The Divine Liturgy - Introduction

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

"The divine liturgy is  truly a heavenly service on earth, in which God himself, in a particular, immediate and most clear manner is present and dwells with men, for he himself is the invisible celebrant of the service; he is both the offerer and the offering. There is on earth nothing higher, greater, more holy, than the liturgy; nothing more solemn, nothing more life-giving."

- St. John of Kronstadt

Keeping the words of Fr. John of Kronstadt in mind, I am going to offer a "few" homilies in the upcoming weeks on the meaning and practice of the Divine Liturgy. By way of reminder, and by way of keeping those who were not at yesterday's Liturgy informed of what I began with, I am simply summarizing the major points from yesterday - both from the Liturgy and the post-Liturgy discussion.

I did remind everyone at the outset of the homily that it could seem like we were merely reviewing what we already knew for the most part. But in the Church to review means to renew - to renew our commitment to Christ, to the Church, and to our deepest possible experience that is offered to us in the Divine Liturgy. Renewal is an ongoing process that is essential in our relationship with God. In short, to review is to renew.

+ The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom as served and celebrated today, is the result of a long process of development. — From the apostolic "breaking of bread" to the ongoing experience of the Liturgy to this day, we find a remarkable continuity of meaning and experience. The Liturgy is identical with itself all through the history of the Church. We all experience the same presence of Christ and the reception of the Eucharist as did the earliest Christians in the apostolic Church. On that level the Liturgy is unchanging. Yet, there have been many changes, additions, embellishments and expansive elements in the outward form of the Liturgy. We are essentially serving a Byzantine-style Liturgy that did not reach its completed form until the late medieval period within the context of the Eastern Christian world, centered in Constantinople, now Istanbul. You can trace this development in a fine book by Hugh Wybreth on the Liturgy.

+ The very title of "Divine Liturgy" is deeply meaningful. — Liturgy is from the Gk. leitourgia meaning the "common action" or "common work" of the assembled people. This is just one more word from the realm of ancient Greek culture "baptized" by the Church to now refer to the assembly of the Christian faithful prepared to offer its "common action/work" of being the People of God and Body of Christ - the Church - in a given local setting. Liturgy is something that we do. There are no passive participants. By praying together with the prayers of the Liturgy and sealing those common prayers with our collective "amen," we are all doing something in common and communal. To come to church is "to liturgize" within the framework of the Liturgy.

+ The Liturgy is "divine" because it is ultimately from God. — We gather to worship the living God - the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Liturgy is about God before it is about us. This sense of the holiness of God pervades the Liturgy: "Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God of Sabbaoth!" If we actualize the presence of Christ in the Liturgy, then Christ is the Gift of God to us and for us. We are thus working with God in the Liturgy as we prepare to encounter Christ in the Gospel and in the Eucharist.

+ We begin the Liturgy with the solemn doxology: "Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..." Our destination is announced from the beginning. — The Kingdom of God is an already present reality that we perhaps most clearly perceive and experience precisely in the Liturgy. We "ascend" into the Kingdom in the Liturgy and from the heavenly banquet table we receive and partake of the the Lamb of God "slain before the foundation of the world." We thus anticipate the Kingdom that will come at the end of history here and now in the Liturgy. We even "remember" the "second and glorious coming" in the anamnesis.

+ St. John of Kronstadt has got it right: there is nothing comparable to the Liturgy for Orthodox Christians. — It is the heart and soul of parish life from which everything else flows outwardly into our lives and into the world as we carry it with us when we "depart in peace."

+ Next Sunday, I will concentrate on the first part of the Liturgy culminating with the reading of the Scriptures.

Glory to God for Autumn

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

(Here is an older meditation from over a decade ago. I thought to bring it back to life in case anyone would be interested in something that deals with the season of Fall that begins today).

Glory to God for Autumn

Fall officially begins at 4:02 p.m. (East Coast time) on Friday, September 22.  And that means later today. From my personal—and, admittedly, “subjective”—perspective, there is nothing quite like the fall among the four seasons.  For me, one of this season’s greatest attractions is found in the flaming red, orange, yellow and golden leaves that transform familiar trees into a series of neighborhood “burning bushes,” each one seemingly brighter than the other.  When combined with a piercing blue sky on a sunlit day and a certain crispness in the air, I find myself more vividly aware of the surrounding world and thankful for God’s creation.

On a somewhat more “philosophical note”—more apt to emerge, perhaps, on an overcast, windswept day—we may realize that this “colorful death” signals the fleeting nature of everything beautiful in this world, “for the form of this world is passing away” [1 Corinthians 7:31].  And yet this very beauty, and the sense of yearning that accompanies it, is a sign of the beauty ineffable of the coming Kingdom of God and our restless desire to behold and experience that beauty.

Growing up on a typical city block in Detroit, I distinctly recall a neighborhood “ritual” that marked this particular season:  the raking and burning of leaves that went on up and down the entire block once most of the leaves had spiraled and floated to the ground.  Everyone on the block raked the leaves down toward the street and into neatly formed mounds of color that rested alongside the curb.  Then they were lit and the task of raking now became that of tending and overseeing the piles of burning leaves.  This usually occurred after dinner for most families, but one could still see the shimmering waves of heat that protected one from the early evening chill and the ascending ashes rushing upward. Please momentarily forgive my politically incorrect indifference to the environment, but I thoroughly enjoyed those small bonfires near the curb as the pungent smell of burning leaves filled the air.  This unmistakable smell would, as I recall, linger in the air for a couple of weeks or more as different neighbors got to the task at different times.

The entire scene embodied the wholesomeness of a 1950s first-grade reading primer, as “Mom” and “Dad,” together with “Dick” and “Jane” (and perhaps “Spot,” the frisky family dog) smilingly cooperated in this joint, familial enterprise.  The reading primer would reformulate this “celebration” of healthy work and a neatly ordered environment into a staccato of minimally-complex sentences:  “See Dad rake;” “Dick and Jane are raking too;” “Here comes mom!”  This all served to increase the budding student’s vocabulary while reinforcing a picture of an idealized—if not idyllic—American way of life.

Since my parents were peasants from a Macedonian village, we never quite fit into that particular mold—especially when my mother would speak to me in Macedonian in front of my friends!  And yet I distinctly remember teaching my illiterate mother to read from those very “Dick and Jane” primers so that she could obtain her American citizenship papers, which she proudly accomplished in due time.

Before getting too nostalgic, however, I will remind you that this wholesome way of life - something of an urban idyll - was taking place at the height of Cold War anxiety. This, in turn, evokes another clear memory from my youth:  the air-raid drills in our schools that were meant to prepare us and protect us from a Soviet nuclear strike.  (Khrushchev’s shoe-pounding exhibition at the United Nations, together with his ominous “We will bury you!” captured the whole mood of this period.)  These carefully-executed air-raid drills were carried out with due solemnity and seriousness—lines straight and no talking allowed!  We would wind our way down into a fairly elaborate—if not labyrinthine—series of basement levels that were seemingly constructed, and thus burdened, with the hopeless task of saving us from nuclear bombs!  We would then sit in neatly formed rows monitored by our teachers, and apparently oblivious to the real dangers of the Cold War world, until the “all clear” signal was given, allowing us to file back to our classrooms.  Thus did the specter of the mushroom cloud darken the sunny skies of “Dick” and “Jane’s” age of innocence.

I must acknowledge that my short nostalgic digression does not offer a great deal for reflection.  So as not to entirely frustrate that purpose—and because I began with some brief reflections on the created world—I would like to offer some of the wonderful praises of the beauty of the world around us from the remarkable Akathistos Hymn, “Glory to God for All Things.”

This hymn, which has become quite popular in many Orthodox parishes, was said to have been composed by an Orthodox priest when he was slowly perishing in a Soviet prison camp in 1940.  In unscientific, yet theological-poetic imagery, he reminds us of what we are often blind to:  God’s glorious creation.  Would he have “missed” all of this if his life was as free as ours are to be preoccupied with daily concerns and cares that leave no time or room to look around in wonder?

O Lord, how lovely it is to be Your guest.  Breeze full of scents; mountains reaching to the skies; waters like boundless mirrors, reflecting the sun’s golden rays and the scudding clouds.  All nature murmurs mysteriously, breathing the depth of tenderness.  Birds and beasts of the forest bear the imprint of Your love.  Blessed are you, mother earth, in your fleeting loveliness, which wakens our yearning for happiness that will last forever.  In the land where, amid beauty that grows not old, rings out the cry:  Alleluia! [Kontakion 2]

You have brought me into life as if into an enchanted paradise.  We have seen the sky like a chalice of deepest blue, where in the azure heights the birds are singing.  We have listened to the soothing murmur of the forest and the melodious music of the streams.  We have tasted fruit of fine flavor and the sweet-scented honey.  We can live very well on Your earth.  It is a pleasure to be Your guest.  [Ikos 2]

I see Your heavens resplendent with stars.  How glorious You are, radiant with light!  Eternity watches me by the rays of the distant stars.  I am small, insignificant, but the Lord is at my side.  Your right arm guides me wherever I go. [Ikos 5]

Brings to mind Dostoevsky’s enigmatic phrase:  “Beauty will save the world.”

'Wood is healed by Wood'

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

Let all the trees of the forest rejoice,
For their nature is sanctified by Christ who planted
   them in the beginning,
And who was Himself outstretched on the Tree.
At its exaltation today we worship Him and glorify
   thee.
- Canon hymn from the Matins of the Feast.

The Great Feast of the Elevation of the Cross raises a myriad of themes—Biblical, historical, theological, etc.—upon which to meditate.  One such theme is what we call a typological reading of the Scriptures.  This is a profound way of discovering the inner connection between persons, events, and places of the Old Testament—what we would call “types”—with their fulfillment as “antitypes” in the New Testament.  Thus, Adam is a type of which Christ—the last Adam—is the antitype:  “Adam… was the type of the one who was to come” (Romans 5:14).

Through typology, we learn that the Old Testament can now be read as anticipating the Person of Christ and the saving events recorded in the New Testament, without undermining the integrity of the historical path of ancient Israel as the People of God, entrusted by God with a messianic destiny. 

One such typological application is expressed in an intriguing and paradoxical manner through one of the hymns of the Great Feast of the Elevation of the Cross.  As we sing in one of the verses from the festal Great Vespers, 

“For it is fitting that wood should be healed by wood, and that through the Passion of One Who knew not passion should be remitted all the suffering of him who was condemned because of wood.”

What a truly wonderful phrase: “wood should be healed by wood!”  Yet, what is this “wood” to which the hymn refers?  How does wood “heal” wood?  

In both instances, the wood is clearly the wood of two trees—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as found in Genesis 2, and the wood of the Tree of the Cross.  In disobedience to the command of God, the man and woman of Genesis 2—Adam and Eve—ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  This was the one tree, the fruit of which it was not safe for them to eat: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in that day that you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:17).

The freedom and self-determination of the first man and woman were tested by this divine commandment.  In a celebrated interpretation of this passage, Saint Gregory the Theologian (+395) draws out the meaning of this command and its consequences.  “[God gave Adam] a law as a material for his free will to act on,” he writes.  

“This law was a commandment as to what plants he might partake of and which one he might not touch.  This latter was the tree of knowledge; not, however, because it was evil from the beginning when planted, nor was it forbidden because God grudged it to us—let not the enemies of God wag their tongues in that direction or imitate the serpent.  But it would have been good if partaken of at the proper time.  The tree was, according to my theory, contemplation, which is safe only for those who have reached maturity of habit to enter upon, but which is not good for those who are still somewhat simple and greedy, just as neither is solid food good for those who are yet tender and have need of milk”  (Second Oration on Easter, 8).

Saint Athanasius the Great (+373) express this in similar terms.  

“Knowing once more how the will of man could sway to either side, in anticipation God secured the grace given to them by a command and by the place where He put them.  For He brought them into His own garden and gave them a law so that, if they kept the grace and remained good, they might still keep the life in paradise without sorrow or pain or care, besides having the promise or incorruption in heaven.  But if they transgressed and turned back and became evil, they might know that they were incurring that corruption in death that was theirs by nature,  no longer to live in paradise but cast out of it from that time forth to die and abide in death and corruption”  (On The Incarnation, 3.4).

The theme of the initial innocence of Adam and Eve—their lack of maturity and their need for spiritual growth and maturation—was quite characteristic of the Church Fathers, being found as early as Saint Irenaeus of Lyons (+c. 200).  “Therefore, the ‘wood’ of this tree proved to be death-dealing, not because God made it such ‘in the beginning,’ but because it was partaken of in a forbidden manner and not ‘at the proper time,’” he wrote.  

Nothing created by God is evil by nature; rather, all is “very good.”  But misdirected free will can pervert the good into something that is evil.  The gift of the promise of deification is a God-sourced gift, not a self-sourced gift.

On the other hand, the Tree of the Cross is precisely the wood through which the first disobedience was undone by the One Who died on it in obedience to the will of the Father.  The Tree of Life that was in the Garden was the actual “type” of the Tree of the Cross on Golgotha.  The last Adam—Christ—healed us of the sin of the first Adam.  (As early as Saint Justin the Martyr, it was taught that the Virgin Mary was the “new Eve” also because of her obedience to the Word of God).  

The Cross is therefore “the blessed Wood, through which the eternal justice has been brought to pass.  For he who by a tree deceived our forefather Adam is by the Cross himself deceived, and he who by tyranny gained possession of the creature endowed by God with royal dignity is overthrown in headlong fall” (Sticheron, Great Vespers). 

Obedience is hardly a virtue that is found attractive or worthy of pursuit in today's world; but a great virtue nevertheless due to the Lord's obedience to the will of his heavenly Father when he willingly - obediently - ascended the Cross for our salvation.

According to a pious tradition, the place of the skull—Golgotha—is the place where Adam was buried when he died.  The blood that flowed from Christ “baptized” that skull as symbolic of the sons of Adam (and Eve) being given renewed and eternal life by the blood shed by Christ on the Cross—the Tree of Life.  As we sing in one of the Litiya hymns for the feast, “The Tree of true life was planted in the place of the skull, and upon it hast Thou, the eternal King, worked salvation in the midst of the earth.  Exalted today, it sanctifies the ends of the world.”  (We might note here that it is in this light that in icons of the crucifixion, we generally see the Cross of Christ “planted” on the skull of Adam, with an inscription that reads “the Grave of Adam.”)

“Wood is healed by Wood!”  This is the good news revealed in the typological interpretation found in the liturgical hymns of the Great Feast of the Elevation of the Cross, together with the biblical exegesis of the Church Fathers.  This is why we honor and venerate the Cross by literally bowing down before it in adoration.  The Cross was at the heart of the proclamation of the Gospel, though an instrument of shame in the ancient world.  But this did not deter the Apostle Paul from proclaiming that Gospel is the power of God.  “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16).  And we also cannot be “ashamed” of the Tree of the Cross through which “joy has come into the world.”

The Crucified King of Glory

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

On September 14 we celebrate the Feast Day of the Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross—to give the Feast its full title.  This is the day that we liturgically commemorate and venerate the Cross that was placed in the middle of the church toward the end of the service the prior evening.  The Feast will then have a full “octave” for its celebration – thus making it an eight-day Feast which serves to stress the importance of the Cross in the life of the Church and in our personal lives. 

To further turn our attention toward the Cross, we recall the Third Sunday of Great Lent — the Adoration of the Cross — and the less well-observed Feast of the Procession of the Cross on August 1.  And, importantly, every Wednesday and Friday is a day of commemorating the Cross, one of the reasons that we fast on those two days on a weekly basis.

Prominent as the Cross may be for Christians, it is the Apostle Paul who very succinctly and profoundly captured the unbelieving world’s attitude toward the Cross in his well-known text: 

“For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:23-24).  

This leads the Apostle to one of his most astonishing and paradoxical insights: 

“For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:26).

The “scandal” for the unbelieving Jew would be the claim that the Messiah was crucified.  The “folly” for the Greek/Gentile would be the claim that the divine would even enter the realm of flesh and blood and “become” human, let alone suffer death on a cross.  Yet God, in and through Christ, transformed what is shameful, weak, lowly and despised—a crucified man—into “our righteousness and sanctification and redemption” [1 Corinthians 1:30].  The entire passage of 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 deserves careful, close and constant study. 

It remains fascinating, and highly instructive, that even non-Christians who profess to have a great respect for Jesus Christ, struggle terribly with the scandal of the Cross.  This is clearly the case with Islam.  Jesus is treated with great respect in many passages in the Qur’an, even to the point of acknowledging His virginal conception in a passage that clearly resembles the Annunciation account in the Gospel According to Saint Luke [Qur’an, 3:45-47]! 

However, the crucifixion is treated in a way that bears no resemblance to the Gospel accounts: “Yet they did not slay him, neither crucify him, only a likeness of that was shown to them” [4:156-159].  The Muslims believe that someone else—a figure unidentified by the Qur’an—was crucified in the place of Christ, but not Jesus Himself.  The Muslim scholar Dr. Maneh Al-Johani wrote, “The Qur’an does not elaborate on this point, nor does it give any answer to this question.” 

Clearly, the “scandal” of the Cross is too much for Muslim sensibilities, since Jesus is for them a great prophet sent by God.  Muslims further believe that Jesus was raised to Heaven, yet before He died—clearly an odd teaching that again is meant to completely distance Jesus from His crucifixion.  If there is anything that is agreed upon today among New Testament scholars—believers and skeptics alike—it is that Jesus of Nazareth was put to death by crucifixion by orders of Pontius Pilate in the early 30s of the Christian era.  This lends a certain fantastic quality to these claims of the Qur’an.

There is a close resemblance here with an early Christian heresy known as docetism—from the Greek word meaning “to appear.”  In other words, it only “appeared” that Christ was actually crucified and died on the Cross.  Saint Ignatius of Antioch (+c. 110) vehemently rejected this heresy in its initial inception early in the second century: 

“Be deaf, then, when anyone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, Who was of the family of David, Who was of Mary, Who was truly born, ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died ... He was also truly raised from the dead, when His Father raised Him up….”  [Epistle to the Trallians, 9].

Saint Ignatius very poignantly asks, what is the purpose of suffering martyrdom for the Lord (as he did in the Roman arena) if the sufferings of Christ were an illusion?  Should a Christian suffer in the flesh if his Lord did not?  As he writes,

“But if, as some godless men—that is, unbelievers—say His suffering was only apparent (they are the apparent ones), why am I in bonds, why do I pray to fight wild beasts?  Then I die in vain.  Then I lie about the Lord” [To the Trallians, 10].

We do not “worship” the Cross.  We worship the One Who was crucified upon the Cross for our salvation.  Indeed, with the Apostle Paul we call Him the “Lord of glory” [1 Corinthians 2:8].  Jesus Christ was not merely a prophet in a chain of prophets sent by God.  He is the fulfilment of the prophetic testimony to His coming, as He is the fulfilment of the Law [Matthew 5:17].  There are no prophets to follow Him with any further additions to the Christian revelation.  We believe, as we chant in the Second Antiphon of the Liturgy, that He is the “Only-begotten Son and immortal Word of God ... Who without change didst become man and was crucified.”  The Cross remains “an unconquerable token of victory” and “an invincible shield.”  In fact, it is for this reason that in our practice, we “kiss with joy the Wood of salvation, on which was stretched Christ the Redeemer” [Small Vespers].

Christianity does not exist because of what it holds in common with other great world religions, but because of what is unique and distinctive about it, primarily the Incarnation, redemptive Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It is because of our love for Christ that beginning on the personal level, we must promote and practice mutual respect, tolerance and peaceful co-existence with sincerely believing people of other religions.  I see no other way for those who claim to follow the crucified Lord of glory. 

However, this should in no way undermine our sense of Christian distinctiveness—“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” [Acts 4:12]—but actually demonstrate our loyalty to Christ Who never compels but invites, with outstretched arms upon the Cross.

To See Life with 'Restored Vision'

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

O incomprehensible and ineffable matters! The God of all things, knowing in advance your worth, loved you; and because of this love, he predestined you, and at the end of times (I Pet. 1:20), he brought you into being and revealed you as Theotokos, Mother, and Nurse of his own Son and God."

"Be glad most blessed Anna, for you have born a female [child]. This female [child] will be the Mother of God, gateway of light and source of life, and she will do away with the accusation against the female sex."

- St. John of Damascus

 

The church was quite filled – and the “Communion line” was quite long – yesterday evening for the Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos. The simple truth is that a Feast Day was therefore “festal” in nature. Coming as it does right after the beginning of the Church New Year, this Feast allows us a good start that we further hope we can sustain as the liturgical year unfolds before us. As a straightforward and joyous feast of commemorating the birth of the Virgin Mary, we receive a “taste” of the joyousness of life from within the Church that is often obscured by life’s challenges, difficulties and tragedies. Fr. Alexander Schmemann puts it like this: 

In and through this newborn girl, Christ – our gift from God, our meeting and encounter with Him – comes to embrace the world. Thus, in celebrating Mary’s birth we find ourselves already on the road to Bethlehem, moving toward to the joyful mystery of Mary as the Mother of God.

 

In an age of cynicism and unbelief, to encounter the purity of Mariam of Nazareth – the Virgin Mary and Theotokos – is to see life with a restored vision that, again, is only possible from within the Church. Goodness, purity of heart and faithfulness to God are embodied realities lived by real human persons. Such a restored vision of life will strengthen our sense of the inherent goodness of life that sin may obscure, but never obliterate. Yet,  if we can no longer “see” that, then we have lost something absolutely vital to our humanity, and we need to repent and embrace that “change of mind” that will restore our own humanity. 

Some will undoubtedly see nothing but a stereotype of the “feminine” here, but perhaps Fr. Schmemann has something worthwhile to say in his approach to the “image of woman” as manifested in the Virgin Mary:

The Virgin Mary, the All-Pure Mother demands nothing and receives everything. She pursues nothing, and possesses all. In the image of the Virgin Mary we find what has almost completely been lost in our proud, aggressive, male world: compassion, tender-heartedness, care, trust, humility.

We call her our Lady and the Queen of heaven and earth, and yet she calls herself “the handmaid of the Lord.” She is not out to teach or prove anything, yet her presence alone, in its light and joy, takes away the anxiety of our imagined problems. It is as if we have been out on a long, weary, unsuccessful day of work and have finally come home, and once again all becomes clear and filled with that happiness beyond words which is the only true happiness.

Christ said, “Do not be anxious … Seek first the Kingdom of God” (see Mt. 6:33). Beholding this woman – Virgin, Mother, Intercessor – we begin to sense, to know not with our mind but with our heart, what it means to seek the Kingdom, to find it, and to live by it.

Celebration of Faith, Vol. 3

 

On the day following the Feast – today, September 9 – we commemorate the “ancestors of God,” Joachim and Anna, the father and mother of the Virgin Mary according to the Tradition of the Church. This is a consistent pattern within our festal and liturgical commemorations: On the day after a particular feast, we commemorate the persons who are an integral part of that feast day’s events. For example, the day after Theophany we commemorate St. John the Baptist; and on the day after Nativity, we commemorate the Theotokos. Therefore, because of the essential role of Joachim and Anna in the current Feast of the Virgin Mary’s Nativity, September 9 is the “synaxis of Joachim and Anna” and we thus bring them to mind in an effort to discern and meditate upon their important place in this festal commemoration.

The source of their respective roles is the Protoevangelion of James, a mid 2^nd c. document. As Archbishop Ware has written:

The Orthodox Church does not place the Protoevangelion of James on the same level as Holy Scripture: it is possible, then, to accept the spiritual truth which underlies this narrative, without necessarily attributing a literal and historical exactness to every detail. 

One of those “spiritual truths” alluded to by Archbishop Ware is the account of both Joachim and Anna continuing to pray with faith and trust in God’s providence even though they were greatly discouraged over the “barrenness” of Anna. This is no longer our perception today, for not being able to have a child is hardly a sign of "barrenness!" And it also implies that this is a "woman's" problem, thus disengaging the man's role in the process of conception.  Yet, it is true that a lack of children in ancient Israel could easily be taken for a sign of God’s displeasure, thus hinting at hidden sins that deserve rebuke. Though disheartened, they continued to place their trust in God, refusing to turn away from God though thoroughly tested as to their patience. Perseverance in prayer in the face of discouragement is a real spiritual feat that reveals genuine faith. The conception and then birth of the Virgin Mary reveals the joyous outcome of their faith and trust in God. Perhaps this is why we commemorate Joachim and Anna as the “ancestors of God” at the end of every Dismissal in our major liturgical services, including the Divine Liturgy: We seek their prayers as icons of an everyday faith that is expressed as fidelity, faith and trust in God’s Law and providential care.

Icon of the Conception of the Theotokos by Righteous Anna

 

 

Joachim and Anna could also be witnesses to a genuine conjugal love that manifests itself in the conception and birth of a new child. Their union is an image of a “chaste” sexual love that is devoid of lust and self-seeking pleasure. The strong ascetical emphases of many of our celibate saints may serve to undermine or obscure the blessings of conjugal love as envisaged in the Sacrament of Marriage. In fact, through its canonical legislation going back to early centuries, the Church has struggled against a distorted asceticism that denigrates sexual love even within the bonds of marriage as a concession to uncontrollable passions. The Church is not “anti-sex.” But the Church always challenges us to discern the qualitative distinction between love and lust. The icon of the embrace of Joachim and Anna outside the gates of their home as they both rush to embrace each other following the exciting news that they would indeed be given a child, is the image of this purified conjugal love that will result in the conception of Mary, their child conceived as all other children are conceived.

The Feast of the Nativity of Our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos has four days of Afterfeast, thus ending with the Leavetaking on September 12. That allows us to then prepare for the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross on September 14!

 

'Making Room' for Christ and His Church

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel! (I Cor 9:16)

Although rather overlooked and perhaps inconsistently observed for that very reason, the Church New Year (September 1) nevertheless allows us the opportunity to review, reassess and then renew our commitment to our lives in the Church. That would also include our commitment to the living God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, for as Orthodox Christians we experience the mercy and love of God in and through Jesus Christ within the grace-filled life of the Church.

Commitment raises issues as wide-ranging as our use of time, our resources and our energy, here understood as what deeply "moves" us to live and act in a certain way.  Commitment reveals just what we are "passionate" about. That raises further wide-ranging challenges to our pursuit of the life "in Christ" as there is just so much "out there" to be passionate about, and hence to commit ourselves to.  Or so it would seem.

And thus, as our lives crowd up with a combination of unavoidable demands and our own more personal choices, we realize that we only have "room" for so much in our lives. We are all very committed to the well-being of our families; so assuming that as a matter of course, we can then ask the questions: Just what is the extent of my commitment to Christ and the Church? To what extent do I have room for the Church in my life? 

If we make the honest assessment that, in answer to this question, I really have only a limited amount of room for the Church; and that because of that I find myself compartmentalizing my "religious" and "normal" life rather unconsciously; then a further question persists: To what extent do I make room for the Church in my life?

This is a more probing question, because to make room for the Church in my life, I must make some hard choices and consciously change some priorities. I may have to make some sacrifices concerning those ever-important components of time, resources and energy. Being committed to Christ and the Church is not about finding a "comfort zone" and then staying within its confines; it is about breaking out of that comfort zone in order to encounter the "living God" which is meant to be an awesome experience: "and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire" (Heb 12:29). Or, as Christ Himself said decisively: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matt 6:21).

Taking up the challenge to make room for Christ and the Church we can initially explore this on the level of parish life.

Over the years, I have tried to consistently maintain what I call the "three pillars" of parish life: worship, education and charity. There is more to parish life, but I begin with these three components, for if they are strong than the parish will be strong - and spiritually healthy.

Worship, education and charity are hopefully rather self-explanatory and therefore do not need to be analyzed in detail. However, by way of reminder we could say in summary fashion that we begin with the worship of God as expressed above in the text from Hebrews; we deepen our faith in God through education by seeking to learn about our shared Orthodox faith in a communal setting of support and fellowship; and through charity we extend the love of Christ for the world by sharing of our own parish and personal wealth with the "least of these my brethren" (Matt 25: 40).  Once we make our commitment to these "pillars" we will be cheerful givers in support of the parish's life and activities. In fact, Christian stewardship can be added as an essential "fourth pillar" of parish life!

I spoke initially of reviewing, reassessing and renewing our commitment to Christ and the Church. Focusing as we are on parish life, is it possible that you could extend your present parish participation further by expanding your commitment to worship, education and charity on the parish level? And also become a more faithful steward of your time, resources, and energy? If room needs to be made, are you able to actually make that room regardless of the "cost?"

Of course, each and every member of the parish must make that choice on a personal or family level. (On that more personal and family level other elements of commitment may come to mind, from praying together, reading the Scriptures, helping our neighbors, etc.). If anyone is quite content with how things stand presently, then so be it - that is in and of itself a choice to be made.

However, if you think there may be something "missing" from the patterns of your life, then I hope this reminder of what our parish is committed to in the service of Christ and the Gospel, will serve as something worthy of your reflection with the goal of offering up the "first fruits" of your lives to the living God.

Can't Get No Satisfaction... Thank God!

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

Relatively speaking, the meditation being presented here was written some time ago - Fall 2007.  I am quite sure that anyone who read it then has long forgotten it!  But for those who are new to the parish, and for those who are willing to give it another read, I thought that it would have a certain resonance since it was only yesterday evening when we chanted the Akathist Hymn "Glory to God For All Things"  as we acknowledged the Church New Year beginning on September 1.  I say that because there are certain thoughts expressed in the Hymn that led me to write this particular meditation.

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Can't Get No Satisfaction... Thank God!

"My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." —Psalm 42:2 

"I can't get no satisfaction" —The Rolling Stones

"I (Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones must be considered one of the great all-time "classics" of the pop/rock music world.

I remember it well from the Summer of 1965. With its driving guitar riff and raspy-voiced lyrics giving a kind of pop-articulation to the disaffection of the lonely and alienated urbanite who, try as he might, just cannot succeed at "satisfying" the material and romantic/sexual goals droned into his mind on the radio and TV; this song - regardless of its actual intentions - managed to say something enduring about the "human condition." (I wonder if the various members of the Rolling Stones ever experience any genuine satisfaction after many years of fame and fortune).

Be that as it may, a rather odd connection came to me between this song and a verse from "The Akathist of Thanksgiving" that we sang and chanted yesterday evening for the Church New Year beginning today, September 1. In Ikos Six of the akathist, one of the verses in the refrain reads as follows:

Glory to You, Who have inspired in us dissatisfaction with earthly things.

Both the Stones' song and the Orthodox hymn speak of "no satisfaction" or "dissatisfaction." However by "earthly things," the author of this remarkable hymn does not mean the natural world in which God has placed us. The refrain of Ikos Three makes that abundantly clear:

Glory to You, Who brought out of the earth's darkness diversity of color, taste and fragrance,
Glory to You, for the warmth and caress of all nature,
Glory to You, for surrounding us with thousands of Your creatures,
Glory to You, for the depth of Your wisdom reflected in the whole world ...

To the purified eyes of faith, the world around us can be a "festival of life" ... foreshadowing eternal life" (Ikos Two). The "earthly" can lead us to the "heavenly."

"Earthly things" in the context of the Akathist Hymn and the Orthodox worldview expressed in the Hymn, would certainly refer to the very things the Rolling Stones song laments about being absent - material and sexual satisfaction seen as ends in themselves. But whereas the song expresses both frustration and resentment as part of the psychic pain caused by such deprivation, the Akathist Hymn glorifies God for such a blessing! In the light of the insight of the Akathist Hymn, we can thus speak of a "blessed dissatisfaction." The Apostle Paul spoke of a closely-related "godly grief." (On this point, I would imagine that the Apostle Paul and Rolling Stones part company).

This just may prove to be quite a challenge to our way of approaching something like dissatisfaction.

Our usual instinct is to flee from dissatisfaction "as from the plague." Such a condition implies unhappiness, a sense of a lack of success, of "losing" in the harsh game of life as time continues to run out on us; and the deprivation and frustration mentioned above.

Why should we tolerate the condition of dissatisfaction when limitless means of achieving "satisfaction" are at our disposal? To escape from a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction, don't people resort to alcohol, drugs and sex as desperate forms of relief? Or unrestrained and massive consumer spending? And we should not eliminate "religion" as one of those means of escape.

If those means fail, then there is always therapy and medication as more aggressive means to relieve us of this unendurable feeling.

Sadly, many learn "the hard way," that every ill-conceived attempt to eliminate dissatisfaction through "earthly things" only leads to a further and deeper level of this unsatiable affliction. Sadder still, there are many who would "forfeit their soul/life" just to avoid the bitter taste of dissatisfaction!

If the living God exists as we believe that He does, then how could we not feel dissatisfaction at His absence from our lives? What could possibly fill the enormous space in the depth of our hearts that yearns for God "as a hart longs for flowing streams." (Ps. 42:1)

It is as if when people "hear" the voice of God calling them - in their hearts, their conscience, through another person, a personal tragedy - they reach over and turn up the volume so as to drown out that call.

If we were made for God, then each person has an "instinct for the transcendent" (I recall this term from Fr. Alexander Schmemann), that can only be suppressed at an incalculable cost to our very humanity.

In His infinite mercy, the Lord "blesses" us with a feeling of dissatisfaction so that we do not foolishly lose our souls in the infinitesimal pseudo-satisfactions that come our way. Therefore, we thank God for the gift of "blessed dissatisfaction!"

When we realize that we "can't get no satisfaction," then we have approached the threshold of making a meaningful decision about the direction of our lives. The way "down" can lead to that kind of benign despair that characterizes the lives of many today. The way "up" to the One Who is "enthroned above the heavens" and the Source of true satisfaction.

The Rolling Stones uncovered the truth of an enduring condition that we all must face and must "deal with." I am not so sure about the solution they would ultimately offer ... but in their initial intuition they proved to be very "Orthodox!"

May the Church New Year fill us with "blessed dissatisfaction" so that we desire to seek and love God all the more!