When the Homily is about Immunology

Orthodox Psychotherapy
The Science of the Fathers

My Godson just told me that reading Mountain of Silence has been life-changing for him. I told the person who originally recommended that book to me pretty much the same thing. I think another gem has been recommended to me again. The title, as noted above, certainly warrants curiosity. The author, Metropolitan Hierotheos, is not, despite the title, addressing the means by which Orthodox Christians treat mental illness; instead he is proceeding from the assumption that we are ALL ill and in need of treatment and therapy.

…the incarnation of Christ and the work of the Church aim at enabling the person to attain to the likeness of God, that is to reestablish communion with God. This passage way from a fallen state to divinization is called the healing of the person, because it is connected with his return from a state of being contrary to nature, to that of a state according to nature and above nature.

Hence, Met. Hierotheos, refers to the praxis of the Orthodox Church as a therapeutic method to heal the human person. The fasting, the liturgy, the prayers, etc are all apart of the tried and true method handed down to us by the fathers and mothers of the Church by which we can be made well. None of which would be possible were it not for the salvific work of Christ. This, as I have recently told an inquiring friend, is the heart of Orthodoxy: healing and making whole. All of the lofty and numerous theologies and religious practices in the world which do not in some way connect to and make manifest this healing is like a bad alternative ending on a DVD.