Orthodox faith biography

The foundations of the Orthodox faith Orthodoxy are a Christian faith that retains the intact truth of the teachings of Jesus Christ, as it is captured in the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Tradition. Thus, the Orthodox creed dates back to the apostolic times. The Church teaches that God is one in essence, but threefold in the faces: God is the Father, God - the Son and God is the Holy Spirit, and all three hypostases of the One God are equal in their divine nature and are in an inseparable unity, so that no action of God is the joint participation of three persons of the Divine Trinity.

God is the creator of the entire existing world, visible and invisible, that is, the physical and spiritual world. God created the world freely, not in need of creation, but in his love. According to Orthodox teaching, everything created was created by perfect and sinless, and sin and evil in the world appeared only after the supreme angel Lucifer Lat. Thus, Lucifer himself fell away from God himself and carried away part of the angels with him.

Thus, evil in the Orthodox understanding is not something in itself, but there is a distortion of the world arranged by God. Evil is the lack of good, distortion of truth. The first man Adam, together with his wife Eva, was also sinless and holy from creation, but Satan deceived Eve, and through her and her husband Adam to disobedience to God, which led to the fall of the first people and the loss of holiness, and as a result, and to be more in close proximity to God.

The atonement of this original sin was accomplished through the embodiment of the god-son from the Virgin Mary, who, being the maiden, the action of the Holy Spirit conceived in the womb of his son, who, according to birth, was given the name Jesus. So the great sacrament of the goddess was accomplished. Jesus Christ redeemed a man from the power of sin gravitating over Him, elevated the previously fallen nature of the human race above angelic dignity.

The day of the Church is revered by the day of Pentecost - the fiftieth day after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, when the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles. A separate existence of local Orthodox churches in different countries, for example, of Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, Russian, etc. This unity is manifested in a single confession by all Orthodox Christians of the dogmatic foundations of the Orthodox faith, in the uniform sacraments of church, in the unity of the episcopate, in fraternal love and communication.

The Orthodox Church has a hierarchy. In the sacrament of the priesthood, or chirotony, grace is reported to a person for the Consumes of the Sacraments and Serving God. The highest and most important rank is the rank of bishop. The bishop represents the fullness of the church, he leads a large church community in a certain territory of the diocese, spiritually leads the believers of his diocese.

It is the bishop that makes the sacrament of the priesthood, that is, ordains clergymen, while the bishop ordains the cathedral of bishops. In the person of the bishops, the Church stores the apostolic succession - a series of ordinations, continuously ascending to the apostles, who received grace from Jesus Christ himself. All bishops are equal in this grace, but by the degree of seniority, archbishops and metropolitans are also distinguished.

Patriarch is a bishop set by the Primate of the Great Local Church. The presbyters, or priests, the next rank of hierarchy, commit all the sacraments with the bishop of their bishop, except for ordination.

The deacons themselves do not commit worship, but help the bishop or priest. The clergy is divided into white and black. The white clergy are priests and deacons with their families. Black - monks, that is, bringing special vows of ministry to God, including a vow of celibacy. Monks may not accept the sacred dignity, or can be ordained into the rank of deacon Hierodeacon, or priest hieromonk.

The abbot of the monasteries wear the sanctuary of hegumen or archimandrite. Bishops are delivered only from monasticism. However, this church hierarchy does not imply that the highest church leadership was free from well -deserved criticism from all other members of the Orthodox Church. Any Orthodox Christian must absorb the spirit of Orthodox tradition. Fidelity to God is fidelity primarily to legend, fidelity to the patristic norms of spiritual life and faith.

Therefore, every person who evades the Orthodox faith, regardless of what place in the hierarchy he occupies, may be criticized from any other member of the Church. We see that this is an attitude towards fundamental internal spiritual freedom for members of the Orthodox Church. In the history of Orthodoxy, there are many examples of how even the highest leadership of the Church, Metropolitans and Patriarchs were subjected to the most strict criticism from other members of the Church in cases where they evaded heresy.

The most important principles of Orthodoxy are openness for all Orthodox faith and the freedom of the human person.Orthodoxy teaches that a person is initially free, and the meaning of the whole spiritual life of a person is that a person gains this genuine freedom, freedom from passions, freedom from the sins that a person enslaves. It is difficult to achieve this freedom, according to Orthodox creed, this is accomplished only by a great feat.

But at the same time, salvation is possible only as a free act of man himself. The Holy Fathers of the Church teach that for salvation a person needs two points: firstly, this is the action of the grace of God, and secondly, this is free permission of man, his own work. Thus, the Orthodox Church insists on the fundamentally free acceptance by a person of the truths of the gospel.

The Orthodox Church teaches that freedom is the most important quality in the personality of a person. A person is, first of all, a personality, and a person, according to the teachings of the Holy Fathers, is a great secret, for this is the image of God inside man himself. And no one can encroach on this God this person freedom. It is in human freedom that the possibility of salvation is, for salvation is this improvement of man so much that he becomes like God, freely accepts and elects life according to God's commandments.

This is precisely the salvation of man, his union with God, subordination of his will to the will of God. We find completely different teachings in other Christian religions, where the legal understanding of salvation dominates. According to this understanding, the salvation of a person depends on whether he will be able to his good deeds, faith and repentance to propitiate a strict judgment - God.

The Orthodox Church teaches that there are two ways to save a person. One way is the path of solitude, renunciation of the world, the monastic path. This is the path of a person’s intense struggle with sins, with vices, subordination of his will entirely and completely the will of God. This is the path of asceticism and special service to God, the Church and the neighbor.

Another path is the way of serving in the world. This is the path of family life. The family is considered by the Orthodox Church as one of the most important institutions of public life and at the same time as a path to salvation of man. The family is called in the church language a small church or home church. It is from the family that the entry of man into the church begins, his path to salvation.

It is in the family that the basic norms of a person’s social behavior are developed with the understanding that each member of society and each member of the family bears special obedience. So, the husband is the head of the family, and the wife is an assistant to her husband. The husband must devote all his strengths and all his strength to his wife and his family.

The Christian family is built on love, on the self -denial of man, on his sacrifice in relation to other members of his family. Such is the love of both the elders in relation to the younger and the youngest in relation to the elders. The same principles are the basis of Christian Orthodox statehood. The Orthodox Church pays great attention to issues of state life. Once Christianity began in the conditions of the persecution of the Roman Empire on the Christian Church.

But even at that time, the Apostle Paul commands Christians to pray for power and honor the king not only for fear, but also for the sake of conscience, knowing that power is the establishment of God. Any power is the image of God's order on earth, in contrast to a mess, in contrast to the kingdom of the arbitrariness of the human. Such is even a godless power. The Orthodox kingdom - the autocratic monarchy is recognized as the ideal.

The king is the first prayer book for the whole people. The king is entrusted with power from God in order to monitor first of all, the moral and spiritual state of his people, not allowing evil and sin to unhindemically spread among the people, and caring about the standard of living and well -being of his people. Protection of the Fatherland, the protection of the Motherland is one of the greatest services of a Christian.

The Orthodox Church teaches that any war is evil, because it is connected with hatred, discord, violence and even murder, which is a terrible mortal sin. However, the war in defense of its Fatherland is blessed by the Church and military service is revered as the highest service. The Orthodox Church glorifies many holy soldiers. These are ancient warriors, primarily the early Christian martyrs, these are many soldiers of Holy Rus', such as St.

Prince Alexander Nevsky. The service of the warrior is understood as the fulfillment of the commandment of Christ: “There is no love higher than if anyone puts his soul for his own. Gospel commandments, which the preaching of the Orthodox Church brought into the life of a person, formed the basis of the whole life, the whole life of the Russian people, which was recorded in all the features of traditional national Russian culture: songs, dancing, rites, morality.

Orthodoxy is closely connected precisely. National culture. In the sacraments, a person can be combined with God in the most close.Of all the sacraments, the most important is the sacrament of the Eucharist or Communion, the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, in which a person joins the deity himself. The sacrament of baptism and anointing is the sacrament through which a person enters the church, is made part of the body of Christ, getting rid of sin and getting the opportunity to start a new life.

The sacrament of marriage is a sacrament in which a person is combined with another person to abide by a single union in order to live a single whole family. In the sacrament of excretion or co -conservation for a person, the forgiveness of all his sins, including forgotten ones, and the petition for the cure of a person from diseases are requested. The sacrament of repentance is the most important in the spiritual life of the Orthodox Church.

In this sacrament, a person actually says goodbye to a person that he committed, subject to sincere repentance in this sin and the confession of this sin in the sacrament of confession. The sacrament of confession is also one of the most important sacraments, because it is through the frequent confession of his sins that a person receives a fertilizer, gracious power and support in order to get rid of sin and learn not to commit it.

The sacrament of the priesthood is a sacrament in which a person is taught the grace of the Holy Spirit to commit the Sacraments, for the achievement of worship, the grace that was once taught by the Christmas -Sloder by his apostles. In prayer, a person is combined with God himself, turning to Him. Prayer is general and home. In domestic prayer, a man one on one will be ahead of God and reveals his heart before him.

And the church prayer is a common prayer in which all members of the church participate, not only those who are apparently and visibly present at worship, but also those who are invisibly, including saints and angels who petition and pray with us and the head of the Church of Jesus Christ. The church teaches that the prayer should be sobrous so that it is alien to all spiritual exaltation, and the church warns a person from lovely - a state of deceiving spirituality, when a person, believing that he has reached some special spiritual heights, thinking of communicating with angels, with the saints and with God himself, in fact appears his own pride, his own selfishness.

So the church warns a person against temptations - dangerous breakdowns for the human psyche.