LENTEN MEDITATION - Day XL — 'Glory to Thee, O God, Glory to Thee'

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

'Glory to Thee, O God, Glory to Thee' (3x)

When the soul enters into the trial of spiritual aridity, or dryness, for the first time, it becomes extremely dismayed. This is especially true if there was a disciplined devotion to worship in sincerity of heart. One begins to be troubled and to wonder why this has happened and to look for the faults that may be the cause.

But spiritual aridity is not a sign of any kind of failure in a healthy relationship with God. It is only an important phase that the soul has to undergo, which may be regarded as a kind of pruning to prepare the soul for a more advanced spiritual life, not contingent upon psychological incentives or subjective pleasures....

It is therefore wrong to be upset during the phase of aridity. It is also wrong to stop praying on the pretext of finding no pleasure in prayer, for aridity is a living part of the very nature of prayer. It is able, if we accept it with contentment and understanding, to raise us to the higher stage of pure prayer, which is not contingent on emotions, sentiments, or incentives of any kind.

Thus, whenever you feel that grace seems to have abandoned you, be content with its hidden action. Rely instead on the strength of the impetus previously gained from your life with God....

The best thing to do is to accept aridity as it is and persist in spiritual activity with calm and awareness. Allow yourself to exert every effort to keep on progressing at the speed of one who travels across the desert and is never deterred by the pleasures of the city he has left behind from striding across the arid wilderness until he reaches his destination....

Spiritual trials in general are not undergone for the sake of attaining perfection, for this implies a sense of self-deification. Rather, we should submit to the sovereign purposes of God so that we may fulfill his will, for our obedience to God is the foundation of our life with him, and it is only this that leads us to perfection.

—Matthew the Poor,  Orthodox Prayer Life: The Interior Way

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If I am not mistaken, Matthew the Poor, a very well-known and respected Coptic monk/elder, is referring by "aridity" what the spiritual tradition terms akedia. This is translated as "spiritual torpor," "listlessness," "apathy," etc. It literally means "not caring." It is a widespread spiritual condition, and not too many people - including desert-dwelling monks! - can escape its clutches. So encouraging, then, to hear how a spiritual master examines this condition and finds the providential dimension inherent in it.

A short personal note: When I was quite young, and well before I moved toward seminary and the priesthood, I encountered a small article about Matthew the Poor in Time magazine. This 20th c. desert-dwelling recluse (Egypt) really grabbed my attention at the time!

 

*** In yesterday's meditation on Phono sapiens, I failed to credit the author of the first paragraph, and hence that now rather unforgettable term. It was Matthew Gasda.

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day XXXIX — 'Phono Sapiens'

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

People who grew up with phones—and even many older people who didn’t—can’t read a novel anymore, sit through a film without looking at their phones, sit through a TV show without pausing it to check their emails, finish an article online—in short, can’t really do anything without multitasking. There’s no moment of rapture in reading the first page of a book because the mind no longer expects to reach the end. The old tools of storytelling are obsolete; distraction supersedes even entertainment, let alone art. And because we can’t narrate our lives, “we can’t construct narratives connected to our own inner truth.” Truth simply falls out of the human vocabulary, replaced by big data: charts, memes, viral clips. Phono sapiens is “lost” in a “forest of information,” without passion or purpose.

—Matthew Gasda

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Not exactly the usual "lenten" fare that I have been sending out this Great Lent. But no less challenging than what we have read thus far from a Church Father, or our more contemporary voices: Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Frs. Alexander Schmemann, Thomas Hopko, and Lev Gillet, to mention a few. My contribution is not to add what you just read above, but to admit - confess! - that I, too, have found myself doing the same mindless and meaningless "stuff" with my phone. I am glad to be a member of homo sapiens, but distressed to even think that unless I am vigilant, I may be degraded to the ranks of Phono sapiens! In fact to curtail some of the above in my own life has been one of my focused "lenten projects" this year. Yet, I do continue to read long novels (and watch films) with great joy and attention, I am glad to further share. A suggestion: Choose a good, long novel for the summer and commit to reading it from start to finish.

 

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day XXXVIII — 'A Vocation of Loss'

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

[Sunday’s] gospel (Mark 10.32–45) describes Jesus’ ascent to Jerusalem before his Passion. Jesus takes the twelve apostles aside and starts to tell them that he will be betrayed, condemned, and put to death, and that he will rise again from the dead. At the threshold of Holy Week could we be “taken aside” by the Savior for a talk in which he explains to us, personally, the mystery of Redemption? Do we ask the Master to help us understand at greater depth what is taking place for our sakes on Golgotha? Do we make it possible for Jesus to meet us in secret? Do we seize opportunities to be alone and quiet with the Lord? Then the sons of Zebedee come to Jesus and ask him to let them sit with him in his glory, one on his right and the other on his left. Jesus asks them—and puts the same questions to us: “Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?” The Master then explains to the disciples that true glory lies in serving others. For “the Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

—A Monk of the Eastern Church, The Year of Grace of the Lord

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This is actually Fr. Lev Gillet (+1980). He once wrote: "What attracts me is a vocation of loss - a life which gives itself freely without any apparent positive result, for the results would be known to God alone; in brief, to lose oneself in order to find oneself." With an all-encompassing simplicity, he once wrote: "The Gospel is all that matters." Perhaps we can sense the truth behind those words most fully in the upcoming Holy Week.

 

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day XXXVII — 'The Lord leads the humble...'

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful, Humility, in the Christian tradition, is called the mother of all virtues. It is the soil out of which grow faith, hope, love and all positive qualities of the spirit. The psalms proclaim that the Lord leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble his way. They claim also, with proverbs and the prophets, that the Lord cares for the humble and gives them his grace. He listens to their prayers and vindicates them before their enemies. He crowns them with victory and clothes them with honor, giving them the whole earth as their inheritance in the upending kingdom which he establishes in the Messiah. —Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko, The Lenten Spring _____ Every virtue that we are exhorted to cultivate, is always preeminently revealed in Christ, the perfect and sinless Son of God become Son of Man. This is the universal teaching of the saints and any and all more recent theologians, as Fr. Thomas Hopko above. Bearing this in mind, we can then ask, who is more humble than:  "Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God,  did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,  being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death,  even death on a cross." (Phil. 2:5-8)

 

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day XXXVI — The Mystery of the Sacrifice of the Eucharist

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

If the priesthood established by the law has come to an end, and the priest who is “in the order of Melchizedek” has offered his sacrifice, and has made all other sacrifices unnecessary, why do the priests of the new covenant perform the mystical liturgy? How it is clear to those instructed in divinity that we do not offer another sacrifice, but perform a memorial of that unique and saving offering. For this was the Lord’s own command: “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11.24). So that by contemplation we may recall what is symbolized, the sufferings endured on our behalf, and may kindle our love towards our benefactor, and look forward to the enjoyment of the blessings to come.

—Theodoret of Cyrus: The Eucharist

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An important perspective to maintain about the meaning of the "sacrifice" that we offer in the Liturgy. Especially after just hearing the powerful passage from The Epistle to the Hebrews, that "Christ ... entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption" (9:11-12). 

The one sacrifice of the Great high priest, Jesus Christ, is not endlessly repeated, but rather actualized (re-presented) in every celebration of the Eucharist. That is why the ordained celebrant - bishop or priest - is considered to be the sacramental image of Christ, who "offers and who is offered" and who distributes Communion to the faithful. That is the mystery that we enter into at every Liturgy.