Meditations: August - November 2005
Dear Parish Faithful,
We commemorate one of our greatest saints this coming Sunday, November 13 - St. John Chrysostom. The homily will concentrate on St. John's life and his contributions to the Church. Here is a fine passage from his writings that reveal his rhetorical skill and his pastoral desire to awaken Christ-like virtue in our hearts:
These words are especially meaningful because St. John had many enemies that saw to his deposition and exile while serving as Archbishop of Constantinople. He died a lonely death, broken in body, but not in spirit, because his well-known last words were: "Glory to God for all things!"
Fr. Steven
November 7, 2005 - The Lord's Prayer Made Real
Dear Fathers, Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,
At yesterday's Divine Liturgy, we completed a series of homilies on the Lord's Prayer, with yesterday's homily being something of a "summary" of the entire prayer and its place in our lives. This "prayer of all prayers," given by the Lord to His disciples - and through them to us - is most effective when it becomes our "daily bread." In fact, we should all find it rather inconceivable to pass through any given day without coming before our heavenly Father and offering this prayer with both our lips and our hearts. Any such day would be diminished and impoverished on an essential level. Not to sound too dualistic, but perhaps we could say that as our bodies would feel the effect of having no food or drink for a day; so too would our souls feel famished without the nurturing words of the Lord's Prayer. Our Lord Jesus Christ directed us toward prayer in the following manner:
Almost immediately following the utterance of these words, the Lord delivered the words of the "Our Father" to His disciples. (MATT. 6:9-13) So when we shut the door of our senses, and enter into the room of our hearts, we already know how to pray and what to pray for. The rest of our prayer - of praise, thanksgiving or petition - is simply an expansion and/or extension of the infinitely comprehensive Lord's Prayer. In fact, to stray beyond and outside of the rich content of the Lord's Prayer, is to "heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do." (MATT. 6:7)Our life-goal as Christians is thus to experience a never-ending process of manifesting and actualizing the words of the Lord's Prayer into the action of our lives. As we mature spiritually, our life becomes the concrete embodiment of the vison of life imparted and expressed in the Lord's Prayer. Saying the Lord's Prayer is imperceptibly tranformed into living the Lord's Prayer. The words of the Scriptures would thus be fulfilled:
To call upon God as "Abba! Father!" in a spirit of love and trust; to be "Kingdom-centered;" to forgive others as we have been forgiven; and to overcome the temptations of the "evil one," is to become Christ-like to an extraordinary degree. All of the best and well-intentioned programs on "Christian evangelism" could not begin to match the explosive missionary potential of just one such life!
And yet who has not experienced a great deal of frustration in the fuflifllment of this process? Why are we failing to embody the content of the Lord's Prayer in a convincing manner? Why are we stalled at the level of mere recitation and repetition? Bluntly, are we "bored" with the Lord's Prayer and looking for "something else" in life - even other forms of "spiritual experience?"
If we are praying one thing, and yet believing another and trying to direct our lives according to this "other way," then we are simply introducing a form of "spiritual schizophrenia" into our lives. We can be torn between addressing God as "Our Father" and yet believing God to be a rather remote Divine Being unconcerned with our human affairs - "out there" but not "with us." Or, we can pray for the coming of the Kingdom of God, but be totally preoccupied with our far-ranging and ambitious plans (of a very "worldly nature") that are disconnected with the "reign" of God as embodied in that petition. Further, we can piously pray that our heavenly Father's will be done on earth as it is in heaven, but in reality be intent upon imposing our own will in all situations. We can pray for our "daily bread" and yet continue to over-consume our food and drink without the slighest sense of the "sacramental" nature of all food as nourishment from our heavenly Father. We can pray to forgive others their tresspasses while continuing to nurse our many grudges and plot sweet revenge. And, we can petition God to deliver us from the temptations of the evil one, and yet actively grasp at these very temptations in the greedy hope that they satisfy our insatiable desire for new forms of "pleasure."
In other words, our "passion" can be elsewhere, thus forgetting the "passionate" nature of the longing for God and His Kingdom revealed in our Lord's Prayer. To believe otherwise is to have domesticated the powerful Lord's Prayer into an inconsequential stew of religious mush - something for small children to memorize so as to gladden the hearts of their adoring grandparents. Or nothing but a convenient prayer at hand when prayer is needed, but devoid of life-transforming potential. We must at least believe in what we are praying for. Otherwise, I do believe that we will become the frustrated victims of the "spiritual schizophrenia" outlined above. To stand before God in prayer and address Him as "our Father" is a gift and a privilege. Christ made this possible for us through His incarnate life culminating in His death and resurrection. To actualize the Lord's Prayer in our lives - or to at least seek to amidst all of the obstacles, struggles and tests that life sets before us - is to reveal our faith in the coming and victory of the One who told us that the heavenly God is "my Father and your Father ... my God and your God." (JN. 20:17)
Fr. Steven
November 4, 2005 - Our Father, Part 3: Translating The Ineffable
Dear Parish Faithful,
Over the course of the last few Sundays, I have delivered a series of homilies on the Lord's Prayer. I have occasionally pointed out some of the difficult issues of translation that face us as we seek to render this essential prayer from its original Greek (with Christ's Aramaic behind that) into intelligible English. Of course, the translation of the Lord's Prayer that we do have is already quite "hallowed" by centuries of usage; and it is a consistent translation that is used by all Christians. Outside of scholarly books, I am unaware of a different translation, except for the choice of "Thee" and "Thou" or "You" in reference to God. And there is now the fact that more and more Christians - as reflected in the Orthodox Study Bible, for example - are using "evil one" instead of "evil" in the last petition. This is a change that I encourage and have introduced into our own parish liturgical practice, at least when we say the Lord's Prayer together as a body.
However, the time-honored translation that we all use is far from perfect - there is no such thing as a "perfect" translation - and in fact it can be improved upon. That is why we discuss, reflect upon and write commentaries about the Lord's Prayer. We want to understand the meaning of the text as well as possible so as to enhance our prayer and allow us to "live out" this prayer that comes to us as a gift from the Lord. I, for one, am certainly not proposing that we change our existing translation, but for those who may be interested - and to assist us in getting behind the meaning of the prayer even more deeply - I wanted to pass on some of the scholarly consensus as to a more "accurate" translation in order to further assist that process of understanding.
As an intelligent and responsible example of that consensus, here is the proposed translation from the New Testament scholar Raymond Brown. In my humble opinion, Raymond Brown was about the best such scholar in America up to his death in the late 90's. In a fascinating and rather detailed article, he came up with the following:
This accuracy, of course, comes at the expense of any sense of poetic or aesthetic structure. That is always the shortcoming of "literal" translations, as we know. But this approach, at least, is helpful in that it brings to mind the various levels of meaning inherent in the Lord's Prayer, thus widening and deepening our appreciation for this "prayer of all prayers."
For those who desire more insight into the Lord's Prayer, there is the little book by Fr. Alexander Schmemann entitled Our Father. This is a wonderful commentary on the Lord's Prayer that I would highly recommend. I have a few extra copies here in my office, that I would most gladly loan out to anyone who may be interested.
On a more ambitious level, SVS Press has released a three-CD set by Fr. Thomas Hopko on the Lord's Prayer, though one can purchase any single volume from the set. Volume One is "Christian Prayer;" Volume Two is "The Kingdom Present;" and Volume Three is "Provision and Purity." The word is that this is Fr. Hopko at his best.
Fr. Steven
October 21, 2005 - Questions of Zeal
Dear Parish Faithful,
Listening to the radio this week, I heard the announcement of the upcoming Bengals' game on Sunday. Kickoff is at 1:00 P.M. However, what kept my attention and led to some thought, was the further announcement that the pregame show will begin at 11:30 A.M. That makes an hour-and-a-half of pregame talk, analysis, team assessment, etc. A professional football game can last as long as three hours, if I am not mistaken. Combined with the pregame, that makes over four hours of football entertainment. For the die-hard football fan who stays with it throughout that time that turns every Sunday of the season into the football equivalent of - forgive me the comparison - Pascha! And if you then compute the time (and energy and money) spent in a pregame "tailgate party" (9:00 - 10:00 A.M.?) it begins to match the holy fathers on Mt. Athos!
On the whole, you are left with the distinct impression that the sports fan has greater zeal than the Christian. If the Christian spoke, read about or discussed Christ during the week as much as the football fan does about the upcoming game, he/she would be considered a "fanatic;" a label the fan would also be given, perhaps, but in a much more jocular manner. Again, that is not the best of comparisons, but I am trying to make a point based upon observation that leads to a few challenging questions.
This brings to mind a wonderful anecdote from the Desert Fathers: an elder was in the city one day with some of his disciples on an errand. As they were walking along, a harlot and her entourage passed by with great pomp and circumstance. The elder began to weep, and his disciples, concerned, asked him why. The elder replied: 'I weep for two reasons - the greatness of her sin, and the fact that she is more intent to please men than I am to please God."
Returning to this issue of the "pregame" programs, perhaps it is meant as a kind of "warm up" before the game itself. A time of preparation that focuses the attention. In the Church, we have services that prepare us for the Divine Liturgy. They are a kind of "warm up" leading to the splendor of the Liturgy. They include psalms and various prayers that focus our attention on the Holy Trinity, the gift of salvation, the need for repentance and the like. They are not well-attended. At best, there may be a smattering of faithful in the church on a given Sunday morning for the chanting of the Third and Sixth Hours. And together they only take up about twenty minutes. When we had Matins - and we will get back to that service again in the near future - that took an hour. These services are meant to be more than a pious background atmosphere. They allow us to "settle in" and to "warm up" our hearts to God as we come in "cold" off the street, so to speak. This is how we all approach attending a concert, a film, a sporting event, or other public gathering. We do our best to be there a bit early and, again, settle in. Who would want to miss the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth?! And yet why is the Liturgy treated (in)differently? Does it not appeal to our heart's desire far more than the other events just mentioned? (At the other end, overtime in a football game is the height of excitement; yet an extra prayer or service in church can draw forth inward groans or desparate glances at one's watch - to get home in time for the game?).
I fully understand that that may be a bit much for certain people in any given parish, but making an effort to be there for the beginniing of the Liturgy should not be viewed as extraordinary. The pastoral question remains: do we have a "passion" for something greater than our "passion" for Christ that will get our pulse pounding, our hearts racing and move us to joyfully expend as much time, energy and money as is needed to satisfy it? If we look deep enough, perhaps we all do! If so, do we inwardly weep as does the elder spoken of above; or do we not give it a moment's thought and accept it as perfectly "normal?" These words of Christ can perhaps prompt some honest inward exploration:
It may be Week VII in the NFL this coming Sunday. But it is primarily the 18th Sunday After Pentecost. It is the Lord's Day. Although shorter in time, we will "prepare" for the Liturgy with Great Vespers on Saturday evening at 6:00 P.M.and the Hours on Sunday morning at 9:10 A.M.
Just a few thoughts written up in the form of a reflection that passed through my mind while listening to the radio the other day ...
Fr. Steven
October 12, 2005 - Our Father, Part 2
Dear Fathers, Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,
"Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit ... "
This magnificent opening doxology of the Divine Liturgy cannot be understood as a pious and rhetorical exclamation since we were taught by the Lord Himself to pray, "Thy Kingdom come ..." The Lord's Prayer seems to revolve around that great petition which perfectly summarizes the hope of all Christians: that God's "reign" or "dominion" (other possible translations of the Gk. word behind our word Kingdom) be fully present in all of its incomparable glory. The Kingdom of God is not so much a "place" as it is an awareness, a relationship, an experience of and with our heavenly Father - through His Son and in the Holy Spirit. Or, perhaps we need to say that an awareness of the centrality of this petition is sorely needed today as we tend to "settle down" so comfortably to a life of security and ease in our earthly existence. We may believe that the Kingdom of God is the happy appendix to our short lives, provided, of course, that we have been good, kind, nice, or pleasant enough. In fact, we may feel entitled to entrance into the Kingdom! (Isn't that the "stuff" of just about all Christian eulogies today?) But the Kingdom in this perspective is a pale and rather vague wish compared to the full-blooded reality of our earthly accomplishments, possessions and ambitions. There is certainly a tension that is less than creative between our daily prayer, "They Kingdom come," and the intensity and energy behind our pursuit of wordly happiness at all costs. But as the Apostle Paul wrote: "the form of this world is passing away." (I COR. 7:31)
According to Christ, it is the Kingdom of God/Heaven that must be the desire of our heart: "But seek first his kingdom and all these things shall be yours as well." (MATT. 6:33) For this reason He began His public ministry by proclaiming: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." (MK. 1:15) It is not an exaggeration to claim that all of the Lord's deeds and words - especially the parables, which could be termed "parables of the Kingdom" - are meant to reorientate our vision toward the Kingdom of God. That reorientation is based upon repentance, the "change of mind" necessary to "see" the presence of the invisible Kingdom in our midst. Of course, the person of Christ and the Kingdom are inseparable. Christ inaugurates the Kingdom with His advent. Thus, He was Kingdom-centered, incarnates the Kingdom and is the Door into the Kingdom. At the end of His ministry, before the Lord goes to His voluntary death, He tells His disciples: "as my Father appointed a kingdom for me, so do I appoint one for you that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom." (LK. 22:29-30)
In the Anaphora of the Liturgy, we pray to God thus:
That "which is to come" we experience here and now in the Eucharistic celebration of the Liturgy. The kingdom is "already" here; the Kingdom is "not yet" here in all of its fulness. The Liturgy retains that same already/not yet tension as we find in the Gospels And it is striking just how often the Liturgy directs our gaze toward the Kingdom, through a multitude of prayers and petitions:
Grant also to those who pray with us ... to be accounted worthy of Thy heavenly Kingdom.
The joy of every Liturgy is the joy of ascending into the Kingdom, to that messianic banquet table from which the Lord gives us the heavenly food and drink of the Eucharist "unto life everlasting." We pray to "lay aside all earthly cares" so that we can make that ascent as unburdened as possible. If we are able to "taste and see" something of the Kingdom here and now; then it will not be a foreign land for us at our appointed time, but rather our true and longed-for "home." If we are "at home" in the Church now, then we will be "at home" in the Kingdom then; for the Church is the foretaste of the Kingdom of God in our midst. As Fr. Schmemann wrote in his book The Eucharist:
All true moments of joy in this world, regardless of how fleeting or short-lived, are perhaps irruptions into our lives, or intimations, of the blessed joy of God's eternal Kingdom. These are intensive moments, rather than extensive; of love and communion, rather than of fun and distraction. Such experiences move us to press on forward toward the Kingdom of God with greater intensity and resolve. The Church provides us with the "map," and now we have to seek this treasure with all our hearts.
Fr. Steven
September 29, 2005 - Our Father, Part 1
Dear Fathers, Parish Faifhful & Friends in Christ,
We are always faced with the temptation of allowing our life in the Church to become routine. In fact, it may be that the more "active" one is, the more consistently real this temptation remains. We struggle with over-familiarity. "God," "Christ," "salvation," "deification," can become mere terms reduced to nothing more than abstract designations and ideas, rather than energized words that point to and lead us to ultimate Reality and the true desire of our restless hearts. We can feel self-assured that we know all about the underlying Reality of these words, when actually we may "know" hardly anything at all! Certainly because of the unfathomable and profound depths of this ultimate Reality (but to which we have direct access in the Church). Yet, also due to the above mentioned over-familiarity that creates a mistaken sense of true knowledge.
The same temptation toward routineness may assault us when we offer up the Lord's Prayer. Memorized at an early age and repeated - hopefully! - on a daily basis, the Lord's Prayer can become the ultimate "routine prayer." Bearing this in mind, I began a series of homilies on the Lord's Prayer this last Sunday during the Divine Liturgy. I would very much like to lead everyone into a deeper understanding of this truly perfect prayer, based upon both patristic and contemporary commentaries on the Lord's Prayer that are accessible to us today. However, an additional modest goal is that of at least imparting an approach/attitude that is serious, careful and vigilant when we stand before God and speak to Him as "Our Father." This is simply reinforcing the admonition we hear at the Liturgy before we sing or say the Lord's Prayer together as the Body of Christ:
Actually, having the prayer before us at this point may be helpful:
How many are familiar with the other version of the Lord's Prayer in LK. 11:2-4?
The petition above actually reveals the paradoxical nature of our relationship with God. On the one hand we refer to "the heavenly God." This is the One Who said to Moses: "I AM WHO I AM." (EX. 3:14) The One, also, Who revealed Himself to St. John as: "I am the Alpha and the Omega ... who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." (REV. 1:8) St. Paul describes God as "the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see." (I TIM. 6:15-16) And "our God is a consuming fire" we hear in the Epistle to the Hebrews. (HEB. 12:29)
In the opening of the Anaphora in the Liturgy, who is not struch with awe and wonder when we "dare" to address God with these words:
This is the language of apophatic theology, the way of negation, in which we describe God but what He is not, so as to avoid the error of attempting to circumscribe God with our limited knowledge and language. We simply cannot know the essence of God with our minds or describe God with our language. This essential and humbling insight into the "unknowability" of God is summarized thus by St. John of Damascus:
Yet, on the other hand, when we stand before the God Who is "above existence itself," we address Him with the most personal term possible by calling Him "Our Father!" The transcendent God is simultaneously our heavenly Father. The eternal Father of the eternal Son is now the Father of His sons and daughters by grace. As the risen Jesus declared, the Father is now "my Father and your Father ... my God and your God." (JN. 20:17)
Fr. Alexander Schmemann summarizes what I have been groping at above, like this:
The Lord Jesus Christ directed His disciples, and us through them, to call God our Father. Thus, the Lord's Prayer as we say. This clearly implies, in a manner that cannot be any clearer, the closeness and intimacy of our relationship with God. God is a personal God and we are the children of God. The "awesome God," the "Maker of heaven and earth, and of alla things visible and invisible," has granted us this blessed privilege by "adopting" us in Christ, the only-begotten Son of God:
St. John the Evangelist reveals the same truth in his very distinct style:
Truly, we have here perhaps the greatest expression of the grace of God. We are now His children through Christ and the Holy Spirit after a long and bitter period of estrangement and alienation. This privilege and gift also carries with it a responsibility:
We must witness to the One Who has made possible this gift of being the children of God, and who gave His life up on the Cross for that gift to be realized and actualized. The Holy One of Israel is now our Father, and when we offer up this prayer, hopefully it will be done with faith, hope and love burning in our hearts. Or, as Fr. Alexander Schmemann once wrote:
Under "Morning Prayers" in any typical Orthodox Prayer Book, we first read the short directive: "When you awake, before you begin the day, stand with reverence before the All-Seeing God. Make the sign of the Cross and say:"
The Trisagion Prayers that follow culminate in the Lord's Prayer, thus allowing our day to begin with acknowledging and turning to "Our Father" with the spirit outlined above eloquently by Fr. Alexander. It is impossible to take this for granted or to succumb to the temptation of over-familiarity, for with God "all things are possible!"
Fr. Steven
September 23 - St John The Baptist: Conception Destiny and the Culture of Life
Dear Parish Faithful,
We commemorate the Conception of St. John the Baptist today, September 23. St. John is the only other figure in the New Testament beside Christ Himself whose conception and nativity are related in detail. This, of course, points to the greatness and importance of St. John in the divine economy. He is the true "friend of the bridegoom."
The point here, though, concerning his conception, is that a new, unique and unrepeatable human person - the one that we would know as St. John the Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord - began to exist precisely at the "moment" of his conception. Human life - the psychosomatic unity of soul and body - is a continuum that exists and develops from conception to the grave and beyond into the Kingdom of God, as we believe. St. John vividly reveals this, because he "leaped" for joy" in the womb of his mother Elizabeth when the Theotokos visited her six months into her childbearing. (LK. 1:39-45) His destiny and vocation were chosen by God even prior to his conception and then began when he was conceived. He needed the time and nurturing to grow into that destiny and vocation. Every child that is so conceived has a destiny and a vocation that can only be realized if his/her mother and father realize the seriousness and responsibility of that initial conception and the subsequent birth.
Yet, our entire legal system now provides the ultimate temptation to "choose" a seemingly efficient solution to avoid the demands and responsibilities that confront a potential father and mother who face an "unwanted" pregnancy. A very fallible logic may exclaim that if it is legal then it is right. A "higher law" points to the "sanctity of life." The Church has always known this and now witnesses to this uncomfortable truth in a world that has lost its moral/ethical bearings about some of the most basic "facts of life."
The celebration of the Conception of St. John the Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord (Sept. 23); the Conception of the Theotokos (December 9); and the Conception/Incarnation of the Son of God (March 25), are now much more than quaint commemorations on the liturgical calendar. They remind us about the sanctity of life; reveal to us that life is from God; and equip us to stand firm in the defense of a "culture of life" amidst an unacceptable "culture of death."
Fr Steven
September 21 - Prefer Nothing Whatsoever To Christ...
Dear Fathers, Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,
I am assuming that today is the first day of Fall, but I am uncertain. Either way, it does not quite feel like the Fall yet. I, for one, am looking forward to the "real" Fall.
Over the years I have periodically corresponded with a Cistercian nun living at the Our Lady of Mississippi Abby outside of Dubuque(?), Iowa. She is strongly attracted to many aspects of Orthodox spirituality and liturgy, and over the years we have shared some notes together on those subjects through e-mail correspondence. (I believe that it was a common aquaintance that initially put us in contact with one another). She once wrote a wonderful article on St. Gregory Palamas that was published in a prominent theological journal, and I believe that I passed on some of her insights from that article in previous meditations. I mention these things in this particular meditation for the following reason: I was recently looking over their website which is replete with photos and texts relating to the life of a Cisterican abby here in America, and I came across a short passage that served as something of a "vision statement" meant to describe the over-all life of the sisters and their vocations in the convent. One sentence in particular that I would like to pass on struck a sure note with me:
I cannot imagine an Orthodox monastic not fully ascribing to that statement. The everyday intensity of the monastic experience gives life to these words.
A life "ordinary, obscure and laborious." Some people would not even dare wish that upon their enemies! For others, that is not too terribly remote from Thomas Hobbes' terse defintion of life as "short, brutish, and nasty." Not even much potential for the ephemeral hope of "fifteen minutes of fame." It would be rather fascinating to discover just what certain people would be willing to give in return for those coveted fifteen minutes. Especially in the light of Christ's words, read on Sunday at the Liturgy for the Afterfeast of the Elevation of the Cross, "For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life?" In the past, a person would "sell his soul" for a lifetime of some unattainable and unimaginable pleasure - the "whole world," so to speak. Today only in order to escape a life that is "ordinary, obscure and laborious."
Although a good monastic would be too modest to say so, a life in which nothing whatsoever is preferred to Christ would, from a "non-worldly" perspective, not be ordinary, but rather extraordinary; not be obscure, but fully known to God; and not be laborious, but filled with holy labors. To use Fr. Roman Braga's expressive term, a whole new "inner universe" is both discovered and explored with single-minded devotion to Christ. Perhaps readers of Archbishop Ware's The Orthodox Way recall the intriguing anecdote that opens the book:
That outward restlessness that ultimately leads to an atomization or fragmentation - if not full exhaustion - of our time, energy and resources (not to mention the purity of our hearts), is often the expression of our lack of focus or concentration on "the one thing needful." There is always "something out there" that draws our attention away from Christ with the (false) promise of yielding a tremendous reward if only we would "go for it:" success, money, status, popularity, power, etc. When one of these (idols?) fails to deliver, we optimistically pursue another. We are always wholeheartedly "into something" while Christ is marginalized and treated with "lip service." This affliction troubles many Christians. The solution is not for everybody to retreat to a monastery. When Christ told Martha that her sister Mary "has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her" (LK. 10:42), He was not insisting that she leave the world (even though these words were later interpreted as befitting the contemplative life), but that He Himself was the "one thing needful," and deserving of our time, energy and resourses - and ultimately our hearts. This, regardless of our particular situation in life including, presumably, being married with children! (not to be confused with the dreadful sitcom of that title).
In other words, if we were to slightly modify the "vision statement" cited above from the Cistercian abby to read as follows:
what serious Christian would disagree? Or, to put that a bit differently: I would say that if we, as Christians, were troubled by the nagging feeling that we were still "missing something" by preferring nothing whatsover to Christ, then we are still struggling with fully embracing Christ and the Gospel and that tension will continue to trouble our hearts. But Christ has told us:
In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. (JN. 16:33)
Fr. Steven
Sept 14 - On The Exaltation of The Cross
Dear Parish Faithful,
Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy and Lifegving Cross of the Lord. We just recently completed the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. Yesterday evening, we celebrated Great Vespers on the Eve of the Feast and brought the Cross out in procession to be placed in the middle of the Church until the Leavetaking on September 21.
There is a powerful passage about the Cross in St. Innocent's book Indication of the Way Into the Kingdom of Heaven. It is an excellent example of how the saints speak and write with a total honesty about our human weaknesses and propensity toward sin; while yet simultaneously expressing the incomparable consolation of God's mercy and grace. They never discourage but encourage - though we may have to squirm a bit at first when we read their assessment of our present condition:
The words of St. Innocent are timely in an age of "self-sufficiency," when we are convinced that we can handle all the situations of life with a bit of ingenuity, cleverness, and "expertise." God is sometimes forced to break through our self-sufficiency with the crosses that St. Innocent refers to above. There are situations in life that we then realize that only by God's saving grace can we be strong enough to pass through a furnace of suffering or hardship strengthened and grateful for His enduring love for us.
Fr. Steven
Sept 7 - Forgiveness: The Condition for Being Forgiven
Dear Parish Faithful,
Something further on forgiveness:
The observant may have noticed that I was holding a small book in my hand while delivering the homily this past Sunday. I meant to read a short passage from it, but somehow managed to forget about it. I thought to share that passage now from Archbishop Dmitri of the South. In commenting on the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, in his book The Parables, he writes the following:
As the New Testament repeatedly reveals, our sins have been forgiven by God through the redemptive death of our Savior: "both voluntary and involuntary, of word and of deed, committed in knowledge or in ingnorance." We can even say of the sins we have yet to commit - provided that we repent. In other words, "objectively" all sins have been forgiven in and through Christ. Yet, "subjectively," that forgiveness only has meaning for each one of us to the extant that we are willing to repent of our personal sins.
We repent and renew - actualize - the limitless forgiveness of sins that God has promised us through the Sacrament of Confession. In the light of the hard fact that we continue to sin, this is essential. When you cease to sin, then you will no longer have to participate in this Sacrament. However, that will only happen when you die. Until then, we repent and seek the forgiving grace of God in and through the Sacrament of Confession. We seek - or should seek - God's forgiveness on a daily basis in our personal prayer life. It is impossible not to be aware of this if you know and use some of the daily prayers found in any basis Orthodox Prayer Book:
The Sacrament of Confession is not simply "in addition to" our daily plea for forgiveness. It is not meant to "supplement" our regular prayer. It is the open and "public" confession of sin (the priest representing the Body of believers); reconciliation with the Church - the "place" of the forgiveness of sins as the Body of Christ; and the sacramental restoration to Holy Communion. Everything that is hidden within our hearts is brought out into the light when we openly confess our sins. This is only possible when we actually say it before a priest, because nothing is hidden from God.
As Fr. Thomas Hopko summarized it:
Practically speaking in reference to our parish, at best we had a very thin stream - if not a trickle - of penitents seeking the forgiveness of sins in and through the Sacrament of Confession this past summer. That means that most of you have not been to Confession since Great Lent, or well over four months by now. If you are a regular communicant, that is far too long. If you have not been a regular communicant, then you need to first come to Confession before returning to the Chalice. Either way, this is one more area of a general "summer breakdown" that many experience in their ecclesial lives. We have somehow developed a mentality that the Summer "doesn't (quite/really) count" in our ongoing relationship with God. We seem to re-start that relationship as we do going back to school or work, etc. That is a very flawed way of thinking upon even superficial examination.
The point is to "examine oneself" and ask the question: am I really prepared to continue to receive Holy Communion even though it has been since Great Lent that I have been to Confession? The next step would probably be to get to Confession as soon as possible. For those who do not receive Holy Communion with regularity and then reason that that somehow exempts you from the "need" to come to Confession, I would simply say that you are excluding yourselves from the fulness of ecclesial life as it was meant to be lived. This approach also demands some serious and prompt self-examination.
Perhaps there is a link between receiving the forgiveness of sins and our own ability to forgive others when the occasion arises.
Fr. Steven
September 1 - Natural and Human Disasters
Dear Parish Faithful,
Hurricane Katrina has proven to be one of the worst natural disasters in American history. The devastation has reached biblical proportions. The sunny skies now hovering over New Orleans and Mississippi have only served to reveal the enormity of the loss and the colossal proportions of the clean-up - projected to take months and, of course, years in terms of rebuilding the city. Countless human lives have been lost; and countless others have been ruined. What are the refugees to return to? Their homes, jobs, and livelihoods have been blown or swept away. For hundreds of thousands of people, "normal life" no longer exists. In the short term, many will be struggling with fatigue, exhaustion, and sheer physical survival; in the long term perhaps with depression and hopelessness.
Human nature being what it is, we probably sympathize and empathize to a degree; but we can also be rather indifferent since we are not directly affected. We have our own lives to live and things to be accomplished today and tomorrow. We will argue over the same petty things as we did yesterday, though we are convinced that we are learning the lesson of appreciating the people in our lives and the things around us, when we see others stripped of them in the rising flood waters. As we shake our heads in disbelief over what we may view on the evening news, we may simultaneously be wondering just what to have for dessert - and experience a tremor of irritation if it is not available. And - like me - we will complain about the rising gas prices! This is all perhaps inevitable as the world does not - and cannot - stop because of a localized disaster, enormous though it may be. With that built-in instinct for survival that characterizes human beings, we will inwardly sigh in relief that it was "someone else" and not me.
On the other hand, we are certain to see and hear of countless acts of heroism, sacrifice and selflessness in the days and months to come. Americans do have an impressive history of "coming together" in the face of precisely such disasters in order to offer the practical "hands-on" help that will now be so much in need. Volunteers, anonymous and unpaid, will put in hours and days of physically and emotionally draining work in order to speed up the process of returning the current surreal environment of New Orleans and other hard-hit places to normal, sanitary and decent living conditions. Millions of dollars and endless supplies of food, water and clothing will be donated and distributed. It will be greatly encouraging to see the other side of human nature also in full display as mentioned above - compassion, sacrifice, selflessness, etc.
Natural disasters are still to this day called "acts of God," whether or not people actually believe that God is active in history. But though that is precisely what we believe as Orthodox Christians, an "act of God" remains a very ambiguous, if not misleading, term. We do not believe that this hurricane and flood were directly willed by God for some punative or didactic purpose. Were the people of New Orleans and Mississippi - or of Indonesia for that matter - any more sinful than the rest of us? Were they being made an example of for our future edification or to put the fear of God into us? Our theological reflection should not lead us into these murky considerations, unworthy of the God we love and adore. As the Orthodox theologian, David Hart, wrote in an article entitled "Tsunami and Theodicy:"
This victory over evil and death has already been won by Christ, but we acknowledge that the full-fruits and consequence of that victory - the wiping away of all sickness, sorrow and sighing - has not yet been fully achieved. The Apostle Paul tells us that the creation is still groaning and in travail until the full revelation of the sons of God. The scriptural revelation tells us that this is connected to human sin. (The entire passage of ROM. 8:18-25 must be read with great care and attention). Again, as David Hart writes:
A pious and sigh-filled resignation in the face of such a natural disaster - as well as accidents, illness, war, terrorist attacks - does not make our response any more "Christian" than the next. We need much more to somehow feel the sting and human loss of such events, and even the grief and anger that will accompany that awareness. Human loss, suffering and death are enemies that God has overcome on our behalf through Christ. In the end they will lose their grip over our lives and then God will be all in all. To once more refer to a passing comment by David Hart that strikes me as very insightful: "Faith ... has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead." And hope comes from God and will lead us to God.
Fr. Steven
August 31 - The Church New Year - Time to Re-Orient
Dear Parish Faithful,
Tomorrow, September 1, is the beginning of the Church Year. This is an over-looked commemoration, but I do believe that with more attention, it can be an important day/date in our ecclesial lives. For the simple reason that it is a "beginning," and beginnings present us with the possibility of starting fresh - if not actually starting over. It can be the occasion for a genuine "reorientation" - an interesting word, that literally means being directed back towards the east (the "orient"), the direction that the early Christians faced in prayer, symbolic of the light of Christ - which is closely linked to repentance. If the Summer was a time of being scattered here and there, both literally and figuratively; then the Church New Year is a time of being gathered together, soul and body, to redirect our lives toward Christ. Curiously, it is the time of year for some of the faithful to "get used to" coming to church with regularity again! As in: the "vacation" from God and the Church is now over and it is time to get back to Church on a regular pattern. Obviously, there is more than out-of-town vacation trips at work here. Thus, even though the song says, "there ain't no cure for the summertime blues," we can say with confidence that there is in the Church.
Be that as it may, September 1 prepares us for the annual liturgical cycle of Feast days; or, rather, the rhythm of fasting and feasting that immerses us into the "counter-cultural" life of the Church that challenges the patterns, attitudes and emptiness of our surrounding secular culture. Instead of a hectic life based on competition and consumerism, we have before us the grace-filled life of the Church based on co-operation and communion. The "world" offers us the Kingdom of Mammon; the Church offers us the Kingdom of God. Our inability to make a firm choice is rather amazing when you contemplate the two choices. For, as another song says, you "can't get no satisfaction" from mammon. The fate of mammon is to be consumed by "moth and rust" (MATT. 6:19). The gifts of the Kingdom are imperishable. So as to make sure that I am not sounding naive or simplistic, I openly acknowledge the evident tension we feel between the Church and "world" (here using the word in its more negative sense of a life directed toward the self and consumed with the passions), for the obvious reason that we are seeking the Kingdom while immersed in the (fallen) world. That often feels like being caught is a maze or labyrinth. We lose our way at times. We struggle with choices. It is a veritable "bungle in the jungle" as yet another song says. However, to sincerely embrace the vision of the Church directed toward Christ and His Kingdom, gives us the opportunity of living out, to some degree hopefully, the familiar but meaningful phrase of "being in the world but not of the world."
Immersion in the life of the Church, to the extent that that is possible for us, is a sure way of clarifying our vision once and for all, and making an honest attempt to be Kingdom-oriented Christians. As Fr. Lev Gillet has written:
With a bit of planning and prioritizing, we can make that immersion a greater reality in our lives. Instead of hanging up our church calendars as pious adornments or reminders of an archaic way of life, we can utilize them as a means of directing us toward the life in Christ. From Feast Days and daily commemorations, to scriptural readings, our liturgical calendars are like maps revealing the location of true treasure worth "digging for." Without exhausting ourselves in the process, we do not have to lose the "battle of the calendars." Life is made up of daily choices, and some of those choices can direct us toward the Church. It is certainly a path worth making some sacrifice for.
A reminder: to commemorate the begining of the Church New Year, we will sing and chant an Akathist Hymn to the Saints of North America this evening at 7:00 p.m. Our Bible Study will follow.
Fr. Steven