Category Archives: quotes

The truth of honey and grapes.

church, nature, quotes, , , , , , , , ,

It’s eleven years !! since I wrote this post at the Feast of Transfiguration, and focused on honey and bees. Since then I’ve posted several times about various aspects of the feast, and now I’m going to return to this one focusing on honey, that marvelous substance in great abundance all over the earth. Who can believe it? Only God could have thought of such a food. I’ve updated the following with some bee photos of my own, and kept my favorite honey pictures:

My parish is lucky enough to have our own vineyard right behind the church. This is very handy on the Feast of Transfiguration; at the end of the liturgy we can process out the doors and around the vineyard, to bless the grapes. It’s traditional to bless grapes or apples or any fruit, really, on this day.

Earlier on the feast day morning people brought into the church baskets of fruit and herbs and flowers. I carried a wooden bowl of blueberries and peaches. While we sang and communed and focused on the main event being commemorated, the fruit waited. The incense was particularly sweet that day, and I didn’t notice the smell of the beeswax candles as much as I usually do. Though I could see basil in a couple of the baskets, I didn’t catch its aroma either.

At the end of the service, with the prescribed prayers for the event, our priest (and all of us) thanked God for all His bounty, and then he sprinkled holy water over the representative sampling.

He explained to us that this is not a superstitious rite we perform, using holy water to do magic on the fruit. When we bless anything in this way we do not make it into something other than what it is, but ask God to reveal it to be what it has always been.

Whatever created things we are talking about, they have always been meant by God to bring us into communion with Him. The service of blessing of fruit brings our thoughts back to Paradise, and the right and good use of the fruits of the earth that God has given us. We are reminded of how in the beginning God made Adam and Eve to be stewards over the Garden of Eden; human beings were called to exercise a loving and thankful dominion over the earth.

Russia

But we by our sin have instead caused destruction on the earth. Mankind more often than not has overused, abused and consumed in perverse ways the gifts of the Creator. Personally, I often gobble my food and eat without attentiveness to Him.

We have prayers for the blessing of bees and beehives and honey, too, usually in a separate service. Around here it’s August 1st, but I found pictures of honey blessings in Bulgaria where they do it dramatically on February 10 (see the bright cross picture down the page).

People like to take pictures of little girls and honey, I was happy to discover, and I am posting some of them here. The Russian ones are from Optina Monastery, and the Oregon photos from the Facebook page of New Martyrs of Russia Orthodox Church.

Father Ted Bobosh has posted a large photo collection of bees and other pollinators, along with quotes about bees and Orthodox prayers for them. Just looking at the pictures will likely make you burst into prayer, too. Here is one of the prayers he posted:

O God, who knows how to work benefits through human labor and irrational living things, You instructed us in your loving-kindness to employ the fruits and works of the bees for our needs. Now humbly we beseech Your majesty: Be pleased to bless the bees and increase them for the profit of the human race, preserving them and making them abundant. Let everyone hoping in Your majesty and Your boundless compassions, and laboring in the care of these living things, be counted worthy to receive abundant fruits of their labors and to be filled with heavenly blessings in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom is due glory, honor and worship unto ages of ages. Amen.

The photo above is from my church on Transfiguration, baskets of all kinds of fruits of the earth waiting for the prayers of blessing. Some of them were inspiring in the variety and arrangement of items, but one of my favorite baskets is the big one in front, full of apples picked just that morning.I don’t eat much honey these days, but I get a whiff of it in the candles every Sunday in church, and I can imagine the heady scent emanating from these tables laden with jars and bowls and plates of honey.

Doesn’t it just tell you something about our God, how sweet He is, and how extravagantly generous, that He would give us something as intense and rich as honey? The bees, of course, are also in the business of pollinating the fruit. The whole Creation and its interconnectedness is reflected in the Church and in our salvation history, all of a piece and orchestrated in love by our dear Father God.

Blessing of beehives
Blessing honey in Bulgaria
Honey blessing in Oregon
Oregon honeycomb

A beehive of comical beings.

creativity, humanity, quotes,

“To be a man and live among men is miraculous, even if we know the vile deeds and crimes that people are capable of. Every day we build together an enormous beehive with our thoughts, discoveries, inventions, works, lives. Even that analogy is hardly accurate; it is too static, since our collective work is constantly changing and displaying itself in various colors, subject to time or history.

“Again, this is an insufficient description, because it ignores the most important thing: that this collective creation is given life by the most private, hidden fuel of all individual aspirations and decisions. The oddity of man’s exceptional calling rests principally on his being a comical being, forever immature, so that a group of children with their easy mood swings from laughter to crying is the best illustration of his lack of dignity.

“A few years pass, and suddenly they are adults, taking control and supposedly prepared to make pronouncements on public matters and even to take upon themselves the duties of father and mother, although it would be good if they first had an entire life of their own to prepare for this.”

― Czesław Miłosz

The Artist Painting, Surrounded by His Family – Otto Van Veen, 1584

Mother and daughter: boundless.

prayer, quotes, saints

“Prayer… by its action it is the reconciliation of man with God, the mother and daughter of tears, a bridge for crossing temptations, a wall of protection from afflictions, a crushing of conflicts, boundless activity, the spring of virtues, the source of spiritual gifts, invisible progress, food of the soul, the enlightening of the mind, an axe for despair, a demonstration of hope, the release from sorrow.”

-St. Abba Agathon

“Abba Agathon was trained in the Thebaid by Abba Poemen when he was a young man. According to the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, he was highly regarded by Poemen, who called him ‘Abba’ (father) even though Agathon was still young. He was known for his exceptional meekness, accounting himself the most sinful of all men. He was a disciple of Abba Lot.

“Abba Agathon lived in Scetis with Alexander and Zoilus, who were later disciples of Arsenius. He moved after the destruction of Scetis and lived near Troe close to the Nile with his disciple Abraham. It was said of Abba Agathon that he often travelled taking nothing but his knife for making wicker-baskets. He, even in old age, provided everything he needed for himself by manual labor. The abba is said to have even lived for three consecutive years with a stone in his mouth to help himself learn silence and abstinence from speech.

“At his death, Abba Agathon remained for three days with his eyes open. The brothers asked him where he was, and he replied saying that he was at the Judgement Seat of God. When his disciples asked him if he was afraid, he said, ‘Until this moment, I have done my utmost to keep the commandments of God. But I am a man; how should I know if my deeds are acceptable to God?’ When they questioned him more, he said, ‘Truly the judgement of God is not that of man.’ Dorotheus of Gaza twice quotes the final words of Abba Agathon in his exhortations to his monks.

“Abba Agathon died c. 435 AD.”

Source

Passion-bearer Alexander

history, quotes, saints, , , , , ,

It was from watching a movie about Sophie Scholl (I think it must have been “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days”) that I first heard of The White Rose, a non-violent youth resistance group formed in Munich in 1942. Britannica says of its members:

Coupling youthful idealism with an impressive knowledge of German literature and Christian religious teachings, the students published their beliefs in a series of leaflets under the name “the White Rose” (and later as “Leaflets of the Resistance”).

In the movie we meet not only Sophie and her brother Hans, but also friends and other members of The White Rose, one of whom is named “Alex.” A couple of years ago I learned that this was Alexander Schmorell, an Orthodox Christian and co-founder of the group.

Hans and Alexander

There is a very memorable scene — one of only two that I can bring to mind from that film — in which Hans and Sophie are throwing leaflets from the upper story of a university building. They were seen by a Nazi Party member and arrested, on February 18, 1943.

The leaflets were like nothing the Gestapo had ever seen—not rigid ideological tracts aimed at the working classes, but passionate, erudite manifestos that quoted Friedrich Schiller, Plato and Laozi. “The guilt of Hitler and his accomplices goes beyond all measure,” read the group’s fifth leaflet. “Tear up the cloak of indifference you have wrapped around your hearts. Make your decision before it is too late!” –Smithsonian

Hans and Sophie were beheaded four days later, along with medical student Christoph Probst. In succeeding months, many other people were arrested in relation to The White Rose, and among them was Alexander Schmorell, who was executed on July 13, 1943. In 2012 he was glorified in the Orthodox Church as a saint and passion-bearer.

Memory eternal!