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Murrieta, CA 92562
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Murrieta, CA 92562
Click Phone for Hours
In English
Antioch is a city of ancient Syria and now a major town of southcentral Turkey. It is located about 12 (miles) northwest of the Syrian border. Antioch was founded in 300 BC by Seleucus I Nicator, a former general of Alexander the Great. The city was named in honor of his father Antiochus. The new city soon became the Western terminus of the caravan routes over which goods were brought from Persia and elsewhere in Asia to the Mediterranean. It became the third largest city of the Roman Empire in size and importance (after Rome and Alexandria) and possessed magnificent temples, theaters, aqueducts, and baths. Antioch was also one of the earliest centers of Christianity, it was there that the disciples of Christ were first called Christians, and the city was the headquarters of the missionary St. Paul about 47-55 ac. With a population as high as 500,000 or more, Antioch was a quite urban, shared many of the characteristics typical of urban centers today. There was a great multiplicity of cultures. Many languages were spoken, as traders, travelers, and full-time residents interacted. Communication to and from Antioch was possible with almost anywhere in the Roman world.
In the time of Christ, a special religious situation had grown up in Antioch which was to make the city particularly fruitful ground when Christianity reached it. Antioch had come to contain, as part of its normal daily existence, not only the old established Hellenic cults, of Zeus, Apollo, and the rest of the pantheon, by the Syrian cults of Baal and another goddess as well as the mystery religions with their doctrines of salvation, of death and regeneration, and their promises for the afterlife. Another factor of prime importance was the presence of a large and ancient Jewish community. This community had attracted to its ceremonies and its teaching numbers of Gentiles who found in Judaism an ethical doctrine that was more satisfactory to them than the pagan teaching. Thus, Antioch was noticeably receptive to the new message.
Moving from city to the “Church”, the book of Acts tells us that the Church flourished in a diversity and pluralism of religion and culture environment- something we may see today as a serious challenge to Christianity. This diversity reflects what the eternity would be like. There is no doubt that the persecution in Jerusalem against the Christianity especially the martyrdom of St. Stephen was the water that nourished the seed of Christianity in Antioch. There was a new identifiable group, it needed a new name! Jesus broke down the dividing walls that Seleucus Nicator built it to separate people of different backgrounds from each other. So, they could not be identified by their race or any of existing religious or pagan identities. What these people shared was eternally deeper than culture, or race, or shared religious heritage and the people of Antioch could identify them according to their shared transformed lives in Christ, their new identify was Christ. This new transformed identity transformed their relationships. Only the Christian message can take the wall of any city down, and recreates it as a Church where the disciples of Jesus Christ called Christians first (Acts 11:26). This Church was established by Jesus Christ through His two distinguished disciples St. Peter and St. Paul who was from Antioch started on his missionary journeys (their church still over there).
Antioch, like Alexandria, was a renowned intellectual center, and a distinctive school of Christian theology flourished there and in the surrounding region throughout the 4th and the first half of the 5th century. In contrast to the Alexandrian school, it was characterized by a literalist exegesis and a concern for the completeness of Christ’s manhood. Little is known of its traditional founder, the martyr-priest Lucian (died 312), except that he was a learned biblical scholar who revised the texts of the Septuagint and the New Testament. His strictly theological views, though a mystery, may not have been orthodox, for Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and other Arians claimed to be his disciples (“fellow Lucianists”), and Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, who denounced them, lists Lucian among those who influenced them. But Eustathius of Antioch the champion of Nicene orthodoxy, is probably more representative of the school, with his antipathy to what he regarded as Origen’s excessive allegorism and his recognition, as against the Arians, of the presence of a human soul in the incarnate Christ.
The fourth ecumenical council of the Christian Orthodox Church, held in Chalcedon in 451. Convoked by the emperor Marcian, it was attended by about 520 bishops or their representatives and was the largest and best-documented of the early councils. It approved the creed of Nicaea (325), the creed of Constantinople, two letters of Cyril against Nestorius, which insisted on the unity of divine and human persons in Christ, and the Tome of Pope Leo I confirming two distinct natures in Christ and rejecting the Monophysite doctrine that Christ had only one nature. The council then explained these doctrines in its own confession of faith. Whereas the Syriac and the Coptic Churches did not accept these confessions, that causes the first schism in the Christendom splitting their church from the Orthodox One.
The theological mastermind of the East was different from that of the West. The Eastern theology had its roots in Greek philosophy, whereas a great deal of Western theology was based on Roman law. This gave rise to misunderstandings and at last led to two widely separate ways of regarding and defining one important doctrine—the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father or from the Father and the Son. The Roman churches, without consulting the East, added “and from the Son” (Latin: Filioque) to the Nicene Creed. Also, the Eastern churches resented the Roman enforcement of clerical celibacy, the limitation of the right of confirmation to the bishop, and the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist.
Two figures played a major role helping the West rediscovering the Orthodox Church, first: Immigrants came from the eastern countries that had an Orthodox majority population they had established their Churches and spread the Holy Tradition of the authentic Orthodox Church. Secondly: Missions that moved towards West requesting to revive the Orthodox faith. A lot of missionaries acknowledged as saints in the U.S.A.
Just two years ago, drove by our Savior Jesus Christ, St. Mary started her mission preaching the Word of God based on the faith of the Orthodox Holy Apostolic Christian Church in Murrieta, and the community around. Proclaiming the salvation and the Kingdom of God revealed for the believers in His Son Jesus Christ is the main Goal of this mission with love and humbleness.
