Try Reading the SOURCE and Not What Enemies are Serving You. Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) and the Garden of Gethsemane
“Your Tomb the source of our Resurrection” -from the Paschal Service repeated tens of times during Bright Week by all Orthodox Christians!
No one was more hated by the Moscow Patriarchate than Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) who organized ROCOR when the Russians found themselves outside of Russia and they willingly cut off all ties with the Sergianistic “Patriarchate”.
Metropolitan Anthony’s work on Redemption is not him making a new dogma – no one can do that- but giving some thoughts concerning redemption. He says, this about his work:
I am convinced that the explanation of the truth of the doctrine of redemption which I have expounded is in accord with the teaching of the Church, but I am even more firmly convinced of the Church’s infallibility so that, if it were proved to me that my explanation does not coincide with her teaching, I would consciously renounce my views on our dogma. But inasmuch as no one has proved this to me (and I hope that no one will), I remain persuaded that the explanation I have proposed is in complete agreement with the Holy Scripture and the Tradition of the Church, and that its seeming novelty results only from the fact that it unfolds the Church’s teaching in the language of exact concepts and harmonizes the meaning of this dogma under consideration with the rest of the most important truths of the Faith.”
No Christian, and certainly not a professor of theology like Metropolitan Anthony would deny that our salvation was achieved through the Passion, Cross, and RESURRECTION of our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ.
But may I the simple one ask you: Was the Annunciation to the Mother of God not part of our on-going redemption? Was the Nativity of Christ not part of our redemption? Was Theophany not part of our redemption? And the list goes on.
The Garden of Gethsemane was certainly A PART OF THE PASSION OF CHRIST, correct? There He said the great words known as the “Gospel of the Testament” or His High-Priestly Prayer.
Can someone deny that Christ’s agony was part of His total passion?
Actually, there are only a handful of quotes about Gethsemane in this work. Read this one though,
“This oppressive grief possessed His most pure soul for a second time on the cross when the cruel masses not only were not moved to pity by His terrible physical sufferings (they could not come close to grasping His moral sufferings) but also maliciously mocked the Sufferer. One must suppose that during that night in Gethsemane, the thought and feeling of the God-man embraced all of fallen humanity — numbering many millions — and wept with loving grief over each one individually, as only the all-knowing divine heart could. Our redemption consisted in this. This is why only God, the God-man could be our Redeemer, and not an angel or a man. It was not at all because a more valuable sacrifice was necessary for the satisfaction of Divine wrath. Ever since this night in Gethsemane and that day on Golgotha, every believer, even one who is just beginning to believe, recognizes his inner bond with Christ and turns to Him in prayer, as to an inexhaustible spring of moral regenerating strength. Few are able to explain exactly why they so easily assimilated faith in the possibility of receiving new moral energy and sanctification from turning to Christ, but no believer doubts this, nor do even the heretics.”
So why don’t people stop making up what they think Metropolitan Anthony said and read what Metropolitan Anthony really said? Sit down and do your homework instead. Try reading it!
