Full of Grace and Truth

Website Review

http://full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com

Many nice posts, but the blog is hard core new calendar and hard core world Orthodox.  Aside from the fact that it is out of sync with the Church [a post about the First Martyr Archdeacon Stephen appears in December], world orthodoxy de-selects and rearranges materials automatically.  The assumption made on this blog is that the EP Bartholomew [a known mason serving antichrist's ecumenism agenda] is real orthodoxy and we old calendarists are schismatics.   

An example of this is:

 http://full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com/2011/11/st-sophia-righteous-ascetic-of-panagia.html

This life has been "adjusted" to justify the new calendar: 

New and Old Calendar

From the time when the Ecclesiastical Calendar changed in Greece, Sophia would keep the fasts of both the Old and New Calendar so as not to be an offense to anyone.

Unfortunately there is a tendency among Old Calendarists to distort facts and consider her one of their own, but this does not conform to reality as she was always in communion with the Church.

There is no reason to doubt the report that this saint did keep both the new calendar fasts and the old calendar fasts.   The reason given –that she did not want to offend anyone– could easily be at least one of her reasons.  [Another reason might be that she, like many saints, secretly fasted year round.]    But the author's conclusion –that the saint "was always in communion with the Church" with the implication that the old calendar is not the Church– is pure propaganda resurrected. 

Whenever the Church is hit with an attack, there is always a period of confusion before the dust settles and before everyone chooses what side they are going to take.  During St. Nicholas' time, when the Church was battling against the heresy of Arius, many people followed Arius at first.  Then in St. Mark of Ephesus' time, when the Church was threatened by a union with Roman error, St. Mark was the only bishop who didn't succumb, and saved the Church.  Recently with the RocorMP union, 2/3 of the Russian Church fell into apostasy after years of debating and confusion.  And likewise with the new calendar imposition in 1924, it did not happen overnight.

Most likely, with St. Sophia, she had not yet addressed the issue.  Keeping both the new calendar fasts and the old calendar fasts is one way to "table" the issue, to "put it on the back burner":  not to ignore it forever but to address it later, maybe after the dust has settled and some of results are manifest, and to avoid getting tangled in controversy where she has no power to cause an effect.

Christ told us that unless we abide in the vine...  The Holy Fathers teach that a branch which is cut from the vine bears no new fruit, but the existing fruit can still ripen.   Many such saints [fruits] do ripen under these circumstances.   St. Sophia could be one of these, and later in her life she made her choice of the old calendar more clear by taking monastic vows under the old calendar.

Also see:
Gerontissa Myrtidiotissa Kleisoura, [St. Sophia's name taken after tonsure] was told by Theotokos to follow the old calendar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUtMJwlbx1Q

Also see:

This saint was tonsured by her chosen [old calendar] Church before her repose:

http://www.synodinresistance.org/pdfs/2012/07/06/E20120706aOsiaMytidiotissa%20Folder/E20120706aOsiaMytidiotissa.pdf

Do you see how much sifting needs to be done on these world orthodox websites?

With this particular website, {FullofGraceandTruth] if you stick with the lives of older saints and writings of older saints, say before 1900, then the FullGraceTruth website should be pretty much ok.  But don't trust anything new: no new "elders", no new "saints", no new "writings", no new "prophesies".  [This warning includes that new elder Paisius.]