It's ok, I also feel sorry that Artintel left us, especially if you said he brought a good contribution on this site :(.
Maybe that was supposed to happen in this post, I believe everything in this world plays a role even if we don't understand it and if this has happened with this post maybe this was supposed to happened.
I'm sorry again too and maybe he will return back soon.
Yestarday I saw accidently a catholic forum where they were talking about \"why God gives miracles to the orthodox church if we consider them schismatiches? Wouldn't be more simple if God would have left only us (the catholic church) to receive His grace and in this way to show to the world that we are the ONE religion? It's a very hard test which our Father is giving us to go through, by searching the right ONE religion.\" - these were the questions/doubts of a (I supposed strong catholic since he had a profile on a catholic website). And he received plenty of answers, mainly \"I don't know\", others said \"you know they are doing pretty powerful stuff, you'd be incredible what it may happen in their churches, I was in Russia and I saw some incredible things but I was afraid because I didn't understand them\", another guy was saying \"you know my spiritual father, Fr...., told me once to respect also their Liturgy because our Lord respect it too 'cause he participated once in Italy to an orthodox Liturgy and a big miracle has happened in front of him, the bread which you communicate with they are putiing it in wine and in the moment they were praying the wine turned into blood in front of his eyes and he was stunished and the orthodox priest told him that this was a miracle done by our Lord for him to believe also because this doesn't happen usually\", others were commenting on the Holy Light from Jerusalem during orthodox Easter, and about people getting healthy while praying to orthodox saints and icons and so on, I felt sorry for them talking between them, and one even said that \"these miracles are so big that I was very closed to convert once to them but I was still very afraid and turning back here because I can't understand them\"
I felt pity for them because this is the religion in which they got born, in catholic religion, and their fault is little, their bishops faults who made the change in 1054 is; I'm looking at their communication for example \"only with bread\". Our Elders also say that they are doing \"trade\" with sins, because Pope is allowed to SELL!! indulgences to sinner, because he says that if you have too many sins you can take forgiveness by donating money to the Pope (the sum depends on sin) and like this the Pope has the right to erase all your sins, and in our church we know that \"forgiveness\" you can't receive by paying, only God forgives us and our \"paying\" is doing prayer to our God in order to forgive us, I have a canonical book in which holy Saints have established for each sin how many days of not communication you can receive, how many prayers and so on, of course if you have stealed maybe you should pay back what you stealed (if you can, to whom you stealed from) or giving something to poor people, and if you WANT and if you can, you can give a mercy to church also. But if our Patriarch would be able to sell indulgences this would mean that only rich people who have eanough money to pay their sins will be SAVED.
In Romania for example we are not supposed to pay anything to church (maybe abroad is different because the life for priest is more expensive there and they have families to feed) but here their are around 20.000 of churches, which are almost full every Sunday but there is no law/obligation to pay anything to the church, but everybody is giving a little gift on Sunday, but nobody is coming in the church with a bowl to pay anything to church, if you want, you go by yourself with your gift at Altar and give it, I remember now from the Bible when our Savior saw rich people put in the temple bowl money and then a very poor lady put \"5 money, if I remember well\" and our Saviour said that this old poor woman's gift is more appreciated by our Father because she is very poor, and it's like she can't afford it.
But still, as I've already said, we should feel pity for the other confessions lay people if they born like this, because it is not their fault, and our Elders tells us that for other confession christians \"we do not guarantee their SALVATION\" because they don't have all the canonical laws intact \"it is something like 2 men are going to climb a mountain, one is full, with all the limbs and organs; and the other has no feet, but it is not his fault he bornt like this; who do you think it has more chances to arrive on top? The second one is at the mercy's Lord, and his struggle should be maybe double than the first's one, the first one gets more powerful by purely being full.\" Of course the 2 of them are at the mercy's of Lord but we should understand the difference, like this is, even if here on earth both of them are healthy physically, the orthodox church still gives him also a healthy communion with Lord in plus.
So we should feel pity for them and I'm sure maybe those of them who live a clean life, in prayers, fasting and so on, will see the light one day.
In Christ!
Be the first person to like this.