Lenten Meditation -- Sixth Wednesday of Great Lent

Source: smtbethpage.org/

To be sure, the extended fasts during Great Lent … are a time for turning inward through self-discipline and repentance to soften our heart, opening it for the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. … But we do not and cannot refashion our own lives in relation to God apart from our relationships with other people. On the very first Monday of Great Lent, we are enjoined by Isaiah (1:16–17): “Cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” This injunction and warning is repeated in Isaiah 58:6–7, which is read on the Wednesday of the sixth week of Great Lent: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness … to let the oppressed go free, to share bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house?”...

Great Lent, then, is a time in which we respond with humility and gratitude towards the compassion God shows to us and also aim to express that compassion in our dealings with others.

—Priest John D. Jones, Moved by Compassion: Exploring the Core of Orthodox Christian Life

Monday Morning Meditation -- The living God who 'does not throw away people'

 

Source: orthodoxartsjournal.org

I was thinking about the words of Christ from the incomparable Gospel teaching that we call the Discourse on The Last Judgment heard this last Sunday: "Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me."(Matt. 25:40) In the words of Jesus, the "least" would include people who do not have enough food to eat; or enough drink to satisfy their thirst; strangers in need of hospitality; those lacking proper clothing; those sick in hospitals; or those languishing alone in prison. We like the sound of this coming from Christ: His universal love for all of humankind. His identification with those Dostoevsky called "the insulted and the injured" (or sometimes "the humiliated and the wronged"), is deeply moving. His refusal to ignore those with no status and thus with no protection awakens our Christian sense of equality and justice.

But upon further reflection our ardor for these compassionate words of Christ may cool when we attempt to further objectively identify those described as "the least" in our contemporary setting. Just who are these "least of my brethren" - and "sisters," we should add - for the sake of clarifying the inclusiveness of the Lord's embrace? Are they the "unwashed/uneducated masses?" Perhaps the "proletariats" of George Orwell's 1984? Prisoners, drug addicts and/or prostitutes? Unwed mothers with nowhere to turn? The chronically unemployed? Neglected minorities? Undocumented immigrants? Even perhaps those dismissed as the undifferentiated "riff raff" drifting along the margins of society. These are descriptive terms for those countless human beings that are both neglected and dismissed as not counting for much. Or, with a bit more respect and regard, are "the least" just "simple people" who go through life without leaving a memorable trace (this possibility might be getting uncomfortably close). 

At the same time I was recently thinking of the dedication of Sister Verna Nonna Harrison's remarkable book, God's Many Splendored Image. I frequently assigned this book while teaching at Xavier University. My students had a genuine positive experience reading this book for the simple fact that they were reading about things they have never thought about up to this point in their young lives. And that would include the notion of human beings made "in the image and likeness of God." Or that not all Christians look at human nature as debased and inherently sinful. (This book is a "must read" for Orthodox Christians, in my humble opinion).

Getting back to her heartfelt dedication, Sister Nonna writes: "This book is dedicated to all those people whom other people have thrown away. It shows that God does not throw away people." What a unique and deeply moving dedication! A good part of human history is a dreary chronicle of horrific human suffering, as the strong throw away the weak with impunity and hardly a second thought: Man is a wolf to man as it has been said. Recent history makes this terrifyingly clear: Two World Wars; the Holocaust; the Gulag; the Cultural Revolution; Cambodian genocide. Step back one more century, and we face our own unconscionable national examples of slavery and the near-genocide of native Americans. Step into the contemporary world and we see slums, massive poverty, child abuse, human trafficking and endless other examples of "people whom other people have thrown away." We live with this, just glad that we and our loved ones are not part of this discarded humanity. 

The positive side of Sister Nonna's dedication is "that God does not throw away people." Each human person is as worthy as the next in the eyes of God - and the "range" traversed is from saint to sinner. Our eschatological hope is for the great reversal when the "least of these my brethren" are embraced by the love of God, transforming their sorrow into joy, "where the voice of those who feast is unceasing, and the sweetness of those who behold the ineffable beauty of thy countenance is beyond telling." (St. Basil the Great). What a wonderful expectation! But Christ in His teaching in Matt. 25:31-46, is concerned with how we treat the "least" here and now within the context and confines of our earthly existence.

The question that looms over us is this: Are we, as Orthodox Christians and members of the Body of Christ, torn between our commitment to the Gospel, but also to an ideology - political, social or cultural - that does not leave much room in our minds and hearts for those considered "the least." Are we indifferent to our fellow human beings who are marginalized and disregarded? Even worse, do we look down on them with (unspoken) disdain or contempt? Are we open to acknowledging that each and every human person is made "in the image and likeness of God," including those "whom other people have thrown away?" Do we resent it when our hard-earned "tax dollars" that may go to supportive programs for those in need - meaning the poor, the unemployed and the homeless? How many of us troubled when our government defunded USAid, thus cutting of essential funds that were devoted to assisting the human being spoken of by the Lord in His great discourse? (Yet, are we as resentful toward the wealthy who know how to avoid paying their fair share of taxes or who are corrupt and steal the needed resources of others?). Am I troubled by childhood poverty though I live in the wealthiest country in the world? 

I maintain that these are legitimate questions in the light of Christ's teaching that we just recently heard in the great Discourse on the Last Judgment found in Matt. 25:31-46. These words are directed to us as we stand in church and hear the Gospel proclaimed. The merciful and loving God that we believe in is also the One who will judge us, or perhaps we should say who will pronounce the sentence that we have "earned" throughout the years of our earthly existence. The Gospel is not about social programs but about the heart of each of us and how we treat "the least" that are so dear to Christ. If we fail to be neighbors to those in need, it is then that we need "safety nets" coming from our religious, social and political leaders.

On a personal level, we need to help the "the least" of Christ's brothers and sisters. And we need to feel deeply in our hearts a painful recognition and sorrow for "those people whom other people have thrown away." Can we even grasp for a moment what it will mean for us to hear the words of the glorified Son of man: "Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." (Matt. 25:34) For we worship "the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," the living God (Matt. 22:32) who "does not throw away people." I, for one, am deeply grateful to Sister Nonna Verna Harrison for bringing this to our attention through her heartfelt dedication found at the beginning of her marvelous book.

More on Compassion

Source: legacyicons.com

A very fine response to the recent meditation on compassion from our own parishioner, John Dumancic. I thought to share this as a kind of extension/follow through on the theme of compassion:

_____

Dear Father Steven,

I had this thought while reading this reflection: both 'compassion' and 'sympathy' seem to have the same etymological meaning: com + passio in the Latin, σύν + πάθος (syn + pathos) in the Greek, 'to suffer with'. St. Paul commands us to 'rejoice with those who rejoice, and to weep with those who weep': this is having compassion, when we are so centered on our neighbor that we suffer and rejoice with them in their suffering and rejoicing. (And, with a broader reading of the word pathos, I think you could admit both of these in 'compassion'!) 

The Cross, then, in this reading, reveals God principally as the Compassionate One; God, who is not subject to pathos, nevertheless assumes all our suffering and rejoicing in the Incarnation of the Son: He carried all of our crosses to Golgotha, and by His suffering destroyed our suffering (the fruit of which we will reap in both this life and the ages to come). Or, if you will, by His death and resurrection, He made our suffering and our crosses to be a vehicle of glory, a pathway to eternal life. 'Blessed are they that mourn' — not because mourning is anything good in itself, but because they that love others must mourn, until the Lord 'wipes every tear from every eye.'

Sincerely,

John Dumancic

The Compassion of the Lord

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

"The Lord is compassionate and merciful, long-suffering and of great goodness." (Psalm. 103:8)

"And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, "Do not weep"." (Lk. 7:13)

Compassion \kem-'pa-shan\: "Sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it." 

Merriam Webster Dictionary

The appointed Gospel that we heard at the Liturgy this last Sunday was Lk. 7:11-16, the extraordinary account of the raising from death of the son of the widow of Nain. This account is unique to the Gospel According to St. Luke. And it is one of the three accounts in the Gospels in which Christ restores a human person to life following death (Jairus's daughter and Lazarus of Bethany being the other two). Although only the Lord Jesus Christ has been resurrected unto eternal life - "For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him" (Rom. 6:9) - those three who were resuscitated to life again were seen as pledges or prefigurations of the resurrection of the dead awaited for at the end of time, as affirmed each and every time that we recite the Nicene Creed in our communal and personal prayer. For this reason, the crowd that accompanied the widow of Nain in the funeral procession of her son glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has visited his people!" (7:16) In this account, Jesus appears as another Elijah who raised the son of the widow of Zarephath (I Kg. 17:17-24). 

However, this raising of the young man is not the only remarkable event of note in this dramatic account. For the mother of the young man was a widow and this was her only son (Lk. 7:12). When the Lord had authoritatively brought the funeral procession to a halt, St. Luke informs us: "And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, Do not weep"." (Lk. 7:13) Compassion always characterized Jesus in his interactions with those who were suffering some form of distress, mental or physical. Jesus understood the distress of this poor widow, who would now be on her own without her husband or son. By restoring the young man to life, he also restores new life to the grief-stricken and lonely widow. In fact, the way that St. Luke conveys this story seems as if that was his main concern in immortalizing it in his Gospel. 

Many will claim that St. Luke stresses the compassion of the Lord the most among the evangelists. Compassion goes beyond mere kindness or helpfulness. It wells up from the heart and it seeks to alleviate the distress of the other. Even the dry definition that is so often characteristic of the dictionary - as cited above - captures this deeper meaning of compassion as an interior sympathy seeking to manifest itself in an exterior action.

Looking inwardly at the "household of faith," which is the Church, the followers of Christ need also to be persons filled with compassion for the other who may be suffering. Compassion takes us far beyond outward forms of piety. Actually, without compassion those forms of piety can dry up and manifest the religious hypocrisy so strongly criticized by the Lord. The world can be a very cold place filled with marginalized and lonely people. We also see that people are often manipulated and abused due to their powerlessness. 

Thus, if a given society is drained of compassion because of a certain ideological orientation or political goals, that society has surrendered its basic humanitarian impulses contrary to the natural goodness of human nature as created by God "in the beginning." The neoconservative social commentator, David Brooks, claims that we are living in "the era of dark passions." He comments on the following: anger, hatred, resentment, fear and the desire to dominate. These are the antitheses of compassion and mercy. And that means that they are contrary to the blessed principles manifested in Christ and meant to be manifested by His followers. In other words, a "Christian" is meant to be "Christ-like."

"Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful." (Lk. 6:36)

A Follow-Through Reflection

 

Source: damascenegallery.com

I have just learned the following "bad news" from a newly published article by the Associated Press:

"Monday was the last day as an independent agency for the six-decade-old humanitarian and development organization, created by President John F. Kennedy as a peaceful way of promoting U.S. national security by boosting goodwill and prosperity abroad."

The administration has ordered USAID absorbed into the State Department on Tuesday.

I wrote about the tragic deaths that will result around the world, primarily among children, from defunding USAID in a reflection on June 6, entitled, "Too Many Children are Suffering Avoidable Starvation and Death." The data referred to then - as disturbing as it was - is now dwarfed by the anticipated deaths that now threaten men women and children throughout the world. I now quote an article written by Aria Bendex and printed on the "health news" page from NBC News today: "USAID cuts could lead to 14 Million deaths over the next five years, researches say:"

"The analysis found that, from 2001 through 2021, USAID-funded programs prevented nearly 92 million deaths across 133 countries, including more than 25 million deaths from HIV/AIDS, around 11 million from diarrheal diseases, 8 million from malaria and nearly 5 million from tuberculosis."

"The analysis, done by a team of international researchers from Spain, Brazil, Mozambique and the United States, estimated the impact of the 83% funding cuts, assuming they remain through 2030. Of the more than 14 million deaths forecast, around 4.5 million would be among children under 5, the authors found.

“The numbers are striking, but we are not the only group that did this kind of analysis,” said Davide Rasella, a research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, who coordinated the study. Other research groups, he said, “came up with similar magnitudes — millions and millions of deaths that will be caused by the defunding of USAID".”

"Amira Albert Roess, a professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University, said the way the funding was terminated is partly responsible for the high number of predicted deaths:

“For better or for worse, some of the USAID-funded clinics in some areas, they were the main source of care,” she said. “If you wanted to reduce USAID funding, it could have been done in a more gradual manner, instead of this sudden — and really, in a lot of places, overnight — shuttering of clinics".”

It seem painfully obvious that so much of this suffering and death could have been avoided by more careful research and planning, and a humanitarian impulse - together with American "soft power" that was behind these life-saving programs going back to the 1960s. Allowing for compassion - a decisive Christian response - in federal government decisions does not violate the separation of Church and State. It actually makes us a better nation. As Orthodox Christians, it is the Gospel and the "mind of Christ" that we need to manifest when examine policies and principles.

I would like to include former president George Bush's comments to disheartened staffers who will be relieved of their positions now: “You’ve showed the great strength of America through your work — and that is your good heart,’’ Bush told USAID staffers. “Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you," he said.

Fr. Steven

The Rich Man and Lazarus

Encountering Lazarus

*For three consecutive Sundays, we always have the so-called "Lazarus Basket" by the Cross once we read the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. For those who are new to the parish, perhaps this older meditation may be helpful in explaining the meaning and purpose of that basket.

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

At the Divine Liturgy yesterday morning, we heard the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (LK. 16:19-31). A wonderful parable, indeed, but a frightening one as Christ describes the torments of Hades/Hell for those who refuse to practice charity in this life. The "rich man" dressed well and ate well, according to the parable (16:19). But yet he ignored Lazarus who lay outside his gate (on a daily basis?). Lazarus, of course, was not only poor, but he was "full of sores," and seemingly at a near-starvation level, because he would have been content with whatever "fell from the rich man's table" (16:20-21). 

Upon their respective deaths, there was a staggering "reversal of fortune." Lazarus "was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom" (16:22); but the nameless (not an insignificant detail) rich man was delivered to Hades, the shadowy realm of death where the presence of God cannot be enjoyed. Conscious and tormented by his condition, and reminded by the Lord that his indifference to Lazarus put him there: "Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things" (16:25), the rich man languishes in agony and regret. And it is too late to repent so that he can come over to the bosom of Abraham, a clear image of paradise: "between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us." (16: 26)

It is difficult to determine just how much in a parable can be applied in a doctrinal manner to the mystery of the judgment and the world to come; but nevertheless this parable should have our undivided attention when it comes to our charitable side when contemplating our impending judgment. (There is, of course, the Parable of the Last Judgment in MATT. 25:31-46, read right before the beginnng of Great Lent). We may read the parable as a warning or as an encouragement, but the lesson remains the same. A lack of charity among those who have the means to practice it, reveals an indifference that leaves one unprepared for the joy of God's presence in the age to come.

We hardly encounter a Lazarus type in our everyday lives. We are protected from such encounters. The appeal to our charitable side comes through less direct sources - the mail, audio communication, word-of-mouth, but also in our churches. We periodically have collections for the poor and needy, for victims of natural disasters and the like. This appeal is usually in the form of a basket that is placed by the Cross, so that after the Liturgy, we may come forward, kiss the Cross, and place our contribution in the basket. 

Here, then, is how I see this parable being actualized - made present - in our own lives, at least periodically. The basket, or basket-holder, represents Lazarus, and each one of us represents the rich man. When we go by the basket, we go right past Lazarus. Do we stop and attend to the needs of Lazarus, or do we pass him by as did the rich man? The description of being "rich" is quite relative, for we are all well-clothed and well-fed as was the rich man. We can always put "something' in the basket (beyond what would honestly be deemed a mere token gesture). The right question, therefore, is not: "Can I afford to put something in the basket?" It is: "Can I afford not to put something in the basket in the light of Christ's parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man?" Or, is it possible to kiss the Cross of our Savior, and then walk right by "Lazarus?" Such a thought should strike our conscience, open our hearts - and then our pockets or purses.

We can hardly respond to every appeal that comes our way. We have to make choices based on some discernment. I am raising the point of enjoying our Lord's hospitality toward us in the Eucharistic liturgy, because He made Himself poor so that we could be made rich in Christ Jesus (II COR. 8:9) - a saving event actualized whenever we celebrate the Liturgy. Lazarus can be in our midst also, in one form or another. It may take some sympathetic imagination to "see" him in a mere basket by the Cross, but hopefully the parable will convince us that the way of the rich man is not consistent with the gifts of God that we enjoy in such abundance.

_____

In case you may be further interested, below are a series of links to other meditations that I have written throughout the years on the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. There is, admittedly, a great deal of overlap and I depend on St. John Chrysostom's remarkable set of homilies on the parable throughout these meditations. But, again, in case you may be interested to read further:

A Radical Critique of Selfishness - Lazarus and the Rich Man

Alleviating the Plight of the Poor

St. John Chrysostom on Wealth and Poverty