Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 26, 2025

 

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

We are called to eternal life in the Kingdom of our Father which is in heaven. But entry into the Kingdom for created beings inevitably entails great suffering. Many decline the Father’s gift of love precisely because the utmost effort is required to assimilate it.

How many times did I say to myself at first, “Oh no … if that is the cost; I don’t want even this gift.” But strong are “the hands of the living God,” and “it is a fearful thing to fall into them” (cf. Heb 10.31).

—St. Sophony, On Prayer

Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 25, 2025

 

Christ our God has loved his own to the uttermost. Because of love he created the world, because of love he took up our broken humanity into himself and made it his own. Because of love he identified himself with all our distress. Because of love he offered himself as a sacrifice, choosing at Gethsemane to go voluntarily to his Passion: “I lay down my life for my sheep…. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (Jn. 10.15,18).

It was willing love, not exterior compulsion, that brought Jesus to his death. At his agony in the garden and at his Crucifixion the forces of darkness assail him with all their violence, but they cannot change his compassion into hatred; they cannot prevent his love from continuing to be itself.

—Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

Meditation for Apostles Fast - June 24, 2025

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

 Nativity of the Holy Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist, John

John also not merely bears witness, but when men were bringing the glory to him, he declined it: for it is one thing not to affect an honor which nobody thinks of offering, and another, to reject it when all men are ready to give it, and not only to reject it, but to do so with such humility.

—St. John Chrysostom, Homily XXIX on Acts XIII

Orthodox Christians killed in Damascus

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

 A horrible event yesterday: A terrorist entered an Orthodox church in Damascus - Mar Elias - and at first opened fire and then blew himself up and in the process killed many of the parishioners. I have heard estimates as high as 20 killed and dozens injured. The Syrian ministry of the Interior thinks that the assailant was connected to the terrorist organization ISIS. We heard the following from the Patriarch of Antioch:

“The treacherous hand of evil struck” on Sunday, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch said in a statement, writing that “an explosion occurred at the entrance of the church, resulting in the deaths of numerous martyrs and causing injuries to many others who were inside the church or in its immediate vicinity.”

“We offer our prayers for the repose of the souls of the martyrs, for the healing of the wounded, and for the consolation of our grieving faithful. We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to our faith and, through that steadfastness, our rejection of all fear and intimidation,” the church said.

An Icon from Dachau

This is from my good friend, Ted Bobosh, who recently returned from a trip to Europe that focused on both famous and infamous sites of WWII. As he writes:

This beautiful icon is in the Russian Chapel in Dachau

https://www.flickr.com/photos/frted/54584994798/in/album-72177720326805830

It shows Christ leading the prisoners out of Dachau. Dachau was liberated during Orthodox Holy week in 1945. There were many Orthodox prisoners there including a number of priests and bishops. They celebrated the Paschal Liturgy on the Sunday after being liberated. The icon commemorates that. It is patterned on Christ's harrowing of Hades icons.

Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 19, 2025

 

Source: legacyicons.com

Holy Apostle Jude, the brother of the Lord

How, if He is not risen but is dead, does He stop and drive out and cast down those false gods said by the unbelievers to be alive and the demons they worship? For where Christ and his faith are named, there all idolatry is purged away, every deceit of demons refuted and no demon endures the name but fleeing, only hearing it, disappears. This is not the work of one dead, but of one alive, and especially of God.…

For if it is true that one dead can effect nothing, but the Savior effects such great things every day— drawing to piety, persuading to virtue, teaching about immortality, leading to a desire for heavenly things, revealing the knowledge of the Father, inspiring power against death, showing himself to each. 

—St. Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation

Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 18, 2025

 

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

When God brings His hidden saints to light, it is in order that some may emulate them and others be without excuse. Those who wish to remain amid distraction as well as those who live a worthy life in communities, in mountains and in caverns (Heb. 11.38) are saved, and God bestows on them great blessings solely because they have faith in Him.

—St. Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses

Midweek Morning Meditation - Become What You Are

 

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

Come, O believers,
Let us celebrate in song today,
Glorifying the memory of all the saints:
Hail, O glorious apostles, prophets, martyrs, and bishops!
Hail, O company of all the just!
Hail, O ranks of holy women!
Pray that Christ will grant our souls great mercy!

(Sunday of All Saints, Aposticha, Vespers)

The Sunday of All Saints fittingly follows the Sunday of Pentecost, for the saints of the Church are the “fruit” and manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s presence among us. They are the living icons that are transparent to the glory of God that shines in and through each of them as a gift of the Holy Spirit. The saints (literally, the “holy ones”) have “escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of passion and become partakers of the divine nature” (II PET 1:4). Created in the image of God, they “are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” (II COR 3:18). In the Book of Revelation, St. John has recorded his incomparable vision of the saints in heaven:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all the tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!” (REV. 7:9-10)

Since, in the one Church of Christ, the heavenly and earthly realms are united, the saints are “the great cloud of witnesses” that surround us and exhort us to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith”(HEB. 12:1-2). At the most basic level, the saints are the true friends of God: “But to me, exceedingly honorable are Thy friends, O Lord”(PS. 138:16, LXX). The saints put Christ above all else in the fulfillment of their Master’s words:

"He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it." (MATT. 10:37-39)

The words of the Scriptures are the seeds that nourish the life of sanctity which results in the slow transformation of a human being, made in God’s image, into the very likeness of God, so that this particular person becomes by grace what Christ is by nature. The saint is thus a scriptural man or a scriptural woman, inasmuch as he/she hears the Word of God and keeps it – meaning acting upon and living out what is heard. The saint has responded positively to the paradoxical admonition: “Become what you are!”

Now, as we like to say today: “No pain – no gain!” If we were “bought with a price” (I COR. 6:20), then we could say that the saints “bought” their sanctity at “a price,” abandoning security, comfort and safety which, we acknowledge, are so central to our own understanding of life. (It is rather easy, though it may go unnoticed, for Christians to be transformed in Epicureans over time: avoid pain and seek pleasure). Being “destitute, afflicted, and ill-treated” they “wandered over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” As such, God has revealed that “the world was not worthy” of them. (HEB. 11:37-38)

The “diversity” of the saints is remarkable: fathers (and mothers), patriarchs (and matriarchs), prophets, apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, ascetics, and every righteous spirit made perfect in faith,” culminating in “our most holy, most pure, most blessed and glorious Lady Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary” (Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom).

On the Sunday of All Saints, we do not commemorate only the saints whose names have been included on our ecclesiastical calendars; those, in other words, who have been officially “glorified/canonized” by the Church and whom we remember and venerate by name. We remember all of the saints, that vast multitude, both known and unknown, (symbolically numbered at 144,000 in the Book of Revelation; a multiple of 12 that signifies an incalculable figure as well as wholeness and totality – much to the dismay, I would imagine, of the Jehovah’s Witnesses) “who are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (REV. 21:27). Perhaps this will include our own ancestors who lived modest and humble Christian lives.

All of the saints, therefore, intercede before the throne of God on our behalf. They are with us and not cut off from us by death. Rather, they are now more alive than ever and being “in Christ” are present wherever Christ is present. The earthly lives of the saints become sources of inspiration and models of emulation for us, teaching by examples of faith, hope and love; of long-suffering, perseverance and patience; of lives steeped in prayer, almsgiving and fasting. They do not discourage us because they attained what may seem unattainable to us; but rather they encourage us to struggle to overcome our weaknesses as men and women who did precisely that in their own lives. They were not born saints or privileged from birth. They became saints by co-operating with the grace of God. We, in turn, simply need to become what we already are: saints of God through Baptism and Chrismation and membership in the Church!

Many of us are deeply impressed by the total dedication, perseverance, training, commitment and love of the sport exhibited by today’s athletes. (Possible envy of their great wealth and fame is a different subject). Many may shake their heads in disbelief or nod in admiration. Hardly anyone will call these athletes “fanatics.” But if someone is that single-minded and intent upon the life in God, that is a word that will inevitably ring out. But the saints are not fanatics – they simply have a passion for God and put the Gospel and the Kingdom of God above all else.

To be inducted into any particular Hall of Fame – from baseball to Rock ‘n Roll – is considered to be a great human achievement and a goal only an elite few could even aspire to. However, these Halls of Fame are the secular and rather pale – if not pitiful – reflections of an earlier age’s striving for the heavenly realm of the Kingdom of God. The saints looked beyond the fleeting and temporal “glory of men” to the unchanging and eternal “glory of God.” That seems to be the vocation of all Christians and the Lord’s desire for us.

Glorfication of Matushka Olga

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

Please read the following letter and directives from our Midwest Diocese carefully. We intend on following these directives here in the parish, beginning with the Memorial Service on Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m.

__________

 Very Reverend and Reverend Fathers,

Christ is in our midst! As many of you will be aware, the first services for the glorification of St Olga of Alaska will be taking place this coming week, and the faithful of the Orthodox Church in America have been encouraged to join in the celebration "with their prayers and by attending any local commemorations in their parishes." To provide for this, His Eminence, Archbishop Daniel has blessed the following services to be offered in parishes, missions, chapels, and institutions of the Diocese of the Midwest: 

1) On the evening of Thursday, June 19: the last panikhida for Matushka Olga. In the Church's received practice, the last act before the glorification of a saint is the celebration of a last panikhida prior to the Vigil. This highlights the humility and sobriety with which the Church approaches glorification, not daring to accord formal veneration prior to it. Our parishes are encouraged to offer the last panikhida for Matushka Olga in the early evening of Thursday, June 19, which due to our time zones will be several hours earlier than the services in Kwethluk. At this panikhida, no other names for the departed should be commemorated.

2) On Sunday, June 22, the Feast of All Saints of North America: the moleben to our holy and righteous mother Olga of Alaska at the end of the Divine Liturgy. A document is attached here with an abbreviated form of the moleben as it is sung after the Prayer Behind the Ambon and prior to the Dismissal. It utilizes the texts just released on the OCA website, where musical settings may also be found. (Note: The fuller form of the moleben, following the Dismissal of the Divine Liturgy, may also be used if so desired.)

Any questions or clarifications regarding these services should be addressed to the undersigned at the Department of Liturgical Practice:liturgy@domoca.org. May we have the prayers of the soon-to-be glorified Matushka Olga as we seek to honor her holy memory! 

Yours in Christ, Priest Esteban Vázquez

Vice-Chancellor &Director, Department of Liturgical Practice--

Diocese of the Midwest
Orthodox Church In America

917 N Wood St

Chicago, IL 60622

Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 17, 2025

 

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

God is indivisible in himself. When he comes, he comes wholly, as he is in his eternal Being. We do not contain him. He reveals himself to us at the “point” where we knock: “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you (Lk. 11.9). He speaks in brief dicta but life is not long enough to uncover their full content.

Reverently we sense his Fatherhood, his clemency. We see that he hungers to communicate to us his eternal life; to have us attain the perfection of his Son, who is the equal mold of the Father. Incomprehensible is his design for us. From “nothing” he creates gods like himself. And our whole being bows before him—not in dread before the stern Master but in humble love for the Father. 

—St. Sophrony, On Prayer: Reflections of a Modern Saint

Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 16, 2025

 

Today is the beginning of the Apostles Fast. The length of this particular fast is ultimately determined by the date of Pascha, because this fast always begins eight days after Pentecost, the date of which is dependent on the date of Pascha for a given year. This year we are entering into a two-week fast that will culminate with the Feast of the Apostles Peter & Paul on Sunday, June 29. 

An Orthodox fast is basically vegan in its dietary discipline. There are exceptions, so please look at the Church calendar. This is a rather neglected fast, but it is my role to inform you of the fast, and your role to make some decisions about how you will observe the fast on some level.

In addition, I have "signed us up" to receive a meditation on a daily basis for the course of the Fast. This series of meditations is sponsored by St. Vladimir's Orthodox seminary. We begin with the following from Dr. Peter Bouteneff:

Beginning of the Apostles’ Fast

A healthy approach to yourself as sinner depends upon knowing something of God’s mercy. Without faith and trust in God—as merciful and loving beyond measure—our self-condemnation would be impossible to bear. It would be self-destructive. And there is no clearer portrait of God than the crucified Christ, who has voluntarily surrendered everything for us. The cross—the limitless self-giving, voluntary co-suffering that it represents, the extent of love and mercy that it conveys—reveals to us what it is to be God.

—Dr. Peter Bouteneff, How to Be a Sinner

The Sundays of Pentecost

Source: legacyicons.com

The Sundays following the Feast are numbered as “after Pentecost.” This is a liturgical reminder of the Holy Spirit’s ever-abiding presence within the Church; and that everything we do within the Church – especially the celebration of the Sacraments – is sealed by the Gift of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, there are no “ordinary” Sundays – including those in the summer months! Our entire lives as Orthodox Christians – from cradle to grave – are an unceasing rhythm of progressing from one Lord’s Day celebration to the next. Our hope is that our earthly Liturgies will prepare us for our “passage” into eternal Liturgy of the Kingdom of God. There is no “summer vacation.” And that includes families with small children who are on “vacation” from Church School. It is a good thing if your children truly miss being in Church School; but that is no reason to miss church and the Liturgy during the summer months. That may be the best “lesson” that you teach your children. 

I just received a very encouraging letter from a mother who shared with me that over time, and with patience and perseverance, her children are now much more focused on the Liturgy; and that they now always say the “Amen” when we consecrate our gifts of bread and wine as the Body and Blood of Christ, including the final triple “Amen” when we call down the Holy Spirit to seal, complete and perfect the consecration. That is the result of “sticking with it” Sunday after Sunday. 

Once again, if you are traveling, there is no reason why provisions to attend a local Orthodox parish cannot be made. Try and work your schedule around the Lord’s Day. If we want God to be with us on our vacations, then perhaps we should make the effort to be with God whenever possible.

Thursday's Theological Thoughts

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

 Dear Parish Faithful,

Come, O Comforter, Holy Spirit, and make Your abode within us!

This morning, we chanted the "Akathist Hymn to the Most-Holy and Life-Giving Spirit." I am going to share Oikos 4, from this Akathist.

Often, there is an eschatological ("future-oriented") dimension to the presence of the Holy Spirit manifested in our prayer, when specific mention is made of the Spirit,as if we are giving a glimpse into to the Age to Come - or Kingdom of Heaven - by the indwelling presence of the Spirit. This is made expressively clear in Oikos 4, as it focuses our attention on the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. It is "meet and right" to at least periodically turn our attention to that future that we await in faith as the fulfillment of our deepest hopes as Christians:

Come and deliver us from spiritual death.

Come and, before our end, satisfy us with the Body and Blood of Christ the Savior.

Come and grant that we may fall asleep in peace, our conscience clean.

Come and make radiant our awakening from the sleep of death.

Come and grant that we may gaze with joy upon the morning of eternity.

Come and make us children of incorruption.

Come and, like the sun, enlighten our bodies, which will be immortal.

Come, O Comforter, Holy Spirit, and make Your abode within us.

Midweek Morning Meditation

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

 Dear Parish Faithful,

"The Holy Spirit is God himself enabling our faith: not merely the object of our worship but the one by whose power and inspiration we worship." 

St. Gregory the Theologian (+395) earned that title of "theologian" primarily through his great series known as the Five Theological Orations (27-31) that he wrote in the fourth century, as the Church was still engaged in articulating the dogma of the Trinity as fully and convincingly as possible. These Orations, then, are classics of Orthodox trinitarian theology. The final Oration 31 is further entitled "On the Holy Spirit." The purpose of this Oration was to demonstrate the following: "All that the Godhead actively performs, the Spirit performs." This is due to the identical divine nature that the Father and the Spirit share from all eternity. 

In that same Oration, St. Gregory further states this about the Holy Spirit:

He is the subject, not the object, of hallowing, apportioning, participating, filling, sustaining. We share in him; he shares in nothing. He is our inheritance, he is glorified, counted together with the Father and the Son. ... That means that the Holy Spirit is of the same essential nature as the Father. 

This is all beautifully and profoundly expressed in one of the hymns for the Sunday Vespers of Pentecost that we heard during that service:

The Holy Spirit always was and always shall be, for He is with the Father and the Son, One of the Trinity. He is both Life and Life-giving; He is Light, and by nature, the Giver of Light; He is All-Holy and the Source of Holiness. Through Him, we know the Father and glorify the Son, understanding that the Holy Trinity is a single Power, Three of equal rank and equally to be worshipped.

Perhaps the unknown person who composed this hymn was inspired by carefully reading St. Gregory's Oration on the Holy Spirit. When we sing "Christ is born! Glorify Him" during the Feast of the Nativity, we know that that well-known hymn was taken directly from the opening of St. Gregory's Nativity Oration. There is a very close relationship between theology, hymnography and worship within the Church. We pray our theology - and absorb a great deal in the process.

49 plus 1: Pentecost and the Life Beyond Time

 

Source: legacyicons.com

Dear Parish Faithful,

"And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting."  (Acts. 2:2)


At the Vespers of Pentecost, celebrated yesterday on Pentecost Sunday, we  implored the Risen Lord, Who sat down at the “right hand” of God the Father, to send the Holy Spirit upon us, as He did upon the apostles who “were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1).

It is quite significant that Pentecost occurred exactly 50 days after the Resurrection of Christ. In the ancient world, there was a deep symbolic—or even sacred—character to the use of numbers, and this is fully shared and reflected in the Scriptures. Father Alexander Schmemann explains this “sacred numerology” as it relates to the Feast of Pentecost. He writes:

“Pentecost in Greek means 50, and in the sacred biblical symbolism of numbers, the number 50 symbolizes both the fullness of time and that which is beyond time: the Kingdom of God itself.

It symbolizes the fullness of time by its first component—49—which is the fullness of seven (7 x 7): the number of time. And, it symbolizes that which is beyond time by its second component — 49 + 1 — this "1" being the new day, the “day without evening” of God’s eternal Kingdom.

With the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s disciples, the time of salvation, the Divine work of redemption has been completed, the fullness revealed, all gifts bestowed; it belongs to us now to “appropriate” these gifts, to be that which we have become in Christ: participants and citizens of His Kingdom.”

This reality that takes us beyond the fullness of time as experienced in this world we call eschatological—the fullness of the Kingdom of God which is “not of this world” but yet experienced here and now within the grace-filled life of the Church, herself the Temple of the Holy Spirit. The “appropriation” of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, referred to above by Father Alexander, implies the rejection of a way of life that is described as “fleshly.” 

In an extraordinary passage of the Apostle Paul found in his Epistle to the Galatians, we encounter the contrast between the “works of the flesh” and the “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16-24). Saint Paul emphasizes this contrast at the beginning of this passage: 

“But I say to you, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:16-17).

It is essential to realize that the Apostle Paul does not mean by “flesh” what we would call our “bodies” or physical existence. He is not attacking our bodily, physical existence as such. That would introduce us to the realm of dualism, an artificial and non-Scriptural conflict between the spiritual and the material. By “flesh,” the Apostle Paul means the human person in rebellion against God, that results in a self-centered way of life that further results in perversions of both the body and soul. 

As this passage continues, you can clearly discern the comprehensive nature of the “flesh” as encompassing both the mind and body and directing them to sinful activities or attitudes:

“Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like” (Galatians 5:19-21).

My intention is not to be discouraging, but if anything here sounds self-descriptive or reminiscent of one’s most recent confession, then one is still contending with the “works of the flesh.” According to the Apostle, the long-term prospects for such a way of life are not very promising, if not altogether bleak:  “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21).

However, the “good news” is that there exists another way of life, one that is “spiritual” but expressed through our bodily existence in the rhythms of our daily life:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23).

There is no mention in these “fruits of the Spirit” of miracle-working, visions, ecstatic and/or mystical experiences. Saint Paul calls upon very human virtues, but with the implication that they are heightened—or deepened—by the Holy Spirit in such a way that a new manner of living is being manifested, one he calls elsewhere a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This newness of life in the Holy Spirit distinguished the early Christians from their environment, and is meant to distinguish Christians to this day.

Failure to live by the “fruit of the Spirit” is essentially a failure of our Christian vocation. Saint Paul implies as much when he writes with confidence: “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). 

And a final exhortation with behavioral consequences concludes this remarkable passage on the newness of life made possible by the Holy Spirit: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another”(Galatians 5:25).

As members of the original Pentecostal Church, Orthodox Christians have every opportunity to both “live by the Spirit” and “walk by the Spirit.”

Too Many Children Are Suffering Avoidable Starvation and Death

 

Source: legacyicons.com

This reflection is not presented as a political statement, though there is an unavoidable political dimension to it, in that it does deal with policies of our current administration in a challenging manner. My perspective is of the Gospel, which raises the following issues well above the “merely” political level. Personally, I have no party affiliation. And the rubric of “conservative” or “liberal” does not rest very easily on me. Rather, this is reflection from an Orthodox priest that raises an issue of moral and ethical significance that should not be ignored. 

__________

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt. 18:10)

“Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God.” (Mk. 10:14)

“Dear Child of God, I am sorry to say that suffering is not optional.” (Desmond Tutu)

Children around the world are suffering in these troubled times. There are wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and a civil war in Sudan. The violence around the world in those afflicted areas translates into a death sentence for children, together with displacement, starvation and being lost to their respective families (the Russian army has kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children to date). As I write, many Palestinian children of Gaza are either starving or dying. Morally speaking, this is an intolerable reality. Ukrainian children need to be returned to their homes, and Palestinian children need full access to food. Neither should be subjected to relentless bombing. And around the world other children are experiencing some form of distress.

Yet, I am concerned here primarily with those administrative decisions and policies within our own country that are tragically leading to avoidable deaths among many of these children. Multiple sources have attested that thousands of children have died since U.S.A.I.D. has been severely defunded (the administration claims by up to 80%). I read the following from a recent Op-Ed article (May 30, 2025) from Michelle Goldberg: “Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, has estimated that these cuts have already resulted in about 300,000 deaths, most of them children, and will most likely lead to significantly more by the end of the year.” Tragic hardly describes this misery. 

On February 3 of this year, we heard from the appointed billionaire leader of DOGE: “We spent the weekend feeding U.S.A.I.D. to the wood chipper.” With this comment, we found ourselves as Americans navigating uncharted terrain: A billionaire gleefully wielding a chain saw before an admiring audience, eliminating life-saving funds that have been keeping children alive for decades, with a callousness that leaves one breathless for its utter lack of humaneness. 

Or, as fellow billionaire Bill Gates said: “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.”

For besides defunding U.S.A.I.D., the administration has also defunded the Bush-era HIV/AIDS initiative that has saved countless lives through the years. This program is known as PEPFAR, primarily effective in Africa. 

To add a bit more to this litany of suffering, I turn to James North, a respected journalist who has reported from Africa for over 47 years. He writes the following grim assessment about the severe defunding of PEPFAR which “ … has already sentenced tens of thousands of people in Africa to death, and with each week that passes with the program stuck in limbo, many thousands of needless deaths will follow.” To this day, food and medicine are either rotting away or nearing expiration dates in warehouses because of distribution breakdowns following widespread defunding of these formally very successful humanitarian programs. Without immediate action, these valuable supplies could go to waste.

Back in March, the journalist Nicholas Kristof – on the ground in Africa - attempted to quantify the harms done by the present administration’s decimation of foreign aid agencies in terms of lives lost. Deaths are being caused by AIDS, from lack of vaccines, from lack of food aid, and from lack of malaria and tuberculosis prevention, respectively.

It is an indisputable fact of human existence that people do die. But policy choices should never be the cause of the death of others – especially children. Yet, we can distinguish between a “natural mortality,” and a mortality rate that is the result of a lack of empathy (the same billionaire has told us that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy”) that leads to avoidable deaths in the present moment. And the avoidable deaths of so many thousands of children are both criminal and sinful. 

When people – and countries – of good will act with both conviction and compassion to support life-saving endeavors, we immediately sense the moral and ethical strength of those decisions. These life-saving programs reveal our better side as Americans. As someone recently wrote to me: "The sharing of our country's resources and wealth with those who are in need has always been part of who we are." With this commitment to the relief of others, even the scriptural expression of “a city set on a hill” is not mere rhetoric. It is one thing to cut “waste and woke;” it is another thing to deprive children of needed food and medicine.

The Orthodox Church has consistently maintained a strong voice in defense of the unborn. This principled position was not about making a political statement, but about protecting the “sacred gift of life” as a moral choice that manifests the love of God for all human beings and the Gospel proclamation of reconciliation with and for all. The same life-affirming morality means that once a given child is born, we still need to help and protect that very child so that he/she at least has the chance to grow into an adult and lead a good and productive life. We were committed to that as a nation. Have we stopped for a good reason?

HOLY TRADITION IS NOT DEAD FORMALISM

 

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

Holy Tradition is the “ongoing life of the Holy Spirit within the Church” (Nicholas Lossky).

What does this mean? Simply that the very best of what the Church carries forward through time and history is offered as a perpetual gift to each new generation, preserved as a sacred treasure so that “all might be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). 

This is the inheritance of the saints, which includes the holy scriptures, the ethical teachings of the commandments, the liturgical tradition of “worship in spirit and truth,” the ascetical practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, just to name a few. Yet Holy Tradition must not be understood as something unbending or monolithic either. We must not think of the vocation of Christian Orthodoxy as the preservation of the faith in a merely rigid sense. Yes, there are many “fixed” features of the Orthodox faith that will remain forever a part of the treasury of our faith— the Bible, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, etc. But it would be a great mistake to think of Holy Tradition as an attempt to embalm some by-gone ecclesial era and declare it as the totality of Christian Orthodoxy. The gospel disallows us from replicating (usually for the sake of romance or nostalgia) any kind of a sacred “era”— Byzantine, Russian, or otherwise. 

Take for instance the so-called “secret prayers” of the Orthodox services. These prayers, offered by the priest or bishop, are found at the end of all the litanies: the Great Litany, the little litanies, etc., just before the doxologies, “For unto You are due all glory…” etc. These prayers are very ancient and are extremely rich in meaning as they point to the spiritual purpose of the services themselves. And by far, the most beautiful of these “secret prayers” are the prayers of the “holy anaphora” which end in the consecration of the bread and wine into the holy Body and Blood of Christ. Over the centuries, however, with the explosion of hymnography, these prayers were truncated (cut) by being said “silently” by the priest, so that all the faithful hear at the end of each litany is the doxology – “For Yours is the majesty…” etc. 

Yet within the last 50 years of worldwide Orthodoxy there has been a liturgical renewal which, among other things, has sought to restore the secret prayers to their rightful place within the worship of the Church by being read out loud by the celebrants. In this way, then, the faithful are edified by these prayers, as they allow for a more deepened experience of the holy services.

The liturgical prayers reveal the mystery of the Church as the means and the “mode” of our salvation in Christ, specifically by extrapolating in a practical manner all the great biblical themes of faith: sanctification, redemption, justification, etc. So it is here, with these “secret prayers,” that the faithful are made more capable of coming to a stronger engagement with the worship of the Church, to such an extent that it, the liturgy, becomes the foundational structure upon which a genuine Orthodox way of life is built. As believers grow and begin to thrive in their faith, they learn how absolutely essential the services of the Church are for building up one’s faith. 

How sad it is that there are many, still, who hold on to a narrow idea of Holy Tradition as a simple repetition and replication of the past, of 19th Century pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodoxy, where none of the secret prayers were ever prayed aloud (with the exception of “O God of spirits and of all flesh” during the Orthodox funeral service). How sad it is that the advice of the likes of St. Tikhon of Moscow, who himself was a 19th Century Russian bishop, is completely ignored, as even he both recognized and advocated for the reading aloud of the secret prayers “for the benefit of the faithful.” 

This is our “Orthodox moment” in America. Many of our nation’s young are entering into the faith with love and zeal. Will we offer them a liturgical life which includes the richness of the Church’s prayers? Or will we offer them a museum filled with dead formalism that is only a semblance of the living Church? 

Fr. Paul Jannakos 

___

Fr. Paul is a good friend of mine who is serving a parish in our Midwest Diocese in the Chicago area. Fr. Paul and I go all the way back to our seminary days at St. Vladimir's when Fr. Alexander Schmemann was the dean.

Thursday's Theological Thoughts

Source: legacyicons.com

 

The Ascension ~ The Meaning and the Fullness of Christ's Resurrection

Dear Parish Faithful,

"I ascend unto My Father, and your Father, and to my God, and Your God.”(JN. 20:17)

According to the mind of the Church, the Risen Lord is also the Ascended Lord and, therefore, in the words of Fr. Georges Florovsky: “In the Ascension resides the meaning and the fullness of Christ’s Resurrection.” I would refer everyone to the complete article by Fr. Florovsky, a brilliant reflection on the theological and spiritual meaning of the Lord’s Ascension. This article is accessed from our parish website together with a series of other articles that explore the richness of the Ascension. In addition to Fr. Florovsky’s article, I would especially recommend The Ascension as Prophecy. With so many fine articles on the Ascension within everyone’s reach, I will not offer up yet another one, but I would like to make a few brief comments:

Though the visible presence of the Risen Lord ended forty days after His Resurrection, that did not mean that His actual presence was withdrawn. For Christ solemnly taught His disciples – and us through them – “Behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (MATT. 28:20) The risen, ascended and glorified Lord is the Head of His body, the Church. The Lord remains present in the Mysteries/Sacraments of the Church. This reinforces our need to participate in the sacramental life of the Church, especially the Eucharist, through which we receive the deified flesh and blood of the Son of God, “unto life everlasting.”

Christ ascended to be seated at “the right hand of the Father” in glory, thus lifting up the humanity He assumed in the Incarnation into the very inner life of God. For all eternity, Christ is God and man. The deified humanity of the Lord is the sign of our future destiny “in Christ.” For this reason, the Apostle Paul could write: “your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (COL. 3:3)

The words of the “two men … in white robes,” (clearly angels) who stood by the disciples as they gazed at Christ being “lifted up,” and recorded by St. Luke (ACTS. 1:11), point toward something very clear and essential for us to grasp as members of the Church that exists within the historical time of the world: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” The disciples will remain in the world, and must fulfill their vocation as the chosen apostles who will proclaim the Word of God to the world of the crucified and risen Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. They cannot spend their time gazing into heaven awaiting the return of the Lord. That hour has not been revealed: “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.” (1:7)

The “work” of the Church is the task set before them, and they must do this until their very last breath. They will carry out this work once they receive the power of the Holy Spirit – the “promise of my Father” - as Christ said to them. (LK. 24:49) Whatever our vocation may be, we too witness to Christ and the work of the Church as we await the fullness of God’s Kingdom according to the times or seasons of the Father.

In our daily Prayer Rule we continue to refrain from using “O Heavenly King” until the Day of Pentecost. We no longer use the paschal troparion, “Christ is Risen from the dead …” but replace it from Ascension to Pentecost with the troparion of the Ascension:

Thou hast ascended in glory,O Christ our God,granting joy to Thy disciples by the promise of the Holy Spirit;Through the Blessing they were assuredthat Thou art the Son of God,the Redeemer of the world.

Coffee With Sister Vassa: The Scandal of the Man Born Blind

 

THE SCANDAL OF THE MAN BORN BLIND

“Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.’” (Jn 9:1-3)

Certain “works of God” are revealed in the man born blind, – that is, a man born quite different from most people, because he didn’t see as others saw. His not-seeing as they saw scandalized his co-religionists, so they even presumed it was because of “sin.”

Which “works of God” are revealed through this scandal, this challenge that the man was to his co-religionists? For one thing, he demonstrates to others that vision is a work of the creative hands of God, Who “works” on our vision not only or even primarily in our mother’s womb. The story of the healing-process of this man includes his heeding Christ’s word and walking and washing off the clay that the Lord put on his eyes in the pool of Siloam; his testifying to Jesus as the One who healed him and getting “cast out” by his religious authorities because of this; and, finally, his coming to believe in Christ and worshipping Him when the Lord finds him and speaks with him after he got cast out.

All of that, my friends, is how the man born blind reveals to the rest of us how the Son of God “works” on our vision, “that those who do not see may see” (Jn 9:39). It’s relevant to all of us, because we are all born blind. Some of us choose to remain blind, if we prefer merely-human religion to God-given faith. The latter, God-given faith, is impossible without a humble acceptance of Christ’s way, the way of the Cross, through which He teaches and touches us and works His works through us, separating us (sometimes painfully) from merely-human religion. And sometimes this involves us walking through our city with mud on our face. Thank You, Lord, our true Light, Who shines and works in our night, through the scandal of Your cross.

____

Sister Vassa has been under a good deal of strain and pressure as of late. This is due to her being attacked by her bishop - and losing her monastic habit due to an unjustifiable disciplinary action by ROCOR's Synod of Bishops  - for her relentless critique of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. In fact, she has sought refuge under the episcopal authority of a Ukrainian Orthodox bishop. She has developed a genuinely prophetic voice in support of the Gospel over the years. Please keep her in your prayers.

Monday Morning Meditation

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

 

Rivers of Living Water

Dear Parish Faithful,

CHRIST IS RISEN! 

INDEED HE IS RISEN!

“So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city…” [John 4:28]

A Samaritan woman came to Jacob’s Well in Sychar, a Samaritan city, at the same time that Jesus sat down by the well, being wearied by His journey [John 4:5]. The evangelist John provides us with a time reference: “It was about the sixth hour” [John 4:6] - i.e. noon. The Samaritan woman had come to draw water from the well, a trip and activity that must have been an unquestioned daily routine that was part of life for her and her fellow city-dwellers.

The ancients had a much more active sense of equating water with life than we do today with the accessibility of water from the kitchen tap, the shower, or the local store. On the basic level of biological survival, Jacob’s Well must have been something like a “fountain of life” for the inhabitants of Sychar.

Therefore, it is rather incredible that she returned home without her water jar, a “detail” that the evangelist realized was so rich in symbolic meaning that he included it in the narrative recorded in his Gospel [John 4:5-42]. And this narrative, together with the incredible dialogue embedded in it, is so profound that every year we appoint this passage to be proclaimed in the Church on the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, the Fifth Sunday after Pascha. So, we again heard this justly-famous passage yet again at the Divine Liturgy on Sunday. Something to actually look forward to on an annual basis!

Why, then, would the Samaritan woman fail to take her water jar home with her?

Her “failure” was based on a discovery that she made when she encountered and spoke with Jesus by Jacob’s Well. For even though the disciples “marveled” that Jesus was speaking with a woman [v. 27], Jesus Himself began the dialogue with the woman perfectly free of any such social, cultural or even religious restraints.

As this unlikely dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman unfolded by the well, it was revealed to the woman that Jesus was offering her a “living water” that was qualitatively distinct from the well-water that she habitually drank [v. 11]. This “living water” had an absolutely unique quality to it that the Lord further revealed to the woman:

Jesus said to her, "Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” [v. 13-14].

A perceptive and sensitive woman who was open to the words of Jesus, she responded with the clear indication that she had entered upon a process of discovery that would lead her to realize that she was speaking with someone who was a prophet—and more than a prophet: “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw” [v. 15].

Her thirst is now apparent on more than one level, as her mind and heart are now opening up to a spiritual thirst that was hidden but now stimulated by the presence and words of Jesus. Knowing this, Jesus will now disclose to her one of the great revelations of the entire New Testament, a revelation that will bring together Jews, Samaritans and Gentiles:

“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” [v. 23-24].

A careful reading of Saint John’s Gospel indicates that under the image of water, Jesus was speaking of His teaching that has come from God, or more specifically, to the gift of the Holy Spirit. For at the Feast of Tabernacles, as recorded in John 7, Jesus says this openly to the crowds that had come to celebrate the feast:

"On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, "If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water." Now this He said about the Spirit, Whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified" [John 7:37-39].

Overwhelmed and excited, inspired and filled with the stirrings of a life-changing encounter, the Samaritan woman “left her water jar, and went away into the city and said to the people, ‘Come and see a man Who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” [v. 28-29].

It is not that the contents of her water jar was now unimportant or meaningless. That would be a false dichotomy between the material and the spiritual that is foreign to the Gospel. The Samaritan woman will eventually retrieve her forgotten water jar and fill it with simple water in fulfillment of her basic human needs. For the moment, however, she must go to her fellow city-dwellers and witness to Christ! They, in turn, will eventually believe that Jesus is “indeed the Savior of the world” [v. 42]. Thus, the Samaritan woman became something of a proto-evangelist. Subsequent tradition tells us that she is the Martyr Photini.

There are indeed innumerable “wells” that we can go to in order to drink some “water” that promises to quench our thirst. These “wells” can represent every conceivable ideology, theory, philosophy of life, or worldview—in addition to all of the superficial distractions, pleasures, and mind-numbing attractions that offer some relief from the challenges and oppressive demands of life.

For a Christian, to be tempted to drink the water from such wells would amount to nothing less than a betrayal of both the baptismal waters that were both a tomb and womb for us; and a betrayal of the living water that we receive from the teaching of Christ and that leads to eternal life. It is best to leave our “water jars” behind at such wells, and drink only that “living water” that is nothing less than the “gift of God” [John 4:10].