, then the
Renaissance which brought back pagan ideals and
mixed them with Christianity, and finally the
Protestant Reformation. The West experienced the
"Dark Ages" or "Middle Ages," which marked the
gradual transition between the ancient Christian
world-view and the modern godless one. The East
experienced no such Middle Ages, since there the
Orthodox Church preserved the Christianity of
the Apostles and the early Church.
Orthodoxy continued to endure martyrdom and
persecution from the world—this time from the
yoke of the Muslims. As with the persecution
under the pagan Romans, suffering at the hands
of the Muslims kept the Church pure by not
allowing for lukewarmness of faith.
THE
THIRD ROME
T ABOUT THE TIME of the falling away of the
Roman Church, the Orthodox Church was enlarged
by the conversion of an entire nation. This was
the Slavic nation of Russia. The steps towards
this conversion first began in the year 863 when
two missionary monks from the Byzantine Empire,
Sts. Cyril and Methodius, set foot in the Slavic
lands of Bulgaria and Serbia. Through their
labors, Christianity eventually reached Russia.
Though they were from distant Constantinople,
they were familiar with the Slavic people and
language from their
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Icon of Saint Cyril and Saint
Methodius.
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childhood. Since the Slavic people had no
written language, St. Cyril devised the Slavonic
alphabet from Greek in order to translate the
Holy Scriptures. Hence the alphabet used in
Slavonic countries today is called the
"Cyrillic" alphabet.
Although Sts. Cyril and Methodius brought
the Gospel to the Slavic nations, the full
conversion of the Russian people took place one
hundred years later. Russia was almost totally
pagan at that time, although there were small
pockets of Christianity thanks to the labors of
the Apostle Andrew. Apostle Andrew had preached
throughout the land of Russia and placed crosses
both in Kiev and on the Lake Ladoga island of
Valaam in the north.
Almost a thousand years after St. Andrew, in
988, the Russian Prince Vladimir decided that an
official religion was necessary for his country.
In search of the true faith he then investigated
all the major religions of the world, sending an
envoy to visit their churches and temples. After
having observed different religions, the envoy
returned to the Prince and said, "When we went
to Greece and the Greeks led us to the edifices
where they worship their God, we knew not
whether we were in Heaven or on earth. For on
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Icon of Saint Vladimir, Prince of
Russia.
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earth there is no such splendor or such beauty,
and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know
only that God dwells there among men and their
service surpasses those of all other nations."
The Prince accepted the Orthodox Christian
Faith, was baptized, and ordered that all the
idols of the
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Photo of the St. Sergius Lavra in
Russia.
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nation be destroyed.
It was not long before the entire Russian
land became a bastion of Christian spiritual
life filled with many saints. Soon churches
covered the land, monasteries filled the vast
wilderness, and golden domes were seen towering
over every city and village.
Then in 1453 a great tragedy occurred. The
seat of the Byzantine Empire of Constantinople
was overtaken by the Muslim Turks who had been
warring against Christian nations for hundreds
of years. The fall of Byzantium led to the rise
of the New Byzantium—Holy Russia. It seemed as
if Russia was called upon to preserve the
Orthodox Faith. The first Rome had departed from
Orthodoxy and the second had fallen. Thus,
Moscow became the third Rome.
Just as in Byzantium, every aspect of life
in Russia was centered around the Church and
Christian spiritual life, yet there still arose
the need for a much deeper, God-centered life
that only the desert can offer. In Russia the
harsh wilderness became the desert that offered
solitude and austerity for the God-centered life
called monasticism. The founding father of
Russian monasticism was St. Anthony of Kiev
(†1073). After having been formed as a monk on
Mount Athos, Greece, he returned to his homeland
and settled in a cave in Kiev. In a short time a
whole monastery arose around that cave. Soon the
monastic ideal spread throughout all of Russia,
even to its deepest wilderness.
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Icon of Saint Seraphim.
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During the thousand years of Russian
Christianity there were always saints who
continued the spirit of the early Christian
Church. For example there was St. Seraphim of
Sarov (†1833), a monk who from childhood lived a
very pure life. He had the gifts of healing and
unceasing prayer, and was seen surrounded by a
magnificent, unearthly light. This was the same
Divine light that Christ shown upon His Apostles
so long ago and that His Apostles brought to the
ends of the world (Exodus 34:29-35, Matthew
17:1-2, Acts 9:3).
THE
ENDS OF THE
WORLD
HILE RUSSIA was at its spiritual height, a group
of Orthodox missionaries was sent eastward
across Siberia to the New World in order to
spread the treasure of the Byzantine Christian
Faith. In 1794, a mission team of ten monks was
gathered from the Monastery of Valaam, the
island where Apostle Andrew had preached the
Christian Faith centuries before. In the spirit
of the Apostles, these Russian monks sailed to
Alaska, and through love and self-sacrifice
brought thousands of the native peoples to the
Christian Faith. One of
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Icon of Saint Herman.
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these missionary monks met a martyr's end while
another began monastic life in the New World, in
the spirit of St. Anthony the Great and St.
Anthony of Kiev. This was St. Herman (†1836),
who became the first saint of the land of
America. Thus, through Russia, the Christianity
of the Apostles, of the catacombs, and of
Byzantium was planted in American soil.
After the death of St. Herman the legacy of
Orthodox Christianity in the New World was
continued by St. Innocent (†1879). He was a
simple priest from Siberia who had an
unquenchable longing to give his whole life to
the service of God. This longing was met when he
sailed to the wilds of Alaska. There he traveled
throughout this frontier just as the Apostles
did in other lands so long ago, living in
hardships and difficulty, suffering extreme
poverty and battling the harsh elements of
nature with the sole purpose of making Heaven
accessible to as many souls as possible. St.
Innocent had to create a written language for
the natives of Alaska just as Sts. Cyril and
Methodius had done for their native people so
long ago, so that these new Christians could
have the word of God in their own language.
St. Innocent was later chosen to be the
Bishop of Alaska and continued to sacrifice
himself for his flock. Then in old age he
returned to his homeland where he was chosen to
be the head of the Church of Russia (a position
equal to that of a patriarch). While the head of
the whole Russian Church he started missionary
societies with the aim of spreading the Gospel
to the ends of the world. After having lived a
full life in the service of God, St. Innocent
died in his homeland and found his rest with the
saints in Heaven.
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Valaam Monastery.
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Less than twenty years later, a great
luminary of the twentieth century was born in
St. Innocent's homeland, who would one day
continue the apostolic work in America. This was
St. John Maximovitch. From childhood he loved
Christ and His Church more than anything else in
this world. This love was tested when his
homeland of Russia became communist/atheist and
underwent one of the bloodiest persecutions in
the history of Christianity. The Church once
again had to go into the catacombs in order to
survive. In these difficult times God preserved
St. John's life and he escaped to the Orthodox
country of Serbia, where he later became a monk;
and soon thereafter was made a
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Photo of Saint John Maximovitch.
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bishop.
As a bishop and successor of the Apostles he
went to China, where he founded Orthodox
churches. Here he started an orphanage and took
care of unwanted children. He would even go to
the slums and find babies in garbage cans and
take them home. Later he was asked to be the
bishop of San Francisco in the United States
where he continued his work of living and
spreading the Gospel.
Although he lived in the city, his way of
life was like that of the desert monks of old.
He prayed without ceasing, ate very little only
once a day, slept only three hours a night, and
wholly sacrificed himself for God and for his
fellow man. He voluntarily chose this difficult
way of life for the simple reason that Heaven
was more important to him than the comforts of
the earth. Through this he attained such heights
of Christian perfection that he was seen several
times surrounded in an unearthly light that
emanated from him, and he was given the gift of
working miracles. In 1966 St. John died and was
laid to rest in San Francisco. To this day,
along with St. Herman, St. Innocent, and all the
saints of the Orthodox Church, he is revered for
bringing the light of Christ to the ends of the
world.
CONCLUSION
ROM THE TIME of the saints of the early Church
to the saints of our own day and age, the
original Church of Christ has been preserved as
a treasure given to mankind by God Himself.
Throughout the centuries this universal Orthodox
Church has maintained the fullness of the
Christian experience in continuity, theology,
and spirituality. It has given us the Liturgy,
the Creed, the Bible, monasticism, and the whole
of the Christian world-view.
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Icon of God in Trinity as He
appeared to Abraham in the form of
three angels (Genesis 18:1). In the
middle Christ is represented in a
chalice, formed by other angels,
which symbolizes Communion.
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This may come as a surprise to those who
thought that the divided and fragmented
Christian experience of the west was the only
expression of the Church. Others, however, who
have discovered the Eastern Church find relief
for their souls, which are hungering for the
ancient, historical Christian Church that the
Apostles began, and which still exists in our
own times.
This Church extends from the saints in
Heaven down to the believers here on earth in
order to raise us from earth to the heights of
Heaven (Hebrews 12:1, 22-24). Thus, the true
essence of the Church cannot be found in its
earthly institution but must be sought in the
spiritual life of the Church which takes place
in the heart; for it is within the heart that
Christ reveals Himself.
Once Christ reveals Himself to a soul, the
heart becomes a battleground where the Christian
fights his way towards Heaven (Philippians
2:12). This battle, which is the lifelong
struggle of good over evil and virtue over vice,
is called Unseen Warfare (Ephesians 6:12), and
is the essence of the spiritual life of a
Christian. In conducting this struggle the soul
becomes purified in order to make a place for
the living God to come and dwell in it. This is
the true and ultimate purpose of the Church.
Everything else in life is only secondary.
It was in order to establish this Church
that God came down to earth, became a man,
suffered, died, resurrected from the dead, and
ascended into Heaven. Through this God showed
mankind the way from earth to Heaven, and gave
us His Holy Church to be the place where Heaven
and earth meet, and where communion with God
begins (Ephesians 3:21, Matthew 16:18-19, John
20:19-23).
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