Daylight Saving Time begins this Sunday.

But while the rest of the U.S. will set their clocks back an hour on Saturday night, and wake up groggy before sunrise on Sunday, we’re going to wait till after the Divine Liturgy this Sunday.

Sleep well, get the kids up as usual, and we’ll see you on time at 8:00 for Matin and 9:30 for the Divine Liturgy!

According to Bishop John of Caracas and South America, Fr. Alexis and his family are alright, “their house was not destroyed, but everything breakable was.”

Their main concerns at this time are looters and lack of provisions in Concepcion.

(via the Fund for Assistance to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia)

Update: “Water and food will last till the weekend…” a letter from Chile

New York – Priest Fr. Alexis Aedo Vilugron is missing after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck Chile early on Saturday, February 27. Fr. Alexis lives in Concepcion, which sustained most damage from the quake. He oversees the parishes of St. Silouan of Mt. Athos in Concepcion and the parish of St. Nectarios in Santiago.

Santiago which is around 500 km North of Concepcion, was also affected by aftershocks, but according to deacon Roberto Leon in Santiago, ROCOR parishioners in that city are “safe and sound.”

Elizabeth Jurlow, secretary of St. Nectarios parish in Santiago, wrote in an email that parishioners of Annunciation of the Theotokos Mission in Valdivia (480 km South of Concepcion), are also doing well.

“Our major anxiety is not having any news from Father Alex and his family, nor from anyone in Concepcion.  There is no telephone contact with Concepcion at all, and all roads going in are impassable, so we cannot even go and look for him ourselves.”

Members of the community are trying to find out whatever they can through contacts with the Air Force, since today they established an air lift for assistance from unaffected parts of the country.

“We all covet your prayers, especially for Fr. Alexey, the community of San Siluan of Concepción, and all our countrymen in the afflicted areas,” wrote Ms. Jurlow.

(via The Fund for Assistance to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia)

Fr. Nicholas Savtchenko, interim rector of the Church of the Dormition (ROCOR) in London speaks with him.

Daniel, please tell us about yourself.

For many years I was a zealous Muslim, as were my wife and children. I was born in the UK, but during my life I have travelled a lot in Muslim countries. I knew both British and Muslim culture. I lived in Saudi Arabia, where I studied theology and contributed to the Muslim mission among foreign laborers. I also spent time in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban, in Pakistan, and in the Pakistani part of Kashmir. I also spent time in Bosnia. In recent years, I’ve been living with my family in London, where, some time ago, I became the Muslim representative in a well-known inter-religious organization dedicated to peace. For the past two years, I was an advisor on Islam to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Two days ago, I called him to tell him I was entering Orthodoxy in the Russian Church.

What was his attitude?

Oh… The Archbishop of Canterbury was very happy. Once, he told me that recently two of his employees in the personnel department of the Anglican Church had been received into Orthodox churches: he respects their choice and they will continue their work in the administration of the Anglican Church.

What led you to Christ?

The first time that I had the desire to study the New Testament in detail was when I was in front of the Kaaba in Mecca — I lived for a time in Mecca. Christian literature is strictly prohibited in Saudi Arabia and many websites are even blocked, but with the development of modern communications, it is not difficult for those who are looking to find the Word of God. After a time, I tried to convince and American who was working in the Saudi capital to convert to Islam. When I spoke to him, he responded with much courage and conviction. I was surprised by his courage, because in Saudi Arabia a man who preaches Christianity can easily be killed. Conversations with Christians in Saudi Arabia were very important for me. As someone associated with the Islamic mission in Arabia, I encountered many foreigners. I always remarked that in most cases, people converted to Islam, not because it was their free choice, but in order to keep working in Saudi Arabia and to obtain a release from the taxes imposed on non-Muslims. The fact is that the salaries of non-Muslims are lower than those of Muslims because of the need to pay a special tax, set by Muhammad. Salaries for Christians in Saudi Arabia are rather low, and some convert to Islam in order to earn more money. The majority of Filipinos who return home immediately renounce Islam. I began to explore Christianity even more and, little by little, I sensed its superiority over Islam. I first consciously encountered Orthodoxy in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. Unfortunately, the priests in Sarajevo did not speak English and I could not really express what I wanted. After waiting for a group of Imams to pass by, I went into the Serbian church and I felt the astonished look of the Serbian priest when I made the sign of the cross in the Orthodox way and I made a prostration onto the ground. Then I knew that Orthodoxy was, of all the Christian confessions, the closest to me. I studied Christianity and Orthodoxy even more, reading books and watching films. I also liked the movie Ostrov (the Island). Slowly, I decided to ask for baptism in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Finally, we hear growing reports of the propagation of Christian missions in Muslim countries. Is it considerable in these countries?

I agree that there are many secret Christians in Saudi Arabia. Several times I myself have encountered people who were probably secret Christians. We need to understand that in Saudi Arabia and other countries, maybe the majority of Muslims go to the mosque not because their faith encourages them to, but because they are obliged to do so under the pressure of laws and customs. Visiting the mosque becomes a burden. Muslims of today are rather less religious than people in the Christian world believe. In Muslim countries, there are many mosques and they say prayers there five times a day, but besides on Friday no one goes to the mosque. Other than on Friday, in any mosque at the time of prayer, you won’t see more than five men, even though there are many homes inhabited by Muslims around it. Most Muslims don’t go to the mosque even on Friday. Some start going during Ramadan, but after the fast they disappear until the next year. In the mosque, once a week during Ramadan there are maybe a hundred people, even though there could be thousands, and after Ramadan there won’t be more than five people. In Muslim countries, many people search for truth and it’s because of this that the Christian mission will grow. Most promote Christianity among friends, and recently there have been television networks and many more internet sites dedicated to mission among Muslims. In general, many Muslims distance themselves from Islam and this is especially visible in Western countries. In Great Britain, many Muslims have converted to Christianity. In the Anglican Church, Muslims who have adopted Christianity are estimated at a hundred thousand people. Many of them are Pakistanis. They have their own Christian churches and are forced to hide because of the danger of reprisals from the Muslims. There are also Arab and Bengali converts to Christianity. Very many convert because of mixed marriages.

Recently in the press there have been reports about the strong growth of Islam in western countries and they have even claimed that the number of Muslim faithful will soon overtake the number of parishioners in Christian churches. It seems strange that the press has mentioned the number of Muslims, of faithful in mosques, many times greater than the capacity of the mosques themselves! But that is not mentioned in the press. What is the truth?

The presence of mosques in the UK is very weak. Most Muslims won’t ever go to a mosque. The young people have effectively left Islam, even if they say that they’re still Muslims. In the mosques they don’t find a common language with the Imams from Pakistan or Bangladesh. Young people can barely speak Urdu or Bengali but only English. Many are ashamed of Islam because of terrorism. Our inter-religious council investigated mosque attendance and we know what the real picture is and it is especially alarming for Islam, but it is to the advantage of certain people to present Islam as an immense force. If one takes the list of mosques in Muslim publications, for example, in West London, we find that there are twenty mosques and much free space in each of these mosques, even though the number of people of Muslim origins in London is such that they would need even more mosques if a majority went. In one large mosque in London there might be three hundred people for Friday prayers. Many mosques are just small halls that are only used on Friday. In general, believers are very rare in mosques and most are children who bring their parents. When they grow, they disappear. Christianity offers a free choice, thus it is much better adapted to life in a climate of tolerance, and Islam is unable to pass this test.

The media talks about the adoption of Islam by many British people. Muslims make an almost triumphant image of Islam in the West. However, the real number of British in the Muslim population is very small, only around 1200 people. How do you understand this contradiction?

It is not a simple question. I was a part of the Islamic mission to the British and I can say that the number of converts is minimal. At Friday prayers in the center of London, the number of British Muslims at the mosque is maybe one percent. Outside of London, they don’t even reach this number. All the Muslims know the real number of converts to Islam. There are those who accept Islam because of marriage to Muslims. These British will never go to mosques and their acceptance of Islam is a formality. Very often they remain in practice Christians. Most of those who accept Islam because of marriage are women. Additionally, many descendants of Muslims immigrants to Britain consider themselves British but could not be considered to be ‘British Muslims’ in the full sense. I’ve spoken a lot to women who divorced their Muslim husbands, and I can say from memory that in London there are maybe 25 British women who have remained Muslim after divorcing their Muslim husband. But, as a general rule, mixed marriages lead to an estrangement from Islam. The Islamic mission in the West has not been successful. In London, there is an organization of missionaries dedicated to the preaching of Islam. They are mostly youths. But, they realize their mission among Muslim immigrants because it’s much more effective, and the British do not convert to Islam. When some Muslims say that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, London imams say that this growth is primarily because of the fertility rate, but there is no real mission. I do not doubt that Christianity is much stronger in terms of mission.

Are there many Muslims who convert to Christianity in Great Britian?

On the one hand, there are very many. This happens without any publicity. In effect, according to most schools of Islam an apostate from Islam should be executed, even though the imams of the chief mosques of London say that they cannot be executed for apostasy from Islam.

However, on the other hand, we can say that there are very few, since many Muslims simply abandon their faith and become unbelievers. Unbelief is an illness common to all. Certain Muslims try to present atheism and the absence of religion as characteristics of Christian civilization, but Muslims themselves, even more than Christians, lose their faith in the Western world. However, there is the very good example of Russia and the other Orthodox countries where the Church is growing, even with freedom of choice. I hope one day to go to Russia, but in the meantime I need to rebuild my life as an Orthodox Christian.

Today, on the first Sunday of Lent, we commemorate the Triumph of Orthodoxy. On this day we bring icons to church and carry them in procession to celebrate the restoration of the icons after the iconoclast heresy long ago. But even though the icons are highly visible, the Triumph of Orthodoxy does not only mean we can have icons.

There’s a subtext to iconoclasm that we miss because we aren’t ancient Greeks or Romans. Saint Paul writes that “Christ crucified [is] to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:23). The religions of the Greeks emphasized the transcendence of God: The high, exalted, remote Deity, they believed, could not be associated with the grossness of the flesh. To them, spirit was good; matter was bad — and man was a divine spirit trapped in a lowly material world, unless he can escape through secret knowledge.

In the face of that belief, the first Christians proclaimed that God has become a perfectly material, fully physical human being; that he actually died; and not only did he rise bodily from the dead, He promises to raise us for eternity in bodies. Salvation doesn’t lie in an escape from matter. Instead Christians expect to live eternally, bodily, in the Resurrection.

Although this pagan Greek disdain for matter and the body was alien to the Christian Gospel, it remained alive in heresies around the periphery of the Church. Finally, in the eighth century, in the wake of Islam’s impact on Christian culture, this delusion reared its head among the Christians.

The iconoclasts [literally, image-breakers] asserted that since “God is spirit” (John 4:24), then He cannot be depicted using matter. Since (they said) an icon can only show the humanity of Christ, not His invisible divine nature, they claimed icons of Christ improperly divided Jesus the man from Christ our God. And, scandalized by Christian veneration of icons, the iconoclasts called it the same as worship of pagan idols. Gaining the ear of the emperor, they arranged to have the Archbishop of Constantinople replaced by one of their own, and began persecuting the Orthodox who venerated images, even putting them to death.

The history of the present feast is that of the restoration of icons to the Church. In answering the iconoclasts’ objections, the holy Fathers remind us that the holy, transcendent God has become a Man; “He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). He saves us by participating fully in our visible, material nature — uniting it to Himself in His triumph over death, in His ascension and return to His own divine glory and throne, in His eternal life, divine nature, holiness and righteousness. Saint Gregory the Theologian famously says, “That which was not assumed is not healed; but that which is united to God is saved.”

Christ can be depicted in matter — in paint on wood, in mosaics in stone, on metal bells and vessels — precisely because ever since Gabriel’s annunciation, “Hail, full of grace,” God the Word is forevermore a material, human Person. He saves us on an entirely material Cross of wood, shedding real blood; He heals and sanctifies us with oil, water, the bodies of the saints, and above all with His own Body and Blood.

God is Spirit, and Christ our God is also human. He is impassible — but in His incarnation, He’s no stranger to pain or tribulation. In Him the human and divine natures are united “without mingling, change, division, or separation,” as the Fathers have said. In the light of this fearful divine Mystery, no Orthodox Christian is tempted to worship the mere wood or paint of an icon: as Saint Basil wrote, when we venerate Christ or the saints in an icon, the honor we show passes on to the one the image represents.

Jesus Christ is the God who gets His hands dirty. That still scandalizes people who prefer a deity they can keep on a pedestal. We live in a culture that — like the ancient Greeks — prefers to be merely a fan of an impersonal god that we can compartmentalize, ignore, and salute when appropriate. The message of the restoration of the icons is that this conveniently uninvolved deity of civil religion is a false god. Ironically, the god that cannot be depicted in images is an idol invented by the minds of men. But the living God – the I AM whose bodily resurrection we will celebrate in a few weeks, is “that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled” (1 John 1:1) This God, who saves the world by His material Incarnation, is fittingly depicted using matter. This is the Orthodoxy that triumphs today.

Pre-Lenten Sundays

• Sunday of Zacchæus
• Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee
• Sunday of the Prodigal Son
• Sunday of the Last Judgment (Meatfare)
• Sunday of Forgiveness (Cheesefare)

From Vespers:

O Righteous Judge of all mankind,
You will come, enthroned in glory and escorted by Angels,
to judge the living and the dead.
Every man will stand in fear before You,
trembling at the river of fire flowing past Your throne,
as each one waits to hear the sentence he deserves.
On that awesome day have mercy on us as well, O Christ;
count us worthy of salvation,
for, worthless as we are, we turn to You in faith,
O compassionate and merciful Lord!

For with the Lord there is mercy and with Him is plenteous redemption, and He will deliver Israel from all his iniquities.

Next week we will enter into the forty-day Great Fast in preparation for the Pascha of the Lord. Today is the  Sunday of the Last Judgement, often called Meat-fare Sunday, because it is the last day on which we will eat meat until Pascha.

Western Christianity has Shrove Tuesday, pancake day, sometimes called Mardi Gras or Carnival* — it is the day before Lent begins in the West, and the purpose of the pancakes is to use up all the eggs and butter  before Lent. Today is the Orthodox Carnival, Meatfare Sunday, the last day we eat meat before Pascha. But instead of a Pancake Day, we have a whole week: During Cheesefare Week, eggs, butter, fish and cheese are permitted. So it is the week of macaroni and cheese, omelettes and fish & chips, which we will say farewell to next Sunday.

But these external preparations for Lent are outward signs of an internal preparation. The last judgment, as St Symeon points out above, is the point at which all self deception ends — when God reveals to us what is really in our hearts.

St. Symeon the New Theologian wrote:

God is truth and light.  God’s judgment is nothing else than our coming into contact with truth and light.  In the day of the Great Judgment all men will appear naked before this penetrating light of truth.  The ‘books’ will be opened.  What are these ‘books’?  They are our hearts.  Our hearts will be opened by the penetrating light of God, and what is in these hearts will be revealed.  If in those hearts there is love for God, those hearts will rejoice in seeing God’s light.  If, on the contrary, there is hatred for God in those hearts, these men will suffer by receiving on their opened hearts this penetrating light of truth which they detested all their life.

So that which will differentiate between one man and another will not be a decision of God, a reward or a punishment from Him, but that which was in each one’s heart; what was there during all our life will be revealed in the Day of Judgment.  If there is a reward and a punishment in this revelation – and there really is – it does not come from God but from the love or hate which reigns in our heart.  Love has bliss in it, hatred has despair, bitterness, grief, affliction, wickedness, agitation, confusion, darkness, and all the other interior conditions which compose hell.

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* Carnival: From the Latin word for “Meat, farewell!” — Carne, vale!