Seleucid & Orthodox Athlete! Two way, one thing: warrior at heart, athlete in spirit!
Seleucid Heritage, is a memorial clothing store intended to awaken the memory of the Seleucids, the greatest Greek dynasty founded in the East by Seleucus Nicator. The Seleucid heritage is to carry an idea, an identity, a culture with which we identify.
Orthodox Athlete and Seleucid Heritage are two new clothing brands born from different worlds. The first embodies the path of the Orthodox Christian at once a spiritual warrior and an athlete of the mind, moving with discipline and inner strength. The second draws inspiration from the warrior and victorious spirit of Seleucus Nicator, founder of the Seleucid Empire.
A mystical path, a spiritual walk!
Orthodox Athlete is a mystical path, a spiritual walk which tends to allow one to think, to live and to exist in and according to the three stages, which could correspond to the three degrees of an athlete’s life – initiation, progression and perfection – like an invisible diagram. Because the mind cannot be purified of effort without contemplation and conversation with God, without solitude, without vigilance, in other words, without prayer and the virtues that ensure its possibility. And that is why [spiritual] athletes begin where the first fall occurred, when they undertake to keep his commandments in order to [obtain] the fear of God.
Attention and vigilance, also called “sobriety”, spiritual nepsis, will therefore always have an essential role to play; but, once thoughts are detected, rather than fighting them by contradiction and opposing them with reasons, it will be more effective to neutralize them by “remembering the virtues”, that is to say by awakening and strengthening in the soul, through prayer, the attraction and taste for the things of God.
Blessed is the athlete who truly runs, with all his might, after the purity of his soul, who follows the well-trodden path trodden by the ancients, and who takes the steps they themselves climbed in order and progressively. He will approach purity with wisdom and by patiently enduring tribulations, but not by inventing steps foreign to the tradition of the Fathers. The purity of the soul is the first gift of our nature. If the soul is not purified of passions, it is not healed of the diseases of sin, and it does not acquire the glory it lost through transgression. But if a person has been found worthy of purity, which is the health of the soul, through this purification his intellect will obtain joy thanks to the awakening of his spiritual sensitivity. For he has become a child of God and a brother of Christ, and he no longer has the leisure to feel the good and the bad that befall him.
The emergence and development of spiritual sensitivity requires of humankind an attitude of simplicity and trusting faith, which is synonymous with purity.
Once our natural ardor unleashes its own energy in due time, the life of the body is more despised than filth. Once the heart is animated by spiritual zeal, the body no longer grieves over tribulations, it no longer fears, it no longer becomes discouraged, but the intellect hardens it like a diamond, through patience, in the face of all trials. Let us, therefore, also be filled with spiritual zeal to accomplish the will of Jesus, and all negligence will be banished from us—that negligence which breeds laziness in our souls. For zeal engenders courage, strength of soul, and physical exertion.
The crowns of confession that the athletes [of Christ] and the martyrs win through their endurance are obtained through the application of their zeal and ardent resolve, fruits of their natural courage. They remain impassive in the face of the terrible suffering of torture.