Coffee With Sister Vassa: "Innocent" Suffering

 

“INNOCENT” SUFFERING 

“I will receive the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.”(Ps. 115:4)

This verse is relevant to both feasts celebrated this Wednesday: the Great Martyr Barbara (NC) and the Entry (or “Leading In” in Slavonic,Vvedenie) of the Theotokos into the Temple (OC). The verse is chanted on feasts of the Theotokos as the Communion Verse, because it connotes the “cup” of suffering, of which the Most Holy Virgin was to drink throughout her unique vocation. Note that the word “cup” in the Bible often means suffering, as in, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me…” (Lk 22:42).

I’m thinking of the suffering that was to be endured by the three-year-old Mary, and of the young Barbara, who, together with Juliana (who was inspired by Barbara’s fearlessness and ended up being martyred with her) “received” the “cup of salvation.” In Barbara’s case, this included the heartbreak of her own father, Dioscorus, having her arrested and later beheading her with his own hands. Before their execution, both Barbara and Juliana were led naked through their city, amidst the derision and jeers of the crowds. I’m thinking also how the young Mary was led, not only into the Temple at age three, being separated from her parents, - but a decade or so later, when she was very-pregnant and both her parents had died, how she was led to Bethlehem, seated on a donkey. This reminds me of our Lord, seated on a donkey, entering Jerusalem, where He was to die His death-trampling death. 

How can we process the “innocent suffering” described above? Let’s first re-think the word “innocent,” which means “harmless,” from the Latin in + nocere, meaning “not to hurt/harm.” And let’s establish that the self-offering of the Theotokos, of Barbara and Juliana, and of their Lord, was by no means “harmless.” Their overcoming of fear, when they were called to “receive the cup of salvation” and testify to Truth, was a liberating sign that dealt a heavy blow to merely-human fear, and to those who terrorized entire peoples through it.“Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against…,” as Simeon said to Mary, when she brought Him into the Temple.

Today we celebrate the mystifying self-offering of the three-year-old Theotokos, and of Barbara and Juliana, in gratitude for their testimony. They testified to the Great Fact that there is more to life and to death than what self-preserving fears would dictate to us. Thank You, Lord, for the Holy Witnesses in our midst. By their prayers, Savior, save us!

The Death of Alexei Navalny

Photo: free.navalny.com

Dear Parish Faithful,

I am sure that most of you have heard that the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny died last Friday while languishing in a Siberian prison near the Arctic circle (a prison that was formerly part of the Soviet Gulag slave labor camps), the victim of an oppressive authoritarian system that is responsible for his death, regardless of what the final "medical" reason behind his death actually is. That is something we may never know. And only God knows what he suffered in that prison for the last three years. 

In an age seemingly devoid of heroes, Navalny happens to be precisely that - a man of great courage and integrity. In short - a real hero. And these powerful virtues are in sharp contrast with the dictator who feared his principled opposition and then persecuted him. After nearly dying from an attempt to poison him, Navalny bravely returned to Russia to resume his role of opposition to the Putin regime. He was immensely popular. But he clearly understood the danger of returning to his home country and putting himself within the grasp of the authorities. As put in a new article in "Foreign Affairs" by the journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan:

For Russian society, confused, depressed, and constantly besieged by an ever more repressive regime, Navalny was a lone unifying figure. Although Russian authorities isolated him in increasingly restrictive layers of confinement since his arrest on his return to Russia in 2021, he continued to have that stature right up to the moment of his death. Navalny’s demise marks a dark new step in Putin’s ruthless pursuit of power. But it also raises a stark challenge for Russia’s opposition, which must now figure out how to sustain the unity he created and seize the movement he left behind.

I do believe that it is "meet and right" to acknowledge Alexei Navalny's tragic death so that we can think about what it means to stand up today for truth and honesty in a time when posturing and rhetoric are being rewarded by a great deal of public opinion. If the word martyrdom means "witness," we can say that Navalny was a martyr, for he was a witness who gave his life for the sake of defending justice and honesty - what we would call "righteousness" -  as did St. John the Forerunner. Like St. John, he boldly stood up to and spoke against a leader who ruled through fear and oppression. The Herods of old have been replaced all through history by latter-day tyrants exhibiting the same dreary traits of corruption and cowardice. They can only respond to strong morally-based opposition by repression and persecution. That is precisely why history judges them as "infamous." But their victims are deeply respected and remembered as heroes and "icons" of goodness and moral integrity. 

I would like to also share a couple of paragraphs from an article by the esteemed journalist and historian, Anne Applebaum, a scholar who has spent most of her professional life studying and writing about totalitarian regimes in which basic civility is cynically trampled on. The article from which this paragraphs is taken, was published on Friday in the Atlantic Monthly and is entitled "Why Russia Killed Navalny."

The enormous contrast between Navalny’s civic courage and the corruption of Putin’s regime will remain. Putin is fighting a bloody, lawless, unnecessary war, in which hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians have been killed or wounded, for no reason other than to serve his own egotistical vision.

Even behind bars Navalny was a real threat to Putin, because he was living proof that courage is possible, that truth exists, that Russia could be a different kind of country. For a dictator who survives thanks to lies and violence, that kind of challenge was intolerable. Now Putin will be forced to fight against Navalny’s memory, and that is a battle he will never win.

Alexei Navalny was a man of great moral integrity. His untimely death is a tragedy. We hope that it was not in vain. As we exclaim in the Church: Memory Eternal!

 

The Pattern of our Lives

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

"We must obey God rather than men." (Acts 5:29)

In our most recent Bible Study, we read and discussed Ch. 5 of the Acts of the Apostles. There we read that for the second time (the first time is recorded in ch. 4) the apostles were detained or arrested for publicly proclaiming the Gospel that Jesus is the Christ and that He is risen from the dead. The apostles were ordered by the Sanhedrin not to preach openly about Jesus. But the Apostle Peter famously and boldly responded: "We must obey God rather than men" (5:29). 

We went on and heard a passage of commentary from St. John Chrysostom about how this event can be understood in the light of the apostles' and disciples' experience up to that point in time in their newly-established faith in Christ. With his usual insight, St. John reminds us that they have experienced both "dejection" and "joy" in an almost ongoing dialectic between these two very opposite - but very human - experiences. What struck me is to what extent this can describe our own lives and the same movement from dejection to joy that is embedded in the very fabric of our lives. This seems to be an inescapable component of the human experience. Of course, we hope that the joy of knowing, trusting and loving Christ will prevail even when - or especially when - we are overcome by dejection. Here is what St. John wrote:

"First there was dejection because Christ was taken from them; then came joy through the descent of the Spirit; then dejection again because of the scoffers; then joy because of the believers and the sign; then dejection again because of the imprisonment; followed by joy in the result of their defense. And here again both dejection and joy: joy because they were well-known and God made revelations to them; dejection because they made away with some of them. Again, joy from their success and dejection because of the high priest. And the same pattern could be seen throughout.”

HOMILIES ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 12.

Again, sounds just like the pattern of our lives!

Facing our (Worst) Fears

Dear Parish Faithful and Friends in Christ,

"For I am sure that neither death, nor life, not angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, not height, nor depth, nor anything else will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 8:38-39)

I cannot find the exact citation at the moment, but I recall that St. John Chrysostom once said/wrote that, as human beings, we have three major fears: 1) poverty; 2) illness: and 3) death. And what we fear we do our utmost to avoid.  We are surrounded by this fearful triad in such a way that we cannot ignore, try as we might, the dangers to our well-being that they persistently threaten us with. Poverty and illness can be thoroughly debilitating, but both can be overcome. Yet the finality of death is inescapable, and for this reason it remains the greatest of our fears, with only its postponement as our most realistic goal. For this reason, we all maximize our capabilities and strategies so as to hold these three fears at bay. 

Now, as a Christian pastor, preacher and theologian, St. John went on to say that through our faith in Christ, we need to always remember that none of these three fears - or perhaps we should say "realities" -  can keep us from God. The poor person can still believe in and trust God. The one who is ill can turn to God with patience and prayer. Even death itself is not a barrier between ourselves and God because the death and resurrection of Christ have removed the "sting of death," and transformed death into a passage to God. 

All this leads St. John to the conclusion that there is only one thing to actually fear - and that would be sin! And for this reason: it is sin that creates the barrier that keeps us away from God. If, therefore, you come to the realization that the supreme good in life is closeness with God, then you realize that there is nothing in this world that can undermine that relationship but sin itself, that "missing of the mark" that frustrates our relationship with God. Poverty, illness and death itself cannot keep us from God, but sin can and will. Ultimately, a profoundly encouraging insight by a deep Christian thinker and pastor.

I should add that in no way did St. John brush aside the terrible effects upon living human beings of poverty, illness and the fear of death. He tirelessly preached to his flock about its responsibility to alleviate the crushing burden of poverty that others are suffering from; or to deeply sympathize and assist those who are struggling with any kind of illness or physical defect. He knew firsthand about the harsh environment of a sprawling cosmopolitan setting and how the well-to-do and healthy members of that society can coldly ignore the sufferings of others - even among his Christian flock. He knew the grip that the fear of death terrorized his same flock with. Poverty, illness and death were daily realities that he contended with when both a presbyter and then bishop in the cities of Antioch and Constantinople. All the more so, then, as a preacher would he exhort and seek to keep the image of Christ alive and burning within the minds and hearts of his flock. For St. John, only faith in Christ could dispel, or at least weaken, those fears.

As to our fears today, the same is true for us as there is "nothing new under the sun." What is different in our immediate present is just how these three fears have been so forcefully - if not brutally - brought to our attention with the spread of the coronavirus. 

This global pandemic has brought these three realities to the surface in a way that most people have probably not experienced in their lives before today. Life goes on in our homes and families, but our conversations, the news that we hear, and our very thoughts are fixated on the things we are contending with - poverty, illness and death. These fears that we can more-or-less hide from within the quotidian events of "normal life" have been thrust before our troubled and anxious gaze. Unexpected unemployment is afflicting a huge segment of our society, to the point that it is being compared to some of the great recessions of the past.  This raises the specter of poverty, even with the social programs and government assistance that are meant to alleviate the pressures of that possibility. We know further of how unemployment undermines self-confidence and self-worth leading to depression over the uncertainty of the future. Hence, the eagerness to re-establish normalcy so as to "get back to work." As over a million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, and as we hear some of the horrific stories of people who have been ill, we then all the more fear our own exposure so that now our "neighbor" is the very person that must be avoided and kept at a distance. We can no longer invite other persons into our "space." And with over sixty thousand American deaths as of this writing, the reality of death is no longer a remote inevitability postponed for a far-distance future; but something brought to our attention on a daily basis. Thus, as St. John Chrysostom taught centuries ago, we are indeed facing our worst fears today.

There may exist a misplaced piety among Christians that claims that any fear in the face of any danger is somehow indicative of a lack of faith. The person who believes in Christ should be fearless, according to this approach. And there is support for such a position found in the Scriptures: "that through death he (i.e. Christ) might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage" (Heb. 2:14-15). A firm belief in Christ's victory over death is our path to freedom for its fearful grip. 

And yet, in that same Epistle to the Hebrews, we hear of Christ's agony - and fear - in the Garden of Gethsemane in deeply moving terms: "In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear" (Heb. 5:7). Even the Son of God agonized over his messianic ministry of passing through "the valley of the shadow of death." There is apparently an inevitable tension between a stance of fearlessness before the reality of death; but also of a genuine fear of death while "in the flesh." I would think that most Christians live within that tension. Christians believe that Christ has "trampled down death by death." This is the faith that we live by and which we proclaim in our liturgical assemblies, especially when receiving the Eucharist.  But we will face our own "agony" and fear when faced with the prospect of death. Perhaps we all share that poignant cry from the Gospel:  "I believe, help my unbelief!" (Mk. 9:24). Those Christians who attempt to intimidate "weaker" Christians into "proving" that they have faith even when fearful, are clearly lacking in charity.

St. John Chrysostom was right: we fear 1) poverty; 2) illness; and 3) death. We can call this (fallen) human nature or the human condition.  Any such terms are applicable. If our anxieties and fears have been heightened to a greater of lesser degree during this coronavirus pandemic, it need not cause us further anxiety concerning our faith, or a debilitating discouragement that we are not being faithful enough. 

To see our weaknesses is not meant to discourage us. In fact, it should encourage us to be honest about ourselves, so as to face and wrestle with our fears. Perhaps like the patriarch Jacob in that mysterious event when he wrestled with an angel, that is how we can overcome them. We know our weaknesses, now we need to avail ourselves of those "tools" from within the Church which, when humbly turned to, can build up our faith: prayer, the Scriptures, Repentance, Confession and the Eucharist (when available again!). Otherwise, our social isolation will only create spiritual fatigue and emptiness. We cannot afford to wait until life returns to normal to then resume our "religious lives" in church. On the contrary, St. Paul exhorts us: "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold now is the day of salvation" (II Cor. 6:2). And elsewhere: "I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me" (Phil. 4:13). 

I believe being brought face-to-face with our fears is a painful lesson in humility. The French Orthodox theologian, Jean-Claude Larchet says this with great insight:  

Illness is an opportunity for each person to experience his ontological fragility, his dependence, and to turn to God as the one who can help overcome it: if not physically (for there do occur, in response to prayer, miraculous healings), then at least spiritually, and give it a meaning by which one builds oneself up, and without which one only allows oneself to be destroyed.

To be humbled is not to be discouraged. To put that another way: I do not believe that God works through discouragement. But I do believe that strengthened by the grace of God, we can work through discouragement in any form that it may assail us. Realizing our dependence on Christ - "For apart from me you can do nothing" (Jn. 15:5) - teaches us to be humble. We therefore cannot judge anyone else - including all of those "unbelievers" who live in our midst.

There is something to learn about ourselves, the world around us, and "life" itself, as we face a multitude of fears during this coronavirus crisis in which we are immersed. The process may be painful, but the results are positive. We are learning to care for and to love each other, to more fully appreciate the "little things" in life, to take nothing for granted - including tomorrow - and to deeply sympathize with the sufferings of others. 

On the pastoral level I am hoping that this includes a deeper awareness of our dependence on God. St. John Chrysostom knew our fears, but he also knew how liberating it is to believe in Christ. We may realize this today as never before: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for ever." (Heb. 13:8). A contemporary Orthodox theologian, Fr. John Breck, expresses this timeless Christian hope as follows:

I hope fear of the coronavirus will lead all of us to recognize "the one thing needful:" to focus eyes and heart beyond the immediate threat, and upon the beauty, peace and joy of the Kingdom of God.  If our suffering enables us to "participate in Christ's own afflictions" (Col. 1), then we can look forward to physical death — however it may occur — not only as liberation, but as a very real transformation from "this body of death" to a spiritual body with eyes to contemplate forever the glorious Face of the Risen Lord.

Archpriest Steven C. Kostoff

Does the Lord continue to sleep?

Dear Parish Faithful,

Remember, O Lord, those who are absent for honorable reasons. Have mercy on them and on us according to the multitude of Thy mercies.

~ Liturgy of St. Basil the Great

Today is the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent and we commemorate the great ascetic and spiritual teacher, St. John Klimakos (of the Ladder). However, every Sunday is first and foremost the Lord's Day, or the Day of Resurrection, for the Lord Jesus Christ was raised from the dead "on the first day of the week." In the Kontakion appointed for Tone 8, which we just chanted in the Service of The Typika this morning, this truth reverberates loud and clear:

By rising from the tomb, Thou didst raise

the dead and resurrect Adam. Eve exults

in Thy Resurrection, and the world

celebrates Thy Rising from the dead, O

greatly Merciful One!

This is the Christian hope that is the ultimate basis of our Faith: that the "sting of death" has been removed by the Death and Resurrection of Christ. However, the path to the Resurrection must go through the Cross. There is no other way. In order to rise from the dead, Jesus had to willingly and obediently ascend the Cross "in the flesh." That was the "cup" from which he had to drink, as this was the fulfillment of the divine economy, known to God from all eternity. 

Therefore, as we pass through these Sundays of Great Lent, and as we get closer to Holy Week, the appointed Gospel readings from St. Mark (8:34-9:1; 9:17-31; 10:32-45) for the final three Sundays of Great Lent focus on the three passion prophecies of the Lord. Jesus was not taken unawares of His impending passion.  (However, we must never lose sight of the fact that each of these passion prophecies culminates with an equal prophecy of the Lord's rising after three days). As Jesus set His face boldly toward Jerusalem and His appointed destiny with the Cross as the Suffering Servant of the Lord, He prepared His disciples for what was preordained to happen in the Holy City (Mk. 10:32).

"O faithless generation . . ."

This morning, we heard the second of those passion prophecies, following  the  dramatic  healing of the boy tormented by a "mute spirit" that often drove him toward self-destructive behavior: "The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise." Again, Jesus is in control as He knows the will of His heavenly Father. But what is the response of His disciples to this prophecy: "But they did not understand the saying and they were afraid to ask him." 

In the dramatic episode of the healing of that young boy, Jesus was forced to rebuke His disciples by saying: "O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?" It is my humble opinion that these words apply to each and every generation of Christ's disciples down through the centuries. And that probably includes all of us. It is a real struggle to be faithful, or so it seems to the vast majority of us.

"The Lord continues to sleep . . ."

As St. Gregory the Theologian said in the fourth century, when a famine was raging in his native land: "the Lord apparently continues to sleep" (see Mk. 4:38). And now, with a raging coronavirus threatening one and all; and as we await and brace ourselves for it to strike our tristate area with its peak wave, it is a challenge to remain faithful as our fears and anxieties are perhaps intensified; and as we may join St. Gregory in thinking that the Lord continues to sleep. But as the Lord then "awoke" and stilled the storm, so we believe that that will occur yet again as "peace" and a "great calm" will again be enjoyed by us all (Mk. 4:39). But for the moment, the storm continues to threaten us.

The days ahead promise no immediate relief, but only further dangers. We need to be cautious and careful. Yet, from our Orthodox Christian perspective, we emphatically believe that "God is with us;" and that God is not "angry" with us if our faith was ever to waver, but rather that God "is compassionate and merciful, long-suffering and of great goodness." The God who raised Jesus from the dead, is the God whose love is without limit.

This is an unprecedented event for the entire world. We trust that our scientists, specialists, and health care personal are doing their utmost to limit the extent of the coronavirus pandemic. We continue to pray for them and to cooperate with their guidance as they attempt to lead us through this crisis with their expertise. We also continue to pray for and support each other. And, as Christians, we continue to place our faith in the God who redeemed and saved the whole world - for the "life of the world"- in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

On St John Chrysostom and St Olympia

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

Throughout the Fall, I have been interspersing some homilies on the great Church Fathers into the Sunday Liturgy in a conscious campaign to "inspire" everyone to read at least one of their works before the end of the year. Thus, yesterday's homily was devoted to St. John Chrysostom (+407, commemorated on November 13) and his spiritual daughter/friend/confidant, St. Olympia (+408, commemorated on July 25). 

We know a great deal about one of the most beloved of all saints, St. John "the Golden Mouthed" (the meaning of Chrysostom), but many of the faithful are hardly aware of this extraordinary woman, St. Olympia. I would like to again share a passage from her anonymously written Life that I read in the church yesterday. It is a splendid passage of praise that enumerates the saint's tireless "active love" on behalf of others that serves as an outline of genuine Christian virtue:

She lived faultlessly (anendeos) in unmeasured tears day and night "submitting to every ordinance of man for the sake of the Lord" (I Pet. 2:13), full of every reverence, bowing before the saints, venerating the bishops, honoring the presbyters, respecting the priests, welcoming the ascetics, being anxious for the virgins, supplying the widows, raising the orphans, shielding the elderly, looking after the weak, having compassion on sinners, guiding the lost, having pity on all, attending with all her heart to the poor, catechizing many unbelieving women and making provision for all their material necessities of life.

Thus, she left a reputation for goodness throughout her whole life which is ever to be remembered. Having called from slavery to freedom her myriad household servants, she proclaimed them to be of equal honor (isotimon) as her own nobility.

The Life of Olympia, 15

In other words, a life very much worth living! St. Olympia was born around the year 362 into a very noble and wealthy pagan family, but with her eventual conversion to Christianity she was closely connected to many of the most distinguished bishops of her era, including St. Basil the Great and his younger brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa, In fact, St. Gregory dedicated his famous Commentary on The Song of Songs to her. 

In a letter to St. Olympia, in which St. Gregory accepted her prompting to write his commentary, he wrote the following:

I do not offer you anything that would benefit your conduct, for I am persuaded that your soul's eye is pure from every passionate, unclean thought, and that it looks without hindrance at God's grace by means of these divine words of the Song.

We also know that St. Olympia was ordained a deaconess by St. Nektarios, Archbishop of Constantinople. The deaconess had a prominent role in the fourth century Church, as summarized by the scholar Chyrsostomus Bauer:

For the service of women, ecclesiastical deaconesses were assigned. These were widows, or older single women, who were consecrated by the bishop, in a special ceremony involving the laying on of hands, and the donation of a stole or chalice for the liturgical service of the Church. It was their special duty to keep order among the women at divine service [i.e., at the Divine Liturgy]; they gave them the kiss of peace, and also had to admonish women who did not live as they should. They helped with the training of the women catechumens, anointed them at baptism, and also had the duty of bringing Holy Communion to sick women.

John Chrysostom and His Time, Vol. I, 155.

Order from SVS Press

St. Olympia remained fiercely loyal to St. John following his two exiles from the capital of Constantinople, once St. John ran foul of the Empress Eudoxia. As I mentioned and even read from yesterday, St. John composed seventeen letters to St. Olympia from various places of his exile. These are now collected and translated afresh in a fairly new publication Letters to St. Olympia (SVS Press, 2016). 

These letters are wonderful compositions of a saintly pastor continuing to minister to his spiritual daughter while he is suffering the physical and psychological hardships of exile. The letters are also filled with some profound scriptural commentary by St. John as he reflects upon divine providence. Overall, they offer an intimate portrait of a saint who bore his cross with courage and integrity, awaiting his heavenly reward from the divine Bridegroom of the Church. The Introduction to the Letters, by Dr. David Ford (also the translator of the Letters), offers an excellent summary of the relevant background that helps bring the letters to life for the reader. The passages above can be found in this Introduction with a great deal more.

Highly recommended!