Lent, a talk by Fr Nicholas Stavropoulos

The other day, we spoke at UNSW about our experiences of Lent. So maybe I can start by asking you what your understanding of fasting is. In medical terms, it means to not eat. But it’s a much more common term in religion than it is in medicine; it's an experience that most religions have. Why? Why would anyone submit themselves to voluntary suffering?

Group answers:

- We can appreciate food more by not having it.

Very true. When you're fasting from rich foods you begin to really appreciate other things. When I'm fasting, the stuff I eat I would never touch when I'm not fasting. So I think it is so that we can appreciate things – food or otherwise. Sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder. The excitement the body has by breaking the fast at Easter is very real.

Jesus fasted after his baptism for forty days

The Church as a body chose to fast, it wasn’t a rule set down by God. They took it from pre-Christian practices. The first type of fasting to be implemented by the Church was fasting before Holy Communion. The early Christians would have Holy Communion every day and would have a Holy Communion meal together every day also; called the Table of Love or the Agape Feast. But as the Church became more established and more people began to convert and participate, the Church fathers felt that Holy Communion wasn’t being taken seriously enough as a result of the meal. So they made a rule of 8 hours of fasting before Communion. Then you would have to say prayers, then have Communion, and then last of all, the celebration. So, fasting from midnight until Holy Communion, the Liturgy, and then people would come and eat together as a family.

The second type of fasting was Lent. The Church fathers decided on a forty day preparation for Easter, similar to Moses spending forty days in the desert. They made up the rules of Lent by thinking about what would be appropriate. No meat, no dairy, and the strictest type of fast is the removal of oil too. They relieved fasting on a weekly basis, lightened it up a bit, so on weekends you could have wine and oil. If there's a major feast day like one which just passed, the Annunciation, we celebrate it by eating fish. So the first level of fasting is no meat, next is no dairy, next is no oil, then total fast, i.e. eating nothing. Next the Church developed the idea of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays. So in all, we are fasting for approximately 55% of the year.

It’s a recipe for very healthy living, if you stick to the proper fasts. A very balanced way of living; it also forces upon you a greater variety of foods and less fussiness about the way you eat.

Back to the “why” now. Why would the Church design fasting?

-       Self-discipline. If you don't have discipline in your life then you become complacent.

Lots of things are about self discipline. The first time you do a run at 5am for example, it's torture. But the more you do it the more your body misses the run when you don't do it. The act of prayer is equally rewarding. All types of self-discipline are rewarding. But if we take it too far then it becomes destructive. That which was good for us becomes bad for us. The meat that's good for you when you need protein and iron, becomes bad for you when you eat it all the time.

-       Makes us more aware if all the things we need to work on in terms of our spiritual life. Helps you become closer to your goal.

Prophet Elijah in the desert

A lot of saints wrote that fasting is one of the things which make you more spiritual. When I eat, I drown out my spirit. When I fast, my spirit gets its wing. I have joy then, my depression goes away. I have peace and clearness of mind. They say that your self-awareness is heightened and prayer seems to come more naturally.

So, we’ve pinpointed three things so far about fasting: appreciating the simple things in life, exercising our body and soul, and as a result becoming spiritually enlightened.

One of the goals I had in this talk was to tell you that fasting us not an end in itself. Just like the goal is the Olympic Games, not the exercise that got you there. The goal was my degree, my time at uni got me there. The time I spent at uni wasn’t the goal. Just like fasting is a vehicle to get you to your goal.

There is no point in feeling guilty when you don't fast. Just start fasting again. It's not the goal. It's a vehicle that enriches your life and helps you to connect to God. The connecting to God - if you think fasting will get you there you're mistaken. Fasting is like taking the first step. If will help you pray if you're not a prayerful person. It will help you be in church, calm your body so that you can participate in prayer and the Liturgy.

Fasting without prayer is of no value. So during Lent, there are more church services. It’s a beautiful extra blessing. Tonight is Wednesday, and in most churches across Sydney they are celebrating the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts.

One other thing fasting is connected to, which the Church in Australia has almost forgotten, is charity. If you read the lives of the Church fathers you'll see that three things defined their lives: fasting, charity and prayer.

In a nutshell, that's Lent. Lent is a time of restraint, of going back to the basics. A time of spiritual exercise, a time of heightened spirituality and a time of charity. Charity is an act of love, and therefore, as God is love, probably the biggest way we connect to Him. Someone who prays, fasts, studies the Church, love will start pouring out of them automatically. And that’s Christ speaking, spilling out of you, because you are becoming a Christian, becoming like Christ, and as a result you will enter the kingdom of Heaven. And people will want some of what you're having.

These things have to be sprinkled throughout your life, but during Lent the church says let's go hard. Let's have a good camp. Let’s take it to the next level. And we can help each other. It's a journey, an agreed journey by the group towards Easter. Let's journey towards it, not just remember all this stuff on Easter Saturday. Let's start exercising, preparing forty days in advance. And if you do it well, then Easter becomes a mystical celebration within you.

There are only two weeks to go until Easter. Lent is almost finished. But there is still time.

The biggest thing the Church emphasises during Lent is repentance. Repentance is about changing, reflecting on yourself, putting your sins aside and asking God for forgiveness. We turn black into white, death into life. Easter can become your own personal resurrection. You kill your old self off and God brings a new person from the ashes. And the best way to do it, to repent, to change, to struggle, is as a group.

The Russian Orthodox Church has a saying: there's only one thing you can do really well by yourself, and that's go to hell. So if you stick together as a group, then you can achieve wonderful things.

Thank you for having me. 

Semester 1, 2012

This semester we will be meeting about twice a month in the Holme Building. These are opportunities for us to discuss pressing issues of our faith and spiritual worldview with a number of expert guest speakers. There will also be a number of social events during the semester - we will let you know about these via email.


5th March, 5:30pm. Common Room, Holme Building.
Fr Gerasimos Koutsouras will lead us in a Small Prayer Service to bless the beginning of semester, followed by a General Meeting.

28th March, 6pm. Bodhan-Bolinsky Room.
Fr Nicholas Stavropoulos will speak to us about the Holy Spirit.

23rd April, 6pm. Reading Room.
Demetrios Stavropoulos will speak to us on the Architecture of the Church, and in particular, how this symbolism was used in the building of Pantanassa Monastery.

7th May, 6pm. Reading Room.
Fr Dr Dimitri Kokkinos will speak to us about Bioethics.

28th May, 6pm. Reading Room.
Fr John El-Karaan will speak to us on the Old Testament and Christianity.




As of Saturday 3rd March, these rooms are still subject to change. Emails will be sent out a week before each meeting with all the relevant details. We are very blessed to have these speakers with us this semester, and we greatly look forward to these talks.

O-Week 2012

Our execs were braving the elements this week at the University of Sydney 2012 O-Week festivities! Our stall was creaking under the weight of the icons, books and candles. We were happy to see everyone who stopped by this week, both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Thankfully the rain didn't keep everyone indoors this week!

For those who were unable to come past our stall, feel free to message us your details on facebook and we will be sure to let you know our meeting times.

Our first meeting is coming right up, on Monday the 5th March at 5.30pm. We will open with a small prayer service to bless the endeavours of our society and members this semester, followed by a brief General Meeting to elect some new executives for this year. Our schedule of talks and social meetings will be posted shortly.

We look forward to meeting you on Monday. May God bless us for the beginning of semester,
SUOF execs

Sense and Sensibility

SUOF Week 4: Sense and Sensibility in the Orthodox Church

Guest speaker: Basil Stavropoulos

I've been a chanter for close to forty years, since I was thirteen. I now teach chanting, and have been a chanter at The Holy Transfiguration Church in Earlwood since 1989. I know a lot about chanting - but I felt that for a talk like this, it was a rather narrow focus. So I thought I'd talk to you today about worship in the Orthodox Church.

Jane Austen's novel, Sense and Sensibility is about two sisters: one is guided by her senses and emotions, and the other is guided by her rational outlook on life. In the end, it all works out, as the emotional one marries someone very sensible, and the sensible one marries someone full of heart. In the Western Church, mind and body have been separated. They worship with their minds, can recite chapter and verse - it's all up here. The insides of their churches have been stripped of everything that could distract from intellectual engagement with the preacher. In Protestant churches, at least - not so much in Catholic churches. This was the result of iconoclasm - for us, this idea of iconoclasm is a misinterpretation of the Bible, since we don't worship images, we honour the person the image is of.

Iconoclasm has been a strong temptation in many places - the Muslims, for example. Protestants don't have representations of anything except a cross. The Catholics have their statues. Part of this is down to the Western notion that body and mind are totally separate. Therefore their churches try not to appeal to the body, to the senses, at all. The Orthodox Church doesn't make these distinctions. We are one person. We have always known what modern science now tells us - that the body influences the mind.

At the central and most holy moment if the Divine Liturgy, which is to say, the most holy moment in the recurrent flow of our lives, the priest asks God to send down the Holy Spirit, saying: "Again we offer to You this reasonable and unbloody sacrifice; and we beg You, we ask You, we pray You: send down Your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these Gifts set forth." The original phrase translated as "reasonable" here is logiki latreia - reasonable, logical, worship (but the English is utterly inadequate for the layers of meaning here). We worship God with our minds and words, but also with our body, our nous, our senses, our whole being.

Knowing this, the Church offers worship not just with words, but with our whole body. Even in private prayer, we bow down, we perform prostrations, we kneel. But we start by worshipping God with our discipline and restraint.   

Moses had to fast for forty days to meet God. We also fast in order to worship. We fast during Lent, on Wednesdays and Fridays. We fast before any communion service. We don't eat breakfast before the Divine Liturgy. We restrain because we're dealing not with flesh and blood, but with God, and we prepare.

So, let's talk about the physical aspects of the Church. The aim of these aspects is to unite heaven and earth in every possible way so that the earthly worshippers are continually reminded through all their senses of the heavenly state of the Church.

Sights

Icons: You may have noticed that icons don't look like realistic representations of earthly people - they are stylised. This is purposeful - the Byzantines who invented the form of iconography we use today knew how to paint naturally, but they deliberately didn't - the icons are purposefully beyond the natural, because they are a window into eternity. With the visual connection of the icon, we are invited into heaven.

One difference between Western churches and our churches - Western churches have a spire pointing up, signifying the struggle and the journey to God's kingdom. Orthodox churches have the dome: it is heaven. When we enter the church, we are in God's kingdom. We also struggle, but in God we are in Heaven. That's why the walls are painted with the hierarchy of Jesus, Theotokos, the apostles, saints, events in Jesus' life. We're surrounded. There us no distinction between us and the saints - we are all alive whether in mortal or immortal flesh. We worship together in the house of God.

Vestments: The brocade of the priests, the black of the chanters, the vestments of the altar Hellers (who represent the angels assisting the priest with the liturgy). The vestments indicate the responsibility and position of the wearer. They also express the 'mood' of the Church - for instance, for about two months after the celebration of the Resurrection, all church vestments are bright white and red whereas during the solemnity of Lent they are dark purples.

Sounds

Chanting, singing, bells. In monasteries they have a wooden plank - simandro - which they tap to call the monks to prayer. There are little bells on the censers.

At the recent tonsuring of Father Eusebius [a Greek Orthodox monk based in Pantanassa Monastery in Mangrove Mountain, NSW], he was slowly outfitted throughout the service with different items of clothing; the armour of the monk. We chanted a mournful hymn for him, and then a joyful hymn sung at baptisms. A monk went around with a censer. It was an eruption of joy in the church, attended by those amazing sounds!

Smell

The aroma of incense. Various oils are used - myrrhon - in chrismation and baptism with different herbs and spices mixed in. In the service of the blessing of the water, vasiliko (basil) is used to sprinkle the water. The beeswax smell of the candles. The smell of wine in Holy Communion.

Taste

The taste of bread and wine which has become the body and blood of Christ. "Taste and see that the Lord is good."

Actions

We do our cross, we stand, we kneel, we bow, we prostrate, we kiss the hands of priests. The Muslims got the idea of prostrations from us, but we've forgotten how to do it! It is called a metanoia - a sign of repentance, real submission to God. Our body performs an action, and our whole heart and soul is moved! We have also forgotten how to do the 'kiss of peace'. There is a moment in the service where we're supposed to kiss and forgive each other - we've forgotten. The Catholics still do this, but shake hands instead of kissing. The only times we perform this action now are at the Forgiveness Vespers at the beginning of Lent, and the Resurrection Vespers on Resurrection Sunday.  

In our attitude to prayer, we can't say that it doesn't matter and we'll do it with our mind only. We can't face God before an icon and confess our sins, we must do it before a physical priest. We can't just do things in thought, we must physically face it, or else it loses meaning. We kneel before the priest, he places the stole on our heads.

Having spoken of how we worship physically. We see that we not only sense with our body, but we express with it also. This can't just happen with the body, it must be the whole person - mind and body.

Okay, now onto the chanting section of this talk. I'll talk about a few different hymns, but also a bit about chanting in general ...

The first Christians sang the psalms, worshipped the same as the Jews. Psalms continue to be central to our writing. But at some point, Christian hymns written specifically for Christian worship began to be sung. The most ancient hymn we have is in our Vespers service - "Joyful Light" or "Fos Ilaron". Vespers - esperinoi in Greek - start at sunset. There is much repetition in this hymn. Things sink in with repetition - it is the mother of learning. It's also poetic. Keep in mind that all this developed when most were illiterate - our church is for the illiterate as well as the literate, unlike the Protestants for example, who are only for the literate.

Lent is a time of discipline and preparation. It is a mirror to our souls - a time of renewal, repentance, change, coming back to God. The first thing we sing to mark the beginning of Lent is a very short text, which is sung slowly and mournfully - "Turn not your face away". While this is sung, all the colours in the church are changed from normal to very dark Lenten colours - the vestments, altar-cloth, and so on. This hymn is sung three times. The idea of asking God not to turn His face away is seen in a lot of psalms. It records the experience of the saints, who had direct, physical, personal experience of God - perhaps seeing the face of Jesus, being overcome with God's grace, and then all this being withdrawn at a later time. They grieve because God has withdrawn that comfort and allowed them to stand on their own two feet to be tested. This is one of the most beautiful hymns for chanters to sing. It is very difficult to sing properly, and very expressive.

The service on a Sunday morning before the liturgy is called Matins. The usual hymn is a joyful one - "The Lord is God and He has revealed Himself to us", which on penitential occasions such as during Holy Week, it is changed to "Alleluia", which is sung very mournfully and slowly. This brings us into Holy Week. The church is darkened, no candles are lit.

We move through Holy Week. On the Friday we contemplate the cross in the morning, take Jesus down and bury Him in the afternoon. In the evening, in the famous service of the Lamentations (again a lost in translation moment, as we do not lament but are now hopeful for the Resurrection), we start to sing Resurrection hymns from the beginning of that service, and the priest changes his dark vestments for white ones.

The last hymn I'll mention is the Communion hymn. During Holy Communion, we have  a very rich hymn to sing. We can sing the whole of Psalm 148 where the hymn comes from, or we can sing the verse pertaining to Holy Communion. This is very meditative and triumphant at the same time. It brings us to the prayer and preparation before Communion, and at the same time, it celebrates what we do. As St John Chrysostom said, "we are roaring lions". The demons are afraid of us.

[we listen to the hymn]

Father Panagiotis: It gives me goosebumps.

Purple Autumn

SUOF Week 2: Purple Autumn
Drawing a parallel between the season of Autumn and Sarakosti

Speaker: Father Gerasimos Koutsouras

The primary message in both the season of Autumn and the season of Lent is change. Metanoia, repentance however, is the main theme of Lent. Try and see, as I speak, how the changes we make to our lives in Lent fit in with Autumn.

Let's take a closer look at Autumn. There's a change in weather. You can both feel and taste the change in the air and the sunlight. Gone is the humidity of summer. The chill of winter hasn't yet arrived. There is no extreme of temperature. So it's a very temperate season - not hot, not cold, but measured. On the 21st March we have the Autumnal Equinox. Once again, we see that 'measured' idea of equality, equilibrium, balance. The equinox is in fact one of the criteria used to calculate the date of Easter. These physical phenomena play a role in the Church too.

The spiritual season of Lent always coincides with Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. They blend well together! The Lenten themes are of repentance, training, self-control. We work hard in the forty days before Easter to readjust our way of life, make ourselves able to survive the ups and downs and trials of life.

The palette of Autumn, you will notice, is linked to our spirituality - the colours of the Autumn leaves are predominately the the colours which dominate our iconography - reds, golds, warm yellows and purples. Porphyron, the Greek word for purple: the word "porphyry" which I will discuss in a moment - as you see, it is a type of rock - derives from this word. The whole spirit of sarakosti is coloured with the colour purple - not just the colour purple in fact, but the reds, the golds, the warm yellows.

The vestments of priests and bishops in Lent are usually purple. Mostly they wear red-purple, since blue-purple is actually more a Western influence. Purple cloth is placed upon the altar-table, the icon stands, and so on. What is the intention of this? Purple symbolises wealth, yes - but it also symbolises mourning. It reminds you to restrain yourself during Lent, to cultivate the "healthy sadness" or "joyful sorrow" of Lent. Let's discuss that idea ...

Autumn is the time of harvest, the time when many fruits ripen. The Greek word for autumn - fthinoporo - means the ripening of fruit. The message here is of maturity, ripeness, readiness. John Keats described autumn as the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. The connection to Lent here is plain.

"Healthy sadness" - charmolipi - is a sadness that ends up producing happiness. It is not quite sad in the English term - it means to be sad but also happy, sober and yet content. Today sadness is not something you're supposed to experience. Our society promotes joy without sadness, gain without pain, fruit without cultivation - there is a big focus on transient joy, not deep fulfilment. Be careful of this. Sadness and joy are natural aspects of life, present in Lent as well as in the rest of the year.

Now you may be wondering, "but what about the Northern Hemisphere"? In the North as we know, Lent is in Spring, and the Northern Hemisphere was where Christianity first began. So a lot of the hymns speak of springtime in this period - there aren't many mentions of it, but they are significant, speaking of the "spring time of our hearts". What this shows is the connection the hymn-writers made between their spiritual and physical environments, which is an important idea. It is the idea that people don't just feel things spiritually, but organically also.

So what to do with us here in the Southern Hemisphere? Certainly, Easter matches the season of Spring far more than Autumn - but what about Lent itself? That is certainly an autumnal period. Spiritually, Easter brings spring time; but in terms of cultivation, ripening and repentance, we see that Lent is a far more autumnal period.

For us here, Autumn is Sarakosti, and Sarakosti is Autumn. Sarakosti then becomes a vioma - a special Greek word that means more than just hearing or experiencing something, but living it, having a life experience. When people from the North come here, Christmas is just not right to them - there's no cold, no snow. The vioma of Christmas for them remains coloured with snow.

So for you, every Autumn in your life will be coloured with Pascha.

Think of our vioma of Holy Week. Don't you always think of Holy Thursday as a day of cooking red eggs, as a smell of waking up to dye and vinegar?

Now I will tell you that you cannot feel Easter without fasting.

These are forty days where you make an effort. We start on Clean Monday, which is really like a day of detox. Very strict fasting, no oil or anything. We've worked on not eating meat for a week previously to that - Cheesefare Week. The Church was very kind to us for doing this. Imagine eating meat right up until the day before Lent, then suddenly asking your body to go cold turkey! That's why we have a week of preparation beforehand, to get us into the idea of fasting. In the same way, the Church in these weeks before Lent provides certain Gospel readings and services that are preparing us for the idea of spiritual fasting and effort.

So think on the idea of Autumn and Lent as you fast. Remember that this is a period of soberness, patience, and slow maturing, so that by the end of Lent, we become ripe for Easter.

Great Lent

SUOF Week 2: Great Lent


Guest Speaker: Mr Anastasios Kalogerakis
Attendance: Kostan, Kyriako, Pavlos, Anastasia, Jack, Angelo, Eleftheria, Vasilia


In the second and third centuries, there was only ever a 2-day fast. It was a fast of complete abstinence - no food or drink whatsoever. In the third century, this was extended to a six-day fast for Holy Week. By the fourth century, however, documents such as the Pilgrimage of Etheria (or Egeria) show that a forty-day fast had been well-established by then. By now, it was a fast not of abstinence, but more of a limited diet.

So, what I call fast, you call diet. But it is important to understand that fasting is not just a matter of diet - it is diet partnered with prayer and almsgiving. In Greek, 'almsgiving' is known as eleimosini - which means acts of mercy. Fasting is a grouping of three. And, as we heard in the hymn last night: "true fasting is to put away evil". Be careful - it is very easy to think of fasting in terms of diet only, and even easier to let this diet control Lent. But it gets a bit ridiculous when our fasting food reaches gourmet status. If we are spending more time preparing fasting food than we would on normal food, we are doing something wrong. Whatever we eat, the most important thing is to thank God for it.

The Church knows that we're only human, and that it is difficult for us to jump straight away into this full-on kind of fasting. Therefore, it prepares us for the start of Lent by gradually easing us into both different eating patterns, and emphasising the spiritual requirements of Lent. In particular, there is a huge emphasis on repentance, forgiveness and not judging. Think of the Gospel readings we have heard over the last few weeks:

The tax collector and the Pharisee: think of how the Pharisee judged the tax collector. The Prodigal Son: not only a lesson in repentance, but also judgement - look at how the elder son judges the younger son, and suffers jealousy through his actions. Jesus separating the goats and the sheep: the lesson here is that Jesus is the only one who can judge people. The Epistle reading of St Paul: "let him who eats not judge he who does not eat ..."

Even though Lent, and Easter, occur every year, we still need to be reminded of what they mean for us. As the saints say, "it is more important to remind, than to instruct". It's up to us to decide what Easter means to us, and what we will do about it.

So, today is called Clean Monday, because we have cleaned the table of most of our foodstuffs. We have a local custom here in Sydney that on this day we make a pilgrimage to one of the local monasteries with our whole parish. This is a communal event, its purpose being to begin Lent all together within the parameters of a monastery. The bishop usually comes along as well, and gives a small homily.

Now we begin Lent in earnest. You will notice that the services now will have a more penitential character. So we're going to play a small word association game today - I'm going to give you a phrase and you'll tell me what you think of when you hear it. The phrase is Great Lent.

• hungry
• sombre
• silence
• forgiveness
• sensibility (to control yourself)
• journey

Is Great Lent just sombre? The way we usually describe it is as a joyful, or bright sadness. It is sombre, but it is also joyful - "a joy creating sorrow". Both emotions are part of our life, and should be so during Lent, especially because during Lent we are liable to fall too much into one or the other. Yes, we are sinners - but we are also saved. Yes, we repent - but we are also forgiven. Neither one or the other takes precedence, but both at once.

Silence is a part of our control during Lent, our self-examination. It's a symbolic silence as well as a physical one. Think of it this way - our life is very noisy. How in all that noise can I hear God? We should never cut down on our quiet time because we are too busy - in fact, we must double our quiet time. How else are we able to remember God?

Think of your surroundings during Lent as an arena. School, work, university, home, church - wherever you are, there are opportunities to triumph, and there are opportunities to stumble. How can we triumph? We can not judge, we can forgive, we can obey, so on. Even though our focus is on the Lord every day, Lent heightens that focus.

Lastly, remember that Orthodoxy is not a religion, a trend, a fancy ... it is a conviction that Christ is the Son of God.

We are very grateful to Tasos for sharing his wisdom with us on the subject of Great Lent. After his talk, Tasos emailed us with some books we may be interested in, and that greatly inspired him:

A Year of Grace of the Lord by a Monk of the Eastern Church (available from http://www.amazon.com/Year-Grace-Lord-Scriptural-Liturgical/dp/0913836680). This is a scriptural and liturgical commentary on the calendar of the Orthodox Church.

The Lenten Triodion translated by Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware (available from http://www.amazon.com/Lenten-Triodion-Mother-Maria/dp/1878997513/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1299469673&sr=1-1). This is a compilation and translation from the Greek originals of Church services for the ten weeks before Easter Sunday, providing access to the profound poetry and prayers within our Church. The Greek language service books are available at http://analogion.gr/glt/. Another English translation by Archimandrite Ephrem Lash is available at http://www.anastasis.org.uk/liturgic.htm.

The Orthodox Faith: An Elementary Handbook at http://www.oca.org/OCorthfaith.asp. This is intended to provide basic, comprehensive information on the faith and the life of the Orthodox Church for the average reader.

My Book of Great Lent. This is a children’s colouring book from Greece available in a few weeks’ time from the Archdiocese Book Centre at bookcentre@greekorthodox.org.au or tel: 9690 6100, in case people have younger siblings, nieces, nephews etc. it’s a great gift idea.

O-Week 2011

O-Week at Sydney University! Check out the SUOF stall - and its hard-working execs - below.

Introducing SUOF

We are a group of students at Sydney University who share an interest in our Orthodox faith.

This year, we invite you to join our relaxed meetings to talk about contemporary matters that relate to our lives as Orthodox Christians within the world. We'd love for you to come along and be part of this.

For those of you unfamiliar with Orthodoxy here's a bit of background. The Christian Orthodox church traces it's roots back to the apostles and therefore boasts of a genuine tradition unaffected by schism and wholly immersed within the teachings of Christ.

Russia probably accommodates the largest population of Orthodox Christians in the world but Orthodoxy is also very strong in counties like Serbia, Greece, Romania and also among many other non-Eastern European counties like the USA which now houses over 40 monasteries. Orthodoxy is an ever-expanding faith chiefly because of its ability to blend within a modern world.

The Orthodox way of life values spirituality above all other forms of reality and because of this, the church's purpose is to create mystical and above all proper communion with God. While our discussions at uni are based on issues pertaining to our faith in this modern world, the spirituality and theology of the church will without doubt anchor our discussions within a deeper realm; that of truth.

We hope you can join our weekly meetings. An extra opinion is always a bit more fun!

We meet weekly at 1pm Monday in Carslaw Room 357. These are opportunities for us to discuss pressing issues of our faith and spiritual worldview. This semester we will have the pleasure of many guest speakers who will lead discussions over a great range of such issues.

We are always open to new ideas, suggestions and help, if you would like an issue examined, a question considered or any information at all, please do not hesitate to contact us at usydof@hotmail.com

Check out our facebook page, under "Sydney University Orthodox Fellowship".