Take Lent Seriously: Make a Good Beginning

Dear Parish Faithful,

Great Lent will begin on Monday, February 15. Actually, from the liturgical perspective, it will begin once we serve what is popularly known as "Forgiveness Vespers" on Sunday following the Liturgy. At this service we change the colors of the analoy and holy table cloths, begin using the distinctive lenten chant for the first time, and together prostrate ourselves before God to the petitions of the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim. But these outward signs - important as they may be - are insignificant when compared to the inward need for mutual forgiveness, concretely expressed in the "rite of forgiveness" that takes us into the very heart of Great Lent. To exchange a kiss of peace and offer and receive forgiveness to and from each other is to extend the forgiveness of God in Christ throughout our community. Receiving and accepting the forgiveness of God, we share that same gracious experience with each other as brothers and sisters united in Christ. Every Great Lent we actualize the saving forgiveness of God when we make present the redemptive death of Christ as well as His glorious Resurrection. But, again, as we experience the "vertical" dimension of forgiveness as it comes down to us; we simultaneously experience the "horizontal" dimension of forgiveness when we extend it to each other. And when the vertical and horizontal meet, a cross is formed. We must crucify our egos, self-defensiveness, and self-righteousness when "face-to-face" with the "other."

Hopefully, you will plan your day so that it will include the Forgiveness Vespers that inaugurates Great Lent. If you have never participated in this service before, please give it serious consideration.

The First Week of Lent is very unique and it affords the possibility of a good beginning to the entire lenten journey of forty days. There is nothing quite like the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, chanted on the first four evenings of the first week. With a knowledge and use of the Bible that would make an evangelical preacher envious, St. Andrew expresses the human need for repentance in an overwhelming manner, weaving together various biblical figures - both good and bad - in order for us to understand that we belong to that same history as we work out our salvation in fear and trembling. A quiet and darkened church will allow us to gather our thoughts together and concentrate on God and the salvation of our souls. How liberatating: to be in church free from cell-phones and calling, chatting, texting, twittering! To stand before the icons in reverence and not before a computer screen in an empty-minded search for more distraction! All of that superfluous talk, those meaningless messages and that "junk" filling our minds and hearts from our waking hours until bed, can be "laid aside" so that we can call to mind who and what we really are - human beings made in the image and likeness of God - and not superficial consumers. Even if you are relatively free from that madness, the Great Canon will lead you upward toward God through the realization that at times we are moving downward and away from God.

The Canon is served on four consecutive evenings. If you are not free one night, then perhaps another may be open. If you have never participated in this service, please give it serous consideration.

As Fr. Alexander Schmemann use to say: Take Lent seriously.

Fr. Steven

The Great Fast, The Whole Person, The Total Effort

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

Yesterday, in anticipation of Great Lent's beginning next Monday, I sent out a basic outline of the "fasting rules" that serve as directives or guidelines for that upcoming season. This was accompanied by what I hope was some sound pastoral commentary - brief though it was - that gave a bit of context to those guidelines. Today, I would like to go a good deal further in that direction. I have attached what amounts to be a very helpful summary of a brilliant article by Archbishop Kallistos Ware, entitled "The Meaning of the Great Fast." This article serves as a wonderful introduction to Archbishop Ware's translation of The Triodion, the liturgical book that provides the hymnography for Great Lent and Holy Week. In fact, this article has become something of a "classic" since it first appeared in 1978. It is a very holistic approach to the inner and outer meaning of Great Lent.

Be that as it may, some years ago, Sister Vicki Bellas came up with an excellent one-page "bullet-point" type summary that still manages to reflect the over-all spirit of Archbishop Ware's main insights into the "meaning" of Great Lent. The fasting effort is deepened and expanded so that our return to God in repentance is kept sight of as the true purpose of Great Lent; and not just a legalistic adherence to the "law" of the Great Fast. The demons fast and they tremble before God! The whole person, as created in the image and likeness of God, is engaged in a total effort that embraces the material and the spiritual - the body and the soul. Sister Vicki's careful summary conveys that essential quality of Great Lent as observed within the Orthodox Church.

Please read this carefully as a necessary supplement to yesterday's material.

Fr. Steven

Webservant's Note: The complete text of Archbishop Kallistos article, The Meaning of the Great Fast: The True Nature of Fasting, may be found here.

'When You Fast' ~ Preparing for Great Lent

Dear Parish Faithful,

Great Lent will begin in one more week on Monday, February 15. Since yesterday was Meatfare Sunday, some fasting has already begun for those who observe that designation. (This is meant to "ease" us into the fuller fasting discipline following Cheesefare Sunday).

I get my fair share of questions each year about the precise nature of the prescribed fasting for Great Lent. I also assume that there is a certain amount of confusion over this, because we pick things up from other church traditions that do not quite fit into our own Orthodox Tradition.

Preparing for next Monday, I wanted to pass on the fasting guidelines of the Church. I found a very clear article about this entitled, "Our Fasting During Great Lent," by Fr. John Hopko. It is attached to a book published by SVS Press: When You Fast - Recipes for Lenten Seasons. Fr. John's article is to the point, and it also has some sound pastoral considerations added, so I will simply pass on the relevant paragraph or two for your reading and reference:

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"We should begin by reminding ourselves of the basics of the Church's traditional discipline of fasting. During Great Lent, the strictest levels of fasting are prescribed, with certain exceptions allowed for weekends and feast days. The traditional norm, as developed and followed over many centuries in the Orthodox Church, is that we would abstain from the following items (listed here in order, beginning with those items that are eliminated first and then on down to those items that may be permissible at some times):

• meat and meat products (must be restricted)
• milk and egg products (often referred to as "dairy." These items are perhaps permissible for some, for example, young children)
• fish (permissible on certain feast during Great Lent)
• olive oil (permissible on weekends and certain feasts during Great Lent)
• wine (this means all alcoholic beverages; they are permissible on weekends, and certain feast days during great Lent

"So then, generally speaking, during Great Lent we are to make do with the following types of food:

• shellfish (shrimp, clams, etc.)
• vegetables
• vegetable products
• fruit, grains (bread, pasta, rice, etc.) nuts, etc.
• nonalcoholic, dairy-free beverages

"Having laid out the traditional guidelines for fasting, certain points must be made in reference to them. First of all, each of us must make an honest, prayerful assessment of how well we can maintain the fasting discipline. If we are unable - due to age, illness, or some other weakness - to follow the traditional order of fasting completely, we must then make a decision about what we are going to do. Being overly scrupulous in this regard will not save us but neither will any rationalizing away of the need to fast. Each and every person, usually together with the other members of his or her family and, if necessary in consultation with his or her parish priest, needs to make an honest and prayerful decision about how he or she is going to keep the fast." (When You Fast - Recipes for Lenten Seasons; Afterword, pp. 247-248)
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A clear and pastorally-balance approach in my estimation. Please give this your prayerful consideration, as Fr. John writes. (The book from which this article is taken, by the way, is filled with hundred of lenten recipes, from "main dishes" to "cookies and desserts(!)" Again, it is available from SVS Press.

As to the fasting, there is no doubt that it is both a disciplined and a healthier way of eating and drinking. We are always hearing of the latest "program" to guide our nation's eating habits in a healthier direction, especially in our school systems. Obesity among our children is far too high. We know that the first foods to be eliminated for health reasons are always red meat and sugar-laden sweets - cakes, doughnuts, ice cream, etc. These concerned educators, social planners, and dietitians need look no further than the Orthodox Church's century-old practice of fasting - linked to the virtues of discipline, obedience and asceticism!

As Fr. John noted, it is sound advice to speak with your parish priest about these issues and how they may be integrated into family life. Please contact me if you so desire.

Fr. Steven

Webservant's Note: Our special page — GREAT LENT ~ Resources for the Journey — features several cookbooks for Lenten seasons, as well as suggested reading, recordings, icons, and more to aid your Lenten effort. We also offer numerous online articles on our parish website's Great Lent section.

A 'Subversive' Parable - The Prodigal Son, Pt 1

Dear Parish Faithful,

Through familiarity, we can lose sight of the "subversive" nature of Christ's parables. By this, I am referring to the fact that Christ will challenge, implicitly criticize, and generally turn upside down, the social conventions, cultural assumptions, and religious pieties of His fellow Jews in first century Palestine. When this happens, we can then "domesticate" the parables, conform them to our own conventional pieties, and thus remove their sting which is precisely to awaken us to a new way of looking at God and our relationship with God and neighbor. Then, with the best of intentions, we can manipulate the parables in order to validate our existing relationships with God and neighbor; miss the challenge to never grow complacent in these relationships; and fail to repent of our sinful inclinations that wreck havoc on the very relationships we claim will effect our salvation. In hearing any given parable we can comfortably remain certain that we are only reinforcing an already-existing understanding of the parable's meaning: "Ah, yes, I know precisely what this parable means. After all, I've heard it so many times." Thus, we place ourselves in a "safety zone" that is far removed from the enormous challenge to actually do something that will shake us out of our soul-numbing complacency.

I believe that this is true of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (LK. 16:15-32). Having "heard" it last Sunday, perhaps we have already filed it away in our memory banks, safely hidden there until we mentally double-click and dislodge it next year three Sundays before Great Lent begins yet again! No wonder then, that repeatedly, and with a sense of urgency and real concern, Jesus would declare: "He who has ears to ear, let him hear!"

This great parable is about repentance, the loving and compassionate nature of God, and the fearful consequences of an unforgiving and resentful heart. With an impressive economy of expression, Jesus fully delineates three unforgettable characters - the prodigal son, the father, and the older brother - who stand out in their individuality and who embody the three "themes" of the parable outlined above. On the one hand, I believe that the parable is very culturally and religiously specific, as the three characters would be easily identifiable to those who initially heard Jesus deliver it. The same would be true of the setting and the circumstances of the events that unfold the drama of the parable: the younger son asking for his inheritance, the subsequent wasting of that inheritance, and his near-starvation level employment feeding swine in the fields. The details of the banquet, with the fattened calf, the robe and ring, together with dancing and music all have a recognizable verisimilitude about them. Through the parables of Christ we have a very realistic view of first-century Palestinian Jewish life.

What I believe to be "subversive" in this parable is that the expectations of conventional piety are not met with the unfolding of the drama and the presentation of the characters. Rather, those expectations are turned on their head. Yet, oddly enough, given the common title of this parable which concentrates on the "prodigal son," perhaps this is less true of him than of the father and the older brother. True and deep repentance was very much a part of first-century Judaism. Scraping the proverbial "bottom of the barrel," the younger son turned his inward gaze toward home and his father. And "when he came to himself" (16:17), he realized that he must throw himself on the mercy of his father, though clearly entertaining the possibility that he would not receive it, and even accepting that as fair. Yet, to his great credit, he was not paralyzed by the fear of justifiable rejection, but acted upon his inner conversion and need for repentance: "And he arose and came to his father." (16:20) And to his further credit, not a word of self-defensiveness is heard from him. Repentant, he does not act with even an instinctive desire to protect himself from the anticipated reproaches of his father. With a "broken and contrite heart," he has nothing left to protect.

With the figure of the father - clearly an image of God - Jesus undermines our expectations of justice and the human need for proving oneself "right," especially after a great offense that can wound our sense of dignity and fairness. Clearly, we share this same very human need today, and as much as we - as countless Christians throughout the centuries - are irresistibly drawn to this magnificent figure and his boundless capacity to forgive any and all offenses; need first to soberly assess our own possible/probable reaction if found in that situation. And that can be summed up in the irresistible urge to finally have the opportunity to say to a profligate child who has hurt us so terribly : "I could have told you so!" And that is just a starter. Our psychological need for "revenge" is capable of bringing to the surface an endlessly dreary set of "variations on a theme," many of which we may have already used ourselves in much milder cases of real and perceived betrayals by our children. Were the initial hearers of the parable expecting from Jesus some such expression of a justice satisfied by delivering these types of reproaches? Were they expecting demands from the father, or "conditions" by and under which the son could take up residence again in his father's house, but now carefully monitored so as avoid a further squandering of the family's wealth? Must reparation follow every act of repentance? I doubt that they would have been terribly surprised if they heard any of these "natural reactions," even in the knowledge of the parable's "happy ending." We depend upon the image of God given to us by Christ in this parable for our own salvation, but that is meant to probe our own hearts for their capacity to forgive.

To return to an earlier expression, perhaps Jesus is most subversive in how he portrays the older brother. Here is a man who appears to be the very image of filial devotion, mature responsibility, and the stability of purpose that would bring consolation and confidence to his father when the proper time for handing over an inheritance emerged. The older brother never showed signs of youthful rebellion and the adventurous spirit that brought the younger brother to ruin: "I never disobeyed your command." (16:29) The reproaches and even resentment of the older brother could not but have struck his contemporaries as fully justified. He has not been properly recognized. Surely the older brother is being treated unfairly! All of that unacknowledged service: "you never gave me a kid, that I might merry with my friends." (16:29) His resentment is choking him, for he cannot refer to his brother other than "this son of yours," when reproaching his father. Jesus was really pushing a point, in order to make a point. Perhaps this was to expose the interior life of the older brother. Christ is concerned about the condition of the human heart, and not only right behavior. Or rather, they need to be harmonized. An inability to forgive undermines that harmony of the interior and exterior. It appears that the older brother's devotion was devoid of joy and thanksgiving. For the father told him in the end: "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours." (16:31) I would argue that as long as we must admit that we would react as the older brother of the parable, then we have yet to fully assimilate this great parable and what Jesus is teaching us about our relationship with God and our neighbor.

To be continued ...


Fr. Steven

On Sickness, Anointing, and the Healing of Soul and Body

Dear Parish Faithful,

Presvytera and I returned late last night from Louisville, where we particpated in the Anointing Service on behalf of Fr. Alexander Atty. Fr. Alexander is the head priest at St. Michael the Archangel Antiochian Orthodox Church. Roberta and Scott were also there, so Roberta was anointed as were many others who were ill. As I informed everyone yesterday, Fr. Alexander is suffering from stage four colon cancer, so he is fully aware of the battle ahead of him. His surgery is scheduled for next Tuesday, February 2, the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord. There were two presiding hierarchs at the service and fourteen priests, all of which served.

Bishop Mark of Toledo (Antiochian Archdiocese) said something at the end that we should all reflect upon: If we did not get sick and die not many people would believe in God. This is not true simply because people would believe out of fear and desperation. Rather, human beings are so self-reliant, egotistically independent, and blindly self-absorbed, that if we had no reason to rely on God then we would totally ignore God. Bishop Mark further said that it is when we are ill that we realize how dependent we are upon God. We are always dependent, but it is only illness that gets that point across very strikingly. "Pain is the megaphone of God" according to C.S. Lewis. That is why the Fathers teach that God was acting mercifully and providentially when He "gave" His creatures over unto the anxieties and fear that accompany the reality of death; so that in full consciousness of our mortality and finitude we could realize our dependency upon God and turn to Him in humility. Fr. Alexander did humbly acknowledge this in his own comments made to a parish that has known him as its priest for over thirty years now. To the inevitable question - usually asked with more than a touch of self-pity - "Why me?" Fr. asked another question of more-than-equal validity: "Why not me?" (When you ask the question, "Why me?" you are in effect saying that it should be someone else - and who should that be?!).

The Sacrament of Anointing is administered for the "healing of soul and body." We pray to God for a complete healing and we believe that that is possible. We do not offer up vain prayer for its psychological and emotional impact alone. But if our bodily afflictions are not healed - and here I am speaking about adults and not the sufferings of innocent children - our "soul" may be, beginning with the sins of arrogance, pride, self-importance and the rest of the dreary soul-destroying afflictions from which we need to be purified, so that we can eventually draw close to God: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

It is important that those who are ill are surrounded by support, care and concern, but especially by love. The ill and the afflicted should never be alone in their suffering. That love begins in the Church where the love of God in Christ Jesus is most fully manifested and presented to us through every aspect of the Church's existence, beginning with the Mysteries/Sacraments of the Church. Then the members of the Body of Christ, the men and women who are the Church need to manifest that love as well as possible to those sufferiing from affliction. That is how we "bear one another's burdens" according to Apostle Paul. This is the co-suffering love that is the deepest expression of Christianity and the Christian believer. This type of love is most fully understood, developed and encountered in the Church where each believer draws upon the love of Christ which is the life-flowing blood of the ecclesial organism that we call "Church." Fr. Alexander was blessed to be able acknowledge such love and support.

Please add Fr. Alexander Atty to your prayer list as he enters into this long, hard battle.

Fr. Steven

Webservant's Note: Updates on Fr. Alexander's condition will be posted on
http://www.stmichaelorthodoxchurch.org/