Category: Orthodox

I found this article via Facebook and thought it was interesting. Before anyone says anything, I have no view of the innocence or guilt of the individual but rather like this as a picture of transfiguration:

The Redemption of Frank Atwood

Atwood’s story echoes the lives of the great repentant saints: the Apostle Paul, once a persecutor; St. Moses the Black, a violent brigand; or St. Dismas, the thief on the cross. His prison cell became a desert where he was able to work out his salvation with fear and trembling. His correspondence reveals a soul grappling earnestly with sin, bravely confronting his mortality, and seeking union with God. His sponsors and monastic community, including monks and nuns who witnessed his transfiguration, affirmed the authenticity of this change and swore to his innocence in the murder of poor Vicki Lynne. …

On the eve of his execution, June 7, 2022, Atwood was tonsured a monk, receiving the Great Schema. He was given a new name, Ephraim.

Even though many of the elders were priests or monks, or both, being an elder was not a church office, but rather an informal ministry. Individual supplicants engaged with spiritual elders sometimes with, or sometimes without, the sanction of the institutional church. The reputation of an elder was established “from below” by ordinary believers and an elder’s disciples. Hence, within the Orthodox Church, eldership may be regarded as a more democratic, nonhierarchical form of religious authority, which, until now, has not received sufficient analysis. ….

Many of them had an uneasy relationship with the institutional church.

Spiritual Elders: Chrisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy, 4-5