PRAYER. O Jesus, Son of God, how generously have you given us, on the Cross, all You had! To Your executioners, Your loving prayer; to the thief, Paradise; to Your Mother, a son; and to the son, a Mother; to the dead, You gave back life, and You placed Your soul in Your Father`s hands; You showed Your power to the entire world, and shed, through Your wide and numerous wounds, not a few drops, but all Your Blood. to redeem us. O meek Lord and Saviour of the world, how can we thank You worthily?
The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
I was brought up Catholic and these videos assist me in deepening my spiritual life. I think these would be good for all christians, regardless of denomination. Your videos bring faith alive for me. God bless you! 🙏💒➕
I think CS Lewis has a famous quote where (paraphrasing) when you look at any human you’re actually looking at someone who is immortal. What do you think about this?
On what Day did the fall occur? Creation Day Six, Rest Day Seven, or some other Day perhaps after Seven? My posit is that it occurred at the very end of Creation Day Six, and that it was considered Very Good, because it has a purpose. I would also argue that we are currently in the time period of Day Seven.
This is a difficult and long question. The simplest way to address it is that God the Father didn't seek to punish anyone for our sins; God isn't bound by some greater laws of justice or other forces outside of Him. Sin is separation from God. Christ joins us in sin, becoming sin (or entering sin) Himself in that He joins us in the emptiness and darkness of death. He joins us there because that's where we are, and He pulls us out (as we see in the icon of the Resurrection).
Thank you. Yes - the best counter argument to the "Jesus was punished for our sins" notion is that God cannot possibly be bound by anything greater than or outside Himself. And since death is the consequence of sin, perhaps we could say He became sin by joining us in the consequences of our sin.
Hi! First I want to say that I LOVE your ministry. As a teen educator, I use it all the time in class, and also find it helpful for my spiritual knowledge and development. Thank you for making this! I have a thought to share with you: Our patriarchs have spoken a lot about creation care, our role as priests for all of creation, and how our theology directs us to preserve the "environment." Perhaps you could connect "be the bee" to this with the bee/pollinator die off caused by excessive use of pesticides that are also harming human health? These farming practices are unnecessary and are the result of greed. I can direct you to scientific literature and statements from the ecumenical patriarch if you would like to do this. Thanks again!
Forgive me, it looks like I never responded to this. Great idea! Did you see the episode where His All Holiness joined us to talk about caring for creation?
I Did! Thank you so much for making that resource available. I shared it out through my blog ecotheologyblog.wordpress.com and my followers all liked it as well. Hope they are all now following Be the Bee too!
PRAYER. O Jesus, Son of God, I contemplate the great sufferings You endured for us on the Cross. It was not in jest that You loved us, but Your love is perfect and real. Arouse in us an ardent desire to avoid anything that might offend You, and to embrace the grief and contempt that You bore, and to keep continually in mind Your passion and death in which our salvation and our life are found.
That would be a lot for one video! We hope to make an entire series on that one day. In the meantime, check out the book "Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy" by Fr Andrew Stephen Damick. God bless you!
@@stevenchristoforou1667 Grand thank you very much I'll take a look. As somebody with a Protestant background I'm trying to learn about orthodox Christianity to see which seems to be closest to the truth from Christ. God bless you too 🙏
Not sure why immortal and moral are contrasted? It seems to mirror the definition of free will vs non free will. Please help me understand. Did we cut ourselves off from God or did He curse us for the disobedience?
Steven Christoforou I could be wrong about it mirroring freewill and non freewill. I just understand it more from that perspective. I hadn’t heard of the immortal vs mortal idea. Only thought of humans (created beings) as ever being mortal.
@@spacebbq344 God created us to be with Him, in His Kingdom. He wants us to live, not die. He wants us to be immortal. But no created thing can be immortal by itself, anymore than a branch can live after you cut it off a tree. God is the source of our life. If we are immortal, it's because of our connection with Him. So we were made with a sort of potential, the ability to choose. We could choose to connect with God, or to detach ourselves. Does that make sense?
@@spacebbq344 Yeah, though of course Adam never did partake of the tree of life. Yet that's something we can now do. Because Christ is the fruit of the tree of life: Be the Bee #29 | The Beauty of the Cross ua-cam.com/video/K1RUgfqI33M/v-deo.html Be the Bee #30 | A True Human Being ua-cam.com/video/MG8RFd6m2Fc/v-deo.html
there must be more...if the analogy you provided of the leaf being plucked out of its life source depicts humanity's spiritual condition with God, which results in decay and physical death ...why then when made alive in Christ(spiritually) do we continue down the slope to our inevitable death? could it be we were created mortal, perfect-yet not perfected? As Christ was. Would appreciate your response?
Our bodies continue to die, no matter how holy one is. Even Holy Mary, who was sinless by Grace, died a physical death. But our souls continue to live in a lesser state of Heaven or hell, depending on how we are judged, until the 2nd Coming of Jesus Christ where we believe all will become new - our Resurrected physical bodies, and the entire universe.
Forgive me, I thought I responded to this question before. We were created, if you will, in a state of potentiality: not immortal in ourselves, but open to eternal life in our union with Christ. We chose separation from God, and that resulted in death. We die, in that our bodies and souls are separated. Yet, as some Fathers describe (it's summarized very nicely in Nellas's book "Deification in Christ), what we experience as death is actually a way to pause us on the road to true death, which is non-existence. God allows soul and body to separate to put an end to sin, to stop on us sliding further from God and deeper into non-existence. In Christ, both body and soul are given life. Neither the soul nor the body is eternal by itself. Life comes from the Lord. As Fr Schmemman once wrote, a body without a soul is but a corpse; and a soul without a body is but a corpse. True life is when our whole selves are united to Christ, so that it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us (Galatians 2:20). Does that make sense?
And keep in mind that our souls are not eternal in themselves. God is the source of life, nothing has life apart from Him. Even our souls will, apart from God, sink into non-existence.
Also, why did God forbid Adam and Eve to know good and evil and have knowledge from the tree? Is he selfish, or hiding something from us? Because these Scriptures sound very curious: Genesis 3:22-23 "And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken." Genesis 11:6-7 "The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”"
First, keep in mind what knowledge is. In the Scripture, that doesn't mean intellectual, head knowledge. It's contact and communion. (Tomorrow's Be the Bee will actually cover this question.) God didn't want us to commune with evil, to taste sin and death. Once we did, God didn't want us to have eternal existence in such a broken state. So God intervened to slow our separation from Him, and to prepare the way for Christ to raise us into true eternal life. This is super complex and layered. Does that make sense?
In essence, if after taking from the Tree of Knowledge and having been corrupted, they took from the Tree of Life, Adam and Eve would have become immortal in their sin, and unable to die. They would have become as the angels are (or fallen angels in fact) and without the ability to die and be resurrected. So even as early as the fall, through death we see the redemptive power of God at work - that through death, He brought about resurrection to new life. It ends the curse and gives an opportunity to permanently change humanity from flesh to spirit. We gain the immortality of the Son of God who put to death the misdeeds of the flesh forever on the cross. Our faith saves us as we receive the seed of God, the Seal of the Holy Spirit, who is a deposit within us until our glory in Christ is to be revealed in the last day.
Hi Steve, I was wondering how the orthodox view, of Adam and Eve not being punished but warned, is reconciled with God giving Eve pains in labour and Adam in his work. Or is this somehow related to their inability to dependent on God as much as they did in Eden. However, even if this is so, I don't understand how Eve having pains would come into the equation. I hope you could clear this up for me.
The video focused on death specifically: God didn't tell Adam and Eve that He would kill them, He simply warned them that death is the consequences of separating themselves from Life. As for the things you mention (labor pains, sweat of their brow, etc.) we can see that as being signs of the new situation into which they found themselves. A world that was designed for their flourishing now was hostile and wild., full of pain and struggle. Even the act of bringing life into the world was now full of pain, and even great risk: countless women have died in childbirth over the generations. Adam and Eve thought they could be like God by eating of the fruit: instead, they fell to an incredibly low and difficult place.
I agree that sin is a disease and that Christ is our great Physician, but what would you say about the many verses which say things such as we are "dead" in our trespasses. This seems to say more than sick
Great question. Anytime we're dealing with language, we have to interpret it. Sometimes in Scripture, strong language may be used for emphasis. To say we're spiritual "dead" can point to the magnitude of our sickness, not imply that somehow we can't be brought back from that. In any event, even if we are dead, God can raise us from that spiritual death. In that sense, "death" again becomes a matter of degree or emphasis. Does that make sense?
how can one be immortal and mortal at the same time? unless you meant they were created mortal for the sole purpose of living in Him as their sustainer and source of Life.
The important thing to remember is that God is the source of life. Separating ourselves from God separates us from the source of life, and therefore leads to death. We are not immortal by nature, no creation is. We were made for immortal, for an eternity in God's Kingdom. And that comes through our connection with God; as you said, "living in Him as [our] sustainer and source of Life."
quantum physics ha no problem with that :). the point is that u cant be free if u cant choose. We must have good faith, the Lord know. Ofc we still can enjoy the trip to understanding his will
We did mention the serpent. You must have missed that. But the point of the video is the way Adam and Eve broke communion with each other and God. The focus isn't on the serpent.
What exactly does it mean to be the image of God? Is it like looking in the mirror? Or drawing a tree? Also, Jesus said that whoever sees him sees the Father. Furthermore, the Scriptures say that he is the very imprint of God. But He's a Middle Eastern male. What does that mean? :/ Very clearly the Fathers prohibit thinking of God as male, female, or any other gender. So what did Jesus mean? Also, what do you think of biological evolution, and how does it connect with the truth of Genesis? Because if it really happened, then death was real even before Adam. How does this fit with Tradition?
Male and female are parts of humanity, not the fullness of humanity. In Genesis we read that God made humanity male and female: Adam and Eve weren't individually human, they were human together. Christ is more than simply male. If you think about it, He has no human father. He received all of His DNA from the Theotokos. There is no real human apart from Christ. All of us are human to the extent we're united with Him.
Great video, however I didn't like the music in the background. It was disturbing and rock like. would've been better if it was an orthodox chant or hymn.
Thanks for the feedback! We don't use chants/hymns for background music because they aren't background music. It would be disrespectful to the prayer to reduce it to that.
original Sin does not mean that the specific Sin of Adam and Even was passed on to us...It is called Original Sin because it describes the State of Man after the fall...Which is SEPARATION from God...This Separation is what we call Sin.... Without Baptism, we are in danger of remaining SEPARATED from God and lose our Salvation.... That is why it is called Sin...Because it Separates and it can cause the loss of Salvation...Baptism Through WATER helps us remove this SEPARATION and the Danger of losing Salvation... As scripture says... "Jesus answered, "Very truly I tell you, NO ONE can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of WATER and the Spirit." ----John 3:5
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
PRAYER.
O Jesus, Son of God, how generously have you given us, on the Cross, all You had!
To Your executioners, Your loving prayer; to the thief, Paradise; to Your Mother,
a son; and to the son, a Mother; to the dead, You gave back life, and You placed
Your soul in Your Father`s hands; You showed Your power to the entire world,
and shed, through Your wide and numerous wounds, not a few drops, but all Your
Blood. to redeem us. O meek Lord and Saviour of the world, how can we thank You
worthily?
Great study of creation and fall. Sharing this with my Sunday School class.
Awesome! I'm curious how the lesson went, and if you've used any other episodes?
NICE
WOA
One of the best episodes-ever! Bravo, Steve. ☦️
It was a real eye-opener video. Thank you for it. :) Your thoughts put the whole God-human relationship into a new perspective.
The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:
The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
May God bless you and keep you
Thank You for these videos.
By your prayers!
I was brought up Catholic and these videos assist me in deepening my spiritual life. I think these would be good for all christians, regardless of denomination.
Your videos bring faith alive for me. God bless you! 🙏💒➕
Glory to God!
Thank you very much for this explanation that is very helpful!
This is truly awesome. Great, great, great.
Beautifully done!
Wonderful! Inspiring
Thanks for this video
I think CS Lewis has a famous quote where (paraphrasing) when you look at any human you’re actually looking at someone who is immortal. What do you think about this?
I really enjoyed that one.
I'm new to all this so my husband sent me your videos ❤️it is helping so much
Creation, Fall...Original Sin? Don't miss the latest Be the Bee!
On what Day did the fall occur? Creation Day Six, Rest Day Seven, or some other Day perhaps after Seven? My posit is that it occurred at the very end of Creation Day Six, and that it was considered Very Good, because it has a purpose. I would also argue that we are currently in the time period of Day Seven.
AMEN☦️❤️✝️
Can you address the idea of "atonement" and what the Apostle Paul says "He [Christ] became sin for us"?
This is a difficult and long question. The simplest way to address it is that God the Father didn't seek to punish anyone for our sins; God isn't bound by some greater laws of justice or other forces outside of Him.
Sin is separation from God. Christ joins us in sin, becoming sin (or entering sin) Himself in that He joins us in the emptiness and darkness of death. He joins us there because that's where we are, and He pulls us out (as we see in the icon of the Resurrection).
Thank you. Yes - the best counter argument to the "Jesus was punished for our sins" notion is that God cannot possibly be bound by anything greater than or outside Himself.
And since death is the consequence of sin, perhaps we could say He became sin by joining us in the consequences of our sin.
Hi! First I want to say that I LOVE your ministry. As a teen educator, I use it all the time in class, and also find it helpful for my spiritual knowledge and development. Thank you for making this! I have a thought to share with you: Our patriarchs have spoken a lot about creation care, our role as priests for all of creation, and how our theology directs us to preserve the "environment." Perhaps you could connect "be the bee" to this with the bee/pollinator die off caused by excessive use of pesticides that are also harming human health? These farming practices are unnecessary and are the result of greed. I can direct you to scientific literature and statements from the ecumenical patriarch if you would like to do this. Thanks again!
Forgive me, it looks like I never responded to this. Great idea! Did you see the episode where His All Holiness joined us to talk about caring for creation?
I Did! Thank you so much for making that resource available. I shared it out through my blog ecotheologyblog.wordpress.com and my followers all liked it as well. Hope they are all now following Be the Bee too!
PRAYER.
O Jesus, Son of God, I contemplate the great sufferings You endured for us on the Cross.
It was not in jest that You loved us, but Your love is perfect and real. Arouse in us an
ardent desire to avoid anything that might offend You, and to embrace the grief and
contempt that You bore, and to keep continually in mind Your passion and death in
which our salvation and our life are found.
Excellent video. Thank you.
Could you do a video explaining the key differences between Orthodox vs. protestant Vs Catholic please?
God bless you 🙏
That would be a lot for one video!
We hope to make an entire series on that one day. In the meantime, check out the book "Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy" by Fr Andrew Stephen Damick.
God bless you!
@@stevenchristoforou1667 Grand thank you very much I'll take a look. As somebody with a Protestant background I'm trying to learn about orthodox Christianity to see which seems to be closest to the truth from Christ. God bless you too 🙏
Not sure why immortal and moral are contrasted? It seems to mirror the definition of free will vs non free will. Please help me understand.
Did we cut ourselves off from God or did He curse us for the disobedience?
I'm not sure I follow your question, especially the bit about free will. Could you help me understand so I can offer a helpful answer?
Steven Christoforou
I could be wrong about it mirroring freewill and non freewill. I just understand it more from that perspective. I hadn’t heard of the immortal vs mortal idea. Only thought of humans (created beings) as ever being mortal.
@@spacebbq344 God created us to be with Him, in His Kingdom. He wants us to live, not die. He wants us to be immortal.
But no created thing can be immortal by itself, anymore than a branch can live after you cut it off a tree. God is the source of our life. If we are immortal, it's because of our connection with Him.
So we were made with a sort of potential, the ability to choose. We could choose to connect with God, or to detach ourselves.
Does that make sense?
Yes. Thank you for responding. So a type of potential immortality but not fulfilled until Adam partook of the tree of life?
@@spacebbq344 Yeah, though of course Adam never did partake of the tree of life.
Yet that's something we can now do. Because Christ is the fruit of the tree of life:
Be the Bee #29 | The Beauty of the Cross
ua-cam.com/video/K1RUgfqI33M/v-deo.html
Be the Bee #30 | A True Human Being
ua-cam.com/video/MG8RFd6m2Fc/v-deo.html
there must be more...if the analogy you provided of the leaf being plucked out of its life source depicts humanity's spiritual condition with God, which results in decay and physical death ...why then when made alive in Christ(spiritually) do we continue down the slope to our inevitable death? could it be we were created mortal, perfect-yet not perfected? As Christ was. Would appreciate your response?
Our bodies continue to die, no matter how holy one is. Even Holy Mary, who was sinless by Grace, died a physical death. But our souls continue to live in a lesser state of Heaven or hell, depending on how we are judged, until the 2nd Coming of Jesus Christ where we believe all will become new - our Resurrected physical bodies, and the entire universe.
Forgive me, I thought I responded to this question before.
We were created, if you will, in a state of potentiality: not immortal in ourselves, but open to eternal life in our union with Christ. We chose separation from God, and that resulted in death.
We die, in that our bodies and souls are separated. Yet, as some Fathers describe (it's summarized very nicely in Nellas's book "Deification in Christ), what we experience as death is actually a way to pause us on the road to true death, which is non-existence. God allows soul and body to separate to put an end to sin, to stop on us sliding further from God and deeper into non-existence.
In Christ, both body and soul are given life. Neither the soul nor the body is eternal by itself. Life comes from the Lord. As Fr Schmemman once wrote, a body without a soul is but a corpse; and a soul without a body is but a corpse. True life is when our whole selves are united to Christ, so that it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us (Galatians 2:20).
Does that make sense?
And keep in mind that our souls are not eternal in themselves. God is the source of life, nothing has life apart from Him. Even our souls will, apart from God, sink into non-existence.
Steven Christoforou No
Also, why did God forbid Adam and Eve to know good and evil and have knowledge from the tree? Is he selfish, or hiding something from us? Because these Scriptures sound very curious:
Genesis 3:22-23 "And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken."
Genesis 11:6-7 "The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”"
First, keep in mind what knowledge is. In the Scripture, that doesn't mean intellectual, head knowledge. It's contact and communion.
(Tomorrow's Be the Bee will actually cover this question.)
God didn't want us to commune with evil, to taste sin and death. Once we did, God didn't want us to have eternal existence in such a broken state. So God intervened to slow our separation from Him, and to prepare the way for Christ to raise us into true eternal life.
This is super complex and layered. Does that make sense?
Thanks Steve! I'll make sure to watch it.
In essence, if after taking from the Tree of Knowledge and having been corrupted, they took from the Tree of Life, Adam and Eve would have become immortal in their sin, and unable to die. They would have become as the angels are (or fallen angels in fact) and without the ability to die and be resurrected. So even as early as the fall, through death we see the redemptive power of God at work - that through death, He brought about resurrection to new life. It ends the curse and gives an opportunity to permanently change humanity from flesh to spirit. We gain the immortality of the Son of God who put to death the misdeeds of the flesh forever on the cross. Our faith saves us as we receive the seed of God, the Seal of the Holy Spirit, who is a deposit within us until our glory in Christ is to be revealed in the last day.
Hi Steve,
I was wondering how the orthodox view, of Adam and Eve not being punished but warned, is reconciled with God giving Eve pains in labour and Adam in his work. Or is this somehow related to their inability to dependent on God as much as they did in Eden. However, even if this is so, I don't understand how Eve having pains would come into the equation. I hope you could clear this up for me.
The video focused on death specifically: God didn't tell Adam and Eve that He would kill them, He simply warned them that death is the consequences of separating themselves from Life.
As for the things you mention (labor pains, sweat of their brow, etc.) we can see that as being signs of the new situation into which they found themselves. A world that was designed for their flourishing now was hostile and wild., full of pain and struggle. Even the act of bringing life into the world was now full of pain, and even great risk: countless women have died in childbirth over the generations.
Adam and Eve thought they could be like God by eating of the fruit: instead, they fell to an incredibly low and difficult place.
I agree that sin is a disease and that Christ is our great Physician, but what would you say about the many verses which say things such as we are "dead" in our trespasses. This seems to say more than sick
Great question.
Anytime we're dealing with language, we have to interpret it. Sometimes in Scripture, strong language may be used for emphasis. To say we're spiritual "dead" can point to the magnitude of our sickness, not imply that somehow we can't be brought back from that.
In any event, even if we are dead, God can raise us from that spiritual death. In that sense, "death" again becomes a matter of degree or emphasis.
Does that make sense?
how can one be immortal and mortal at the same time? unless you meant they were created mortal for the sole purpose of living in Him as their sustainer and source of Life.
The important thing to remember is that God is the source of life. Separating ourselves from God separates us from the source of life, and therefore leads to death.
We are not immortal by nature, no creation is.
We were made for immortal, for an eternity in God's Kingdom. And that comes through our connection with God; as you said, "living in Him as [our] sustainer and source of Life."
quantum physics ha no problem with that :). the point is that u cant be free if u cant choose. We must have good faith, the Lord know. Ofc we still can enjoy the trip to understanding his will
Why you didnt mention the serpent in Eden...or there is no serpent who deceived Eve in orthodoxy?
We did mention the serpent. You must have missed that.
But the point of the video is the way Adam and Eve broke communion with each other and God. The focus isn't on the serpent.
why Did Adem And Eve
Eat The Fruit???
Or Else We Woudent Die And
We Woudent Know Tha T We Where NAKEDDDDDD
What exactly does it mean to be the image of God? Is it like looking in the mirror? Or drawing a tree?
Also, Jesus said that whoever sees him sees the Father. Furthermore, the Scriptures say that he is the very imprint of God. But He's a Middle Eastern male. What does that mean? :/ Very clearly the Fathers prohibit thinking of God as male, female, or any other gender. So what did Jesus mean?
Also, what do you think of biological evolution, and how does it connect with the truth of Genesis? Because if it really happened, then death was real even before Adam. How does this fit with Tradition?
Does this mean that there was no true human being that was female?
Re:icons, this is quite a beautiful doctrine. God bless!
Male and female are parts of humanity, not the fullness of humanity. In Genesis we read that God made humanity male and female: Adam and Eve weren't individually human, they were human together.
Christ is more than simply male. If you think about it, He has no human father. He received all of His DNA from the Theotokos. There is no real human apart from Christ. All of us are human to the extent we're united with Him.
Great video, however I didn't like the music in the background. It was disturbing and rock like. would've been better if it was an orthodox chant or hymn.
Thanks for the feedback!
We don't use chants/hymns for background music because they aren't background music. It would be disrespectful to the prayer to reduce it to that.
original Sin does not mean that the specific Sin of Adam and Even was passed on to us...It is called Original Sin because it describes the State of Man after the fall...Which is SEPARATION from God...This Separation is what we call Sin....
Without Baptism, we are in danger of remaining SEPARATED from God and lose our Salvation....
That is why it is called Sin...Because it Separates and it can cause the loss of Salvation...Baptism Through WATER helps us remove this SEPARATION and the Danger of losing Salvation...
As scripture says...
"Jesus answered, "Very truly I tell you, NO ONE can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of WATER and the Spirit."
----John 3:5
It Is Good. I just came across your vids. You got the light 💡
Thanks, pray for us!