LENTEN MEDITATION - Day XIII

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

We must care for ourselves, think about ourselves, reflect on ourselves. But keep it light. A good sense of humor about yourself helps immensely. Don’t overdramatize either your sins or your virtues, because frankly, chances are that neither are all that spectacular.

Peter Bouteneff, author of How To Be a Sinner

_____

A helpful piece of short "spiritual advice" that I would think speaks to all of us. There is a thin line between high drama and soap-opera, as there is between pathos and bathos. And perhaps we straddle both of those lines more than we think. I recall that the great religious philosopher, Vladimir Solovyov (+1900) once reflected that among all of created beings, that  it is only the human being who has the capacity for laughter.

 

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day XII

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

In the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts [catechumens] are prayed for with special fervor. This prayer has not lost its meaning, for still...there are catechumens preparing for Baptism.... We will be praying for them during Lent.... And we ourselves, after all, never stop being catechumens. The Word of God made flesh never ceases to educate us. The Holy Spirit never ceases to educate us. The Holy Spirit never stops knocking at the door of our hearts. Lent is a time which is particularly well suited to hearing, to listening to, the voice of God.

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

_____

"A Monk of the Eastern Church" is actually Fr. Lev Gillet, who was a very popular writer in the 20th c. up to the time of his death in 1980. Fr. Lev - a "convert" to the Orthodox Church - was known as a very gentle spirit who wrote extensively on a variety of topics, including a wonderful book in which he studied the historical development of the "Jesus Prayer." During Great Lent, especially, we all humbly become catechumens - "learners" - as we pray for our actual catechumens preparing to enter the Church through Baptism and/or Chrismation.

 

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day XI

 

The Expulsion from Paradise

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

For the Lover of humankind himself once entrusted the commandment of fasting, as a loving mother, as a teacher, to the human that had been created, giving life to its hands; and had he loved it, he would have made his home with angels. When he set it aside, he found toils and death, the roughness of thorns and thistles, the affliction of a toilsome life. If then in paradise fasting is shown to be useful, how much more here, that we may have eternal life.

—St Romanos the Melodist, from On Fasting, a kontakion of compunction for Wednesday of the second week of Lent (Translated by Andrew Mellas in Hymns of Repentance)

____

In yesterday's Lenten Meditation, Fr. Alexander Schmemann alluded to the "life-giving" quality of fasting that was lost by Adam and Eve in paradise when they abandoned the Lord's command. We read of this same theme today from St. Romanos the Melodist, a sixth c. poet and theologian that created the structured hymn known as the kontakion. The point here is the continuity of the theme throughout the ages in the Church's spiritual tradition. Notice that the Lord is here called "The Lover of humankind" - philanthropos in the original Greek. It is the same "Lover of humankind" who will ascend the Cross in the flesh to restore to us this gift: "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (Lk. 23:43)

 

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day X

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day X

How many people have accepted the idea that Lent is the time when something which may be good in itself is forbidden, as if God were taking pleasure in torturing us. 

For the authors of lenten hymns, however, Lent is exactly the opposite; it is a return to the "normal" life, to that "fasting" which Adam and Eve broke, thus introducing suffering and death into the world. Lent is greeted, therefore, as a spiritual spring, as a time of joy and light:

The lenten spring has come,

The light of repentance ...

The time of Lent is a time of gladness! 

With radiant purity and pure love,

Filled with resplendent prayer and all good deeds,

Let us sing with joy ...

— Fr. Alexander Schmemann
_____

The above passage is very typical of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, we could actually say "vintage." In his many writings, he recovered so much of a lost Orthodox Christian vision that was actually right in front of us, if we would only open our eyes and look carefully. I know that many of you are currently reading Fr. Schmemann's Great Lent. I hope that the book is proving to be precisely an eye-opening experience that will bring to life the richness and depth of the Church's liturgical life. At the midpoint of Great Lent we will be able to sing "For through the Cross joy has come into the world" - actually something we chant at every celebration of the Divine Liturgy! 

There is a joyousness at the very heart of Great Lent for the simple reason that this season is given to us as a gift during with we draw nearer to Christ, the living Source of joy and gladness.

 

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day IX

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day IX

When the intellect is severed from grace, it hardens and proudly asserts itself. With all one’s effort, the mind must pass through the mystery of Baptism, not the precise moment of child’s or adult’s Baptism, but everything that Baptism presupposes: preliminary and lasting renunciation of an old life and the desire for a new life, the sacrament of the death and the life of Jesus Christ....

Thus, the proud mind that counts itself as the criterion of things and of the world must be baptized. This mind must discover silence by entering into the depths of the heart and gradually must be taught by the Holy Spirit who leads with a maternal sweetness into the intimate place where God and Christ are. When the intellect purifies itself by this descent and attentiveness to God, life springs up from the transfigured heart, and the mind finds new words.

—Protopresbyter Boris Bobrinskoy, The Compassion of the Father

 

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day VIII

The Annunciation

"The incarnation of the Word was not only the work of the Father, Son and Spirit – the first consenting, the second descending, and the third overshadowing – but it was also the work of the will and faith of the Virgin. Without the three divine persons this design could not have been set in motion; but likewise the plan could not have been carried into effect without the consent and faith of the all-pure Virgin. Only after teaching and persuading her does God make her his Mother and receive from her the flesh which she consciously wills to offer him. Just as he was conceived by his own free choice, so in the same way she becomes his Mother voluntarily and with here free consent.”   (St. Nicholas Cabasilas - 14^th c.)

The text for meditation above is hardly "lenten." But neither is the Feast of the Annunciation that falls every year on March 25, and invariably during Great Lent. This feast, therefore, is an event that we can call a "festal interlude" during this season of fasting, and because it is a Great Feast, it is the only time during Great Lent that a full Liturgy is celebrated on a weekday.

Be that as it may, the passage above from St. Nicholas Cabasilas has become the classic text for how we, as Orthodox Christians, understand the relationship between divine initiative and human freedom. The Virgin Mary contributed her freedom and awareness of "choice" to the divine oikonomia (economy) of our salvation by her response to the archangel Gabriel. This process we call synergy - the harmony between divine grace and human freedom. The relationship between the two may be asymmetrical, but both are essential to the process of salvation.

For those who may be interested, here is a longer presentation on The Annunciation written a few years ago.

Great Lent - The Fifth Day

  

Combatting the 'Evening Demon'

Dear Parish Faithful,

In continuation from Thursday's Lenten Meditation, taken from Sister Vassa's book Praying in Time, I have included today some of her very practical advice on how to combat what she calls the "'evening demon' that drags us by our fingertips to our phones at night." Of course, if you face no such challenge you do not have to read further except, perhaps, out of sheer curiosity. 

Sister Vassa is by vocation a monastic, but she is not currently attached to a monastery, but lives in an apartment in downtown Vienna, Austria. So she understands the challenges of urban life and of living within a different way of reckoning and experiencing time. All the more important for us to learn how to "redeem the time," and even "sanctify" time through well-structured and consistent prayer. Be that as it may, here are some of her "timely" points of advice - someone edited - for us to think about as we turn Great Lent into a real "springtime of the soul."


1. "Turn off the phone at least half an hour before bedtime, and leave it in another room, not your bedroom, until at least one half-hour after you wake up in the morning. ... 

2. "Don't depend on an app or texts in your phone; use a prayer book instead, if you read the Evening Prayers of the Prayer Book."

3. "If you are plagued by thoughts of possible emergencies that might happen at night, and of which you might be notified via your phone, ask yourself: When was the last time you were notified at night, via your phone, of such an emergency? Would it have changed anything, were you to have found in the morning? And, what did we all do in such cases, before we had mobile phones?

4. "Do not despair or give up on evening prayer entirely, if/when you slip, staying up late into the night with your nose in your phone for no good reason. Tomorrow is another day and another evening, when God willing, we will have the chance to do better.... I'll note here that I think it's very important that we keep talking to God, even when we completely lose focus, because that keeps up breathing, so to say, even when we feel close to (spiritual) death. God wants us continuously to stay in touch with him, even when we are down, just like a first responder bends over a barely conscious person who has been in an accident, saying, "Keep talking to me! Look at me! Keep talking to me"!"

Great Lent - The Fourth Day

 

'Now is "the acceptable time" to reject mere connectivity in order to embrace communion with God and our neighbors...'

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful, True rest evades us even in our beds, we might find, if we attach ourselves too heavily to the constant 'connectivity' offered by our mobile phones, and to the detriment of communion with God and one another as offered to us in Christ, in the prayer tradition(s) and times of the church. Whether we are single or married, using our phones at night, when in bed, leads to a modern kind of loneliness, which seeks to 'connect' with everyone and everything 'elsewhere', rather than with the One and/or the one (i.e. our spouse, if we are married), whom we neglect while engrossed in our phone. In very practical terms, to be 'redeemers of the time' in the twenty-first century, we are called to learn how and when to turn off our lights and screens, allowing ourselves (and others!) to 'rest' according to God's Sabbath commandment, not abolished but fulfilled and expanded in the era of the church, to every day. _____ This challenging passage is from the book Praying in Time - The Hours and Days in Step with Orthodox Christian Tradition by Vassa Larin (known usually as Sister Vassa). Many are familiar with Sister Vassa through her YouTube ministry known as "Coffee With Sister Vassa."  Her words above resonate with me personally, for since acquiring an iPhone for the first time four years ago now, I find myself (distressingly) too dependent upon it and I have steadily increased my time "on the phone." Great Lent is serving as my wake-up call, and I am grateful for that.  If you are willing to admit of the same dependence on your own phones (and I do not mean "keeping track of your children"), now is "the acceptable time" to reject mere connectivity in order to embrace communion with God and our neighbors - including our own family members! Tomorrow morning, I will share some of Sister Vassa's practical advise on how to deal with this form of "spiritual warfare" - stay tuned!

Great Lent - The Third Day

 

Dear Parish Faithful, This morning, I am sharing with the parish a poem written by our own parishioner, Spencer Settles. Here is a fine example of creatively working with an ancient text from one of our great Church Fathers - St. John Chrysostom. We receive exhortations galore all through the Fast - clothing those exhortations in the flesh and blood of our embodied existence is the real challenge!    You fast, you say? We say of Lent, “It’s fasting season.” It’s true, we limit drink and food. But lest we miss the greater reason And stoke within ourselves a mood And countenance of deprivation, Let’s hear Chrysostom’s exhortation: You fast, you say? Well, prove it then! Give alms to help the poor of men. Your love from foes are you restraining? No, reconcile before you part! And let not envy grip your heart If friends you see in honor gaining. And comely women, pass them by – Let fasting be for mouth and eye! For ear and feet and hands – all members That of the body do comprise The one who fasts each day remembers, And each one, training, says “Be wise! My hands: from greed and from loose living Now flee. Be rather busy giving! My feet: run not to what is wrong But aim for that for which I long. My eyes: seek not what stirs the passions – Those things that sparkle, awe, and bind The one who looks without a mind That loves not much the worldly fashions.” For if our fast is thus declared, Our hearts for Pascha come prepared!

Great Lent - The Second Day

 

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day II

" ... in fasting must not only obey the rule against gluttony in regard to food, but refrain from every sin so that, while fasting, the tongue may also fast, refraining from slander, lies, evil talking, degrading one's brother or sister, anger and every sin committed by the tongue. One should also fast with the eyes, that is, not looking at vain things ... not looking shamefully or fearless an anyone. The hands and feet should also be kept from every evil action. When one fasts through vanity or thinking that he is achieving something especially virtuous, he fasts foolishly and soon begins to criticize others and to consider himself something great. A man who fasts wisely ... wins purity and comes to humility ... and proves himself a skillful builder."

St. Dorotheos of Gaza (6th c.)

_____

Another classic text from St. Dorotheos who is intent upon expanding the meaning and practice of lenten fasting to include all of the senses. Our eyes, together with our feet and hands - not to mention the tongue - can continue in unseemly deeds as we abstain from certain food and drink. As "the world" claims that we are no more than our bodies and its functions - and that would include the mind - then these temptations are ubiquitous and endless. In other words, there is nothing new under the sun!

 

Great Lent - The First Day

 

A Word About the Great Fast

St. Theodore the Studite

What is this struggle? Not to walk according to one’s own will. This is better than the other works of zeal and is a crown of martyrdom; except that for you there is also a change of diet, multiplication of prostrations and increase of psalmody all in accord with the established tradition from of old. And so I ask, let us welcome gladly the gift of the fast, not making ourselves miserable, as we are taught, but let us advance with cheerfulness of heart, innocent, not slandering, not angry, not evil, not envying; rather peaceable toward each other, and loving, fair, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits; breathing in seasonable stillness, since hubbub is damaging in a community; speaking suitable words, since too unreasonable stillness is profitless; yet above all vigilantly keeping watch over our thoughts, not opening the door to the passions, not giving place to the devil.

We are lords of ourselves; let us not open our door to the devil; rather let us keep guard over our soul as a bride of Christ, unwounded by the arrows of the thoughts; for thus we are able to become a dwelling of God in Spirit. 

____

What I find rather amazing about this passage from St. Theodore (+826), is that as an abbot of a  famous monastery in Constantinople, he was by all accounts a very austere  ascetic. He mentions fasting, prostrations and psalmody almost as an afterthought, or simply to remind his fellow monastics that those practices are naturally "built in" to the lenten season. His description of a community free of the many divisive passions that can undermine any community, is so applicable to the setting of any contemporary Orthodox parish, that his exhortation could come from the hand of any parish priest encouraging his parishioners to treat one another with Christian love and respect. 

No matter what the setting, the same temptations to live according to the "old Adam" are ever present. Our goal is to follow the "new (and last) Adam," Christ.

 

Comments on 'The Prodigal Son - Ending Unresolved?'

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

I will share a few responses to the meditation that I sent out yesterday about the "openness" of the parable of the Prodigal Son. This one is from Spencer Settles:

_______

Thanks for those thoughts on the parable, Father! The one thought that came to me after I read your email regards a similarity to another biblical account. The younger son, in his moment of repentance, expresses a sentiment much like that of the Syro-Phoenician woman who petitions Jesus to heal her daughter. She says, in response to Jesus’s statement that it is not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children’s crumbs.” (Mark 7:28). In Matthew’s telling of that event Jesus praises the woman’s faith. The younger son in Luke’s parable says something that seems very similar to me: that he would gladly become a hired servant in his father’s house, where the servants never go hungry. There’s that same extreme humility expressed: “Never mind privilege, as long as I can BE there. As long as I can eat, I do not need to be honored. I will be a dog. I will be a servant.” 

That, I think, is evidence of true faith and true repentance. Of course, we do not know whether the son would have continued in this humility, as you pointed out. But I like to think that a moment of such genuine humility has a powerful effect on the heart of a person. And the reception he got! How it must have bewildered him. The father disregards his rehearsed statement - practically interrupts him - and begins calling for a robe, a ring, a feast! As anyone who has ever received love or praise in a moment of intense awareness of one’s own weakness knows, such a thing is incredibly moving and humbling. What might otherwise “puff up” will, in such a moment, scald and sear in the most powerful way. 

Anyway, that was the thought that came to me, so I thought I’d share it.

In Christ,

Spencer Settles

The Parable of the Prodigal Son - Ending Unresolved?

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful, 

Of the many intriguing points about the Parable of the Prodigal Son, one of them is the fact of just how "open" it is in the end. After reading of these three wonderfully etched characters of the compassionate father, and of the two sons - one prodigal and the other unforgiving - we find ourselves facing a real dose of uncertainty when the parable is completed. 

Sequentially, we heard of the remarkable "resurrection" (anastas in the text) of the prodigal son once he "comes to himself," and literally throws himself before the father whom he callously abandoned to pursuit his fortune and his misguided understanding of both independence and pleasure. Then, we heard of the compassionate father who responds with an outpouring of forgiveness and love, as he refuses to react with a predictable offense at his son's misadventures when he returns seeking mercy. And finally, we hear of the even more predictable response of the other son who, almost choking with resentment at the mercy shown his unacknowledged brother (a relationship that he does not admit to), as he bitterly lashes out at his father's seemingly blissful indifference to his life of toil in pursuit of fair recognition of his filial piety. The poor father has two very difficult sons to deal with, and he does so with an amazing patience and loving admonition. The image of our heavenly Father as revealed by Jesus finds its truest expression in the father of the parable.

But a parable is not a fairy tale, and though the final sentence is undoubtedly positive and even echoes the very core of the Gospel: "Your brother was lost, and is now found," that is not the same as hearing: "And they lived happily ever after." It is not even equivalent to hearing: "All's well that ends well." Hence, the "openness" of the parable's ending is that we cannot assume with any certainty that the unforgiving brother experienced a "change of mind" (the meaning of the Gk. word for repentance - metanoia). The possibility remains that his resentment may have continued to smolder even if he went into the party and partook of the fatted calf and appeared to "make merry." There is no real indication of his final response. 

And the prodigal son? We left him humbled and on his knees before his father; perhaps filled with jubilation at his "reversal of fortune" as he now rejoices in a sumptuous feast prepared for him shortly after his desperate willingness to even eat the pods thrown to the pigs. But was his repentance permanent or ephemeral? Did he suffer another bout of restlessness and instability? Did he "hit the road" yet again?

Christ gives us a remarkable glimpse of the gift of salvation and of a "fresh start" in this parable. Of this there is no doubt, as many see this as the "parable of all parables;" the one that comes readily to mind when the heart of the Gospel is reflected upon: the salvation of sinners by a merciful God. And yet we can also say that Christ was a "realist," and that he leads us into the deepest recesses of the Gospel, while simultaneously acknowledging the barriers presented to a sinful humanity to actually repent: habit, hard-heartedness, indifference and resentment, to mention a few of the more obvious sins. 

We know how we want the parable to end, as our better intuition seeks reconciliation and deep communion between human beings made in God's image and likeness. But the "openness" in the end, without an assurance of that longed for "happy ending" reveals the contingency of all life within the theater of history and its demands for constant choices. Repentance must be sustained once embraced - an ever-deepening process of "turning around" and "changing one's mind" so that we seek first the Kingdom of God and all righteousness, leading to the human transformation that that implies.

Again, Christ offers us an unforgettable image of repentance, compassion, and even the "no exit" of cold indifference. This openness is perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Lord's incomparable parables.

Please feel free to share any comments or further insights into this "parable of parables."