Coffee With Sister Vassa -- THE DISOBEDIENCE OF A VIRGIN MARTYR

 

Today is the feast of the 15-year-old Virgin Martyr, St. Agatha of Catania in Sicily, one of the most venerated female saints in Christian antiquity. Martyred in AD 251 for her refusal to marry the local pagan governor, St. Agatha became the patron-saint of women who are victims of rape and other violence. She’s also the patron-saint of many others, including breast cancer patients, victims of fire, and of bell-ringers, because bells are shaped like breasts, and part of the sexual violence that St. Agatha endured was that her torturers cut off her breasts. In our day in Catania, there’s a huge Festival of Saint Agatha that lasts from January 30 to February 12 (the main three days being February 3-5), drawing hundreds of thousands every year. This festival involves processions with St. Agatha’s relics through the streets of the city, special Masses commemorating women victims of violence, the armed forces, and religious (monastic) men and women.

The story of St. Agatha, born in AD 236 to wealthy Christian parents in Catania, is one of her resistance to the advances of the powerful local governor, the pagan Quintianus, who thought he could force her to marry him. After she repeatedly rejected him, because (according to a 13th-century account of her life) she had made a vow of virginity, Quintianus had her brought before him as a Christian, as this was during the brutal persecutions of Emperor Decius. First, Quintianus tried threatening Agatha with torture for not offering incense to the gods and for the well-being of the Emperor, and flattering Agatha for her beauty, promising her more wealth and status as his wife. When none of his creepy advances worked, he had her imprisoned in a brothel kept by a woman named Aphrodisia, who, with her daughters was meant to entice Agatha to change her mind by dressing her in sexy clothing, serving her wine and praising Agatha’s beauty and the desirability of Quintianus. When all this failed, Agatha was brought back to a furious Quintianus, who had her stripped and subjected to various tortures, including the severing of her breasts, as he watched. After this, St. Agatha was thrown into a prison-cell, where she continued to pray and the Apostle Peter appeared to her, healing all her wounds. Quintianus sentenced her to be burnt at the stake, but an earthquake disrupted this and St. Agatha died in her prison-cell.

All the celebrated ‘ virgin martyrs’ of those early centuries remind us, on the one hand, of how the Church cherishes the non-conformism and disobedience to rapacious male authorities of those beautiful Christian women, who represent church-resistance to the violence against the ‘she’ that is the Church-Mother. On the other hand, we’re reminded that rich and powerful men who commit sexual crimes against women, also underaged women, are unequivocally condemned in our church-memory. One might take pause to think about this today, amidst the ongoing scandal of the Epstein-files, which some Christians are tempted to dismiss out of political loyalty to the rich and powerful men exposed in them, disregarding the vulnerable female victims trafficked to pleasure them, often from ‘Orthodox’ countries like Russia, Ukraine, and others in Eastern Europe. Also, the ongoing travesty of Putin’s rapacious destruction and torture of Ukrainians, both women and men, who resist his genocidal ‘advances,’ because they don’t want to subject themselves to his creepy authority, might remind us of St. Agatha’s refusal of Quintianus’s advances. By her prayers, Lord, help us discern right from wrong, the victims from the aggressors, and to resist rapacious authorities by Your grace.

Midweek Morning Meditation

 

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

"Save yourself, and thousands around you will be saved.”

• St. Seraphim of Sarov

“God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.”

• Fyodor Dostoevsky

A major preoccupation for many people today are the so-called “culture wars.” Conservatives and Liberals - or religious and secular - fighting it out on both an ideological and practical level, and claiming to know the truth on issues as far-ranging as political, moral, social, ethical, and ultimately, religious. As the old group Buffalo Springfield sang: “Hurrah for my side.” There is a real shortage of humility as these positions are presented as unassailable and hardly open to “negotiation.” Over time, positions often harden, rather than soften, to a more flexible level of mutual understanding. 

I simply bring that current cultural situation to mind as we are asked to meditate on the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, and exhorted to “flee from the pride of the Pharisee,” blinded by his self-righteousness. And that is a spiritual condition that is further aggravated by condescension, judgmentalism and hypocrisy. Hardly traits that allow for any openness to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit! Therefore, anyone fully immersed in “culture wars” is put on notice that the temptation to become like the Pharisee is ever-present. That is not to impugn the rightness of a particular position – on the moral and ethical level – we need to bear in mind. Yet, the more “right” one is – and certain of being right – the more that self-righteousness is ever-present and threatening to engulf one in the process.

There is a remarkable passage from St. Gregory the Theologian (+391) who makes this abundantly clear when speaking of his own need to pay heed to himself (as a priest) before pointing out the sinfulness of other human beings. In other words, the “spiritual warfare” of “saving oneself” by honest self-reflection, confession of one’s own sins, and a basic sense of being caught up in the same struggle as one’s ideological “enemy” is the true starting point before venturing out into the dangerous terrain of culture wars. As St. Gregory writes:

“I have not yet spoken about the war within – even within ourselves – that rages among th passions. We are engaged in war with them night and day, brough on by our “lowly body,” sometimes in secret and sometimes openly, and by the turmoil that sweeps over us like a wave from above and below, whirling through our sensations and the other delights of this life, and by the “miry clay” in which we are stuck, and the “law of sin that wars against the law of the Spirit” and is attempting to destroy the royal image in us, as we well as whatever foundations of divine self-communication has been laid in us … Before one has gained control if this, as far as he is able, and has sufficiently purified his way of thinking, and before one has surpassed the others in growing near to God, I am certain it is unsafe to receive the office of leading souls or of mediating between God and human beings … “

Oration 2, 91

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn went right to the “heart” of the matter, when after suffering for years at the hands of a godless and authoritarian regime, he realized the deeper issue before us all:

“if only it were so simply! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

Perhaps blogging away, and crushing the arguments of our culture opponents, is not the surest way to the Kingdom of God. If we begin with the Truth of the Gospel, and a humble acknowledgment of our own sinfulness, combined with a deep awareness of our dependency on the mercy and grace of God, then the acceptance of the “spiritual warfare” within may produce a greater fruitfulness of heart.

A follow-through commentary

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

A fine follow-through commentary on the mediation sent our earlier this morning, from Shannon Grubb:

I may have said this before, but what has always struck me the most in reading this parable was that the Pharisee's prayer includes no petition whatever: he doesn't ask anything of God. And that, to me, shows his confidence in his Self and works. For we all need 'something' from God on a continual basis, and indeed, even when at special times we think we'll offer God a prayer of pure thanksgiving, somehow petitions always sneak in. And God does not mind those, I do not think. So for the Pharisee to stand at the temple and ask for nothing - for himself or even for his fellow man - betrays a hardened heart. 

Secondly, I'm about half way through St. Athanasius' Life of Antony (my first time!) I believe it was Antony (if so, I haven't reached that part yet, but I could be wrong) who had a vision where he saw, stretching between him and his destination (God) a field completely full of snares and traps (the Devil's), all the way to the horizon. He asked how it would be in any way possible to navigate through all of those. And the answer came back, "By humility." Also many monks since have maintained that humility is the surest way to defeat the Enemy. And I think it was the same saint who was told "you fast, but Satan does not eat. You keep vigil, but Satan never sleeps (either). However, there is one thing he cannot do: humble himself." Anyway, all good lessons on the necessity of humility. 

Shannon

The Publican and the Pharisee, and the Struggle for Humility

 

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

The parable of the Publican and the Pharisee confronts us with a stark contrast between religious pride and self-righteousness, on the one hand; and heartfelt humility and repentance on the other hand. The Pharisee, of course, is the one who manifests the pride, and it is the publican who manifests the humility. The Lord closes this short parable by declaring the Pharisee “condemned” and the publican “justified.” This is a genuine “reversal of fortune” upending our preconceived notions of piety and righteousness, as forcefully as this must have struck those who initially heard the parable as delivered by Christ. Yet, that reversal of fortune should not obscure other notable factors that are also working within this parable.

For Christ is not condemning the actions of the Pharisee. The Lord is not telling us through this parable that the Pharisee – or anyone else, and that includes us – is wasting both time and energy by going up to the temple to pray, by fasting and by tithing. These are not being condemned as empty practices, thus consigning all such practitioners to the barren realm of hypocrisy and religious formalism. We, as contemporary Christians, are encouraged to enter the church with regularity and offer our prayer to God; to practice the self-restraint and discipline of fasting; and to share our financial resources with the generosity implied by the biblical tithe. We could add other practices to that. In fact, we would do well to imitate the outward actions of the Pharisee in practicing our Faith! 

Yet, on a deeper and far more significant level, the Pharisee got it all wrong. He was consumed by a self-satisfied and self-righteous interior attitude that left no room for God to transform him by divine grace. The Pharisee’s prayer was seemingly directed to God, but in reality it was an exercise in self-congratulations (for not being like other sinful men). Here was a man who did not suffer over low self-esteem! The Pharisee was self-centered, but not God-centered. Something went wrong, and the self replaced God as the center of his energy and passion. The exterior forms of piety that he practiced were disconnected from the interior realm of the heart, where God is meant to dwell and, again, transform the human person from within, so that each person becomes less self-centered and more God-centered with time and patience.

Based on our knowledge of the role of the publican in first century Israel, we can be assured that Christ was not “justifying” the particular “life-style” that made the publicans such notorious and despised figures of that world. In fact, they were always included with “harlots” when reference was being made to the marginalized, if not ostracized, members of first-century Judaism. Rather, the publican was declared “justified” for the very fact that he recognized and was profoundly struck by just how sinful he had become in cheating and defrauding his neighbor as a hated tax-collector working for the occupying Roman authority. He had the experience of true contrition of heart; he realized that he stood self-condemned before the Lord; yet he did not despair but cried out plaintively: “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” (Lk. 18:13) 

Human persons are not saved as sinners, but as sinners who in humility repent before God and then offer the fruits of repentance.

The hymnography for the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee exhorts us to flee from pride and to embrace humility. We live in a culture obsessed with the self and thus not only susceptible, but openly promoting, both pride and vainglory. “In your face” is widely seen as a “heroic” gesture of self-defiance and legitimate self-promotion. Humility is treated as weakness and ineffectual for “getting ahead” or for fulfilling one’s desires. We hear the voice of the Lord and we hear the voice of the world. It is our choice as to which voice we will listen to. And that choice will be determined to a great extent by just what the desires that move us to action are actually for. “For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.” (Matt. 6:21)