Hogar Mission Trip, Pt 2

Dear Parish Faithful,

Di Carter was kind enough to provide a written summary of her visit to the Hogar last week. I very much enjoyed reading her insights about the Hogar and hope that you will too. Please see the attachment.

It appears that we arrived just in time to spend some time with Francesca, for as I mentioned the possibility upon returning last week, she has already been transferred to another orphanage together with her older brother, Hugo. A rather sad development. Please continue to pray for her. Our parish sponsorship is being transferred to another young girl, an eleven yr. old named Gabriela. She, too, is a lovely girl, with a very friendly and kind spirit. I will try and send a photo soon.

Fr. Steven



Impressions of My First Visit To the Hogar San Rafael Ayau Orphanage
By Di Carter

As it was my first visit to the Hogar I did not know what to expect but I did anticipate feeling very sad at the sight of so many children who had been abused and abandoned. But the Hogar is not an unhappy place and I was soon caught up in its lively atomosphere. The children really do have fun and seem to enjoy life.

There were nine people on our team and we were soon put to work. Our tasks included making and planting a new garden bed, painting the side of the church and the bell tower, clearing French drains and doing the mowing. In the afternoons we spent time with the children doing crafts, swimming, going on outings and generally making friends.

Soon after we arrived, Mother Ivonne spent some time telling us about the Hogar and the children and as she spoke I realized that she sounded exactly the same as any of us relating the joys and frustrations of being a parent. She really is their mother. It is an enormous task and it is made more difficult by the conditions in Guatamala. It is not only dangerous, but the government continually tries to create obstacles for the orphanage. There is to be an election later this year and all three of the nuns will be watching the results of that closely as it will impact the orphanage directly.

On Saturday night we all watched the Guatamala soccer team play Jamaica on the television. Everyone, including Mother Ivonne, is obsessed with the game! One of our mission team, a young man called Matthew who has been down to the Hogar on a number of occasions, had bought soccer shirts for every member of the orphanage including Mother Ivonne and he handed them out during half-time. Mother Ivonne immediately put hers on as did the children. As we sat watching the game eating popcorn and candy I realized again that the Hogar is not an institution but rather it is a family. How the nuns have managed to create this is in itself a miracle. The wonderful thing is that the children have come to regard the missionaries (for that is what we are called!) as part of their extended family and they are happy to welcome us as such.

On Sunday we all went out to the monastery in a bus to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. This was probably the highlight of the trip for me. The monastery is situated beside a huge lake with mountains surrounding it including a volcano. The church is perched high on the hill and can be seen from the air as the plane comes in to land in Guatamala City. It is very beautiful, covered with frescoes and yet light and airy. Father Steven and Father Antonio, who is the priest at the monastery, served the Divine Liturgy and the children sang. They had no service books, nothing to refer to and yet they knew every word. Their voices rose up into the dome and they sounded like angels! After the service everyone had lunch under the trees overlooking the lake and a double rainbow appeared in the sky. We then toured the new building which will house the children when it is finished and then back to the church for the Kneeling Vespers service. On the way home in the bus the children sang, mostly the songs from church but they did get on to “Doe a Deer”! It was a perfect day.

I was very impressed by the children. They all have their chores to do around the orphanage and they do them seemingly without complaint. When it is time to tidy up and go to church it is done in record time without argument. If Mother Ivonne cannot be at Matins or Vespers they just carry on without her, chanting all the relevant Stikeras for the day and even the small children read some of the service. I found myself wondering why my children had never been so responsible and well-behaved! Of course the children do have enormous problems and one wonders how they will transition out of this safe place into the world. Mother Ivonne asks for our prayers and as a parish I hope we can commit ourselves to that.

The Death of 'Doctor Death'

(Originally sent to the parish June 6, 2011)

Dear Parish Faithful,

As you may have heard, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a.k.a. “Doctor Death,” died of natural causes last week. To put it mildly, he was a very controversial figure. I am forwarding a non-emotional and, I believe, rational and well-argued piece by Ross Douthat concerning the open and hidden fallacies and dangers of “physician- assisted suicides. Please feel to comment further if you so choose.

Fr. Steven

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Dr. Kevorkian’s Victims
By ROSS DOUTHAT
Published: June 5, 2011

The case for assisted suicide seems to depend on human sympathy — on the impulse toward mercy, the desire to ease what seems like pointless pain and suffering. Why shouldn’t the terminally ill meet death on their own terms, rather than at the end of prolonged agonies? Why shouldn’t the dying depart this earth with dignity, instead of enduring the inexorable stripping away of their physical and mental faculties?

Such are the sentiments that made Jack Kevorkian, who died last week of natural causes, a hero to many millions of Americans. Though he was tried repeatedly and finally convicted of second-degree murder, the former pathologist’s career as “Dr. Death” (he said he assisted at more than 130 suicides) was widely regarded as a form of humanitarianism rather than a criminal enterprise.

But if such sentiments are understandable, they are morally perilous as well. We do not generally praise doctors who help dispatch their terminally ill patients, as Kevorkian repeatedly and unashamedly did. Even when death is inevitable and inevitably painful, it is not considered merciful to prescribe an overdose to a cancer victim against her will, or to gently smother a sleeping Alzheimer’s patient.

The difference, of course, is that Kevorkian’s clients asked for it. That free choice is what separates assisted suicide from murder, his defenders would insist.

But this means that the moral case for assisted suicide depends much more on our respect for people’s own desire to die than on our sympathy for their devastating medical conditions. If participating in a suicide is legally and ethically acceptable, in other words, it can’t just be because cancer is brutal and dementia is dehumanizing. It can only be because there’s a right to suicide.

And once we allow that such a right exists, the arguments for confining it to the dying seem arbitrary at best. We are all dying, day by day: do the terminally ill really occupy a completely different moral category from the rest? A cancer patient’s suffering isn’t necessarily more unbearable than the more indefinite agony of someone living with multiple sclerosis or quadriplegia or manic depression. And not every unbearable agony is medical: if a man losing a battle with Parkinson’s disease can claim the relief of physician-assisted suicide, then why not a devastated widower, or a parent who has lost her only child?

This isn’t a hypothetical slippery slope. Jack Kevorkian spent his career putting this dark, expansive logic into practice. He didn’t just provide death to the dying; he helped anyone whose suffering seemed sufficient to warrant his deadly assistance. When The Detroit Free Press investigated his “practice” in 1997, it found that 60 percent of those he assisted weren’t actually terminally ill. In several cases, autopsies revealed “no anatomical evidence of disease.”

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Metropolitan Anthony Bloom on Suffering

Dear Parish Faithful,

Below you will find in three parts an extraordinary talk by the late Met. Anthony Bloom on the meaning of suffering. These were discovered and sent to me by Marty Davis. Thank God these talks were actually videoed. They probably go back to the 70’s, for I remember seeing Met. Anthony on this program. I would suggest playing them when you some time to listen carefully and absorb his keen insights into the meaning and mystery of suffering.

Fr. Steven

Hogar Mission Trip, Pt 1

Dear Parish Faithful,

Buenos Dias!

Di Carter and I returned yesterday evening from our Mission Team trip to the Hogar in Guatemala. We were the two members representing our parish on what proved to be a nine-member Team, and I was also the “spiritual leader” of our Team. We both thank God for a wonderful week at the Hogar and the accumulated encounters and experiences that made our trip memorable. After two long flights and a week together in close quarters, we still remain, not only on speaking terms, but very close friends! Di agreed to write a summary of her first visit to the Hogar – complete with a description of an extraordinary Pentecost Liturgy at the monastery cathedral of the Holy Trinity that overlooks Lake Atatlitlan and is itself overlooked by a row of stunning volcanoes. We will look forward to Di’s account.

For the moment, I would like to focus on our own Francesca, the little girl we have been sponsoring for the last two years. I have both “good news” and - if not necessarily “bad” - then certainly “sad news” to share with you. The good news is that Francesca could not have been more “sweet” and adorable. We made a point of spending a good deal of time with her, as we took her to Antigua with us, and I also spent a day with her at the zoo. She knows of our relationship with her, and she was as respectful, friendly, warm and loving as possible. It was a joy to be with her. She thanks all of our Church School children for her birthday gift (coming up on July 8, when she will turn nine); and we were able to purchase a new cross for her that she chose while in Antigua.

Yet saying good-bye to Francesca was not easy. For due to a combination of complicated reasons, she and her two brothers will most probably be transferred to another orphanage in the near future. Since she and her brothers are very much at home at the Hogar; and since it is only at the Hogar that she is being nourished by the sacramental life of the Church on a daily basis; this is indeed sad news for her (although she is not yet aware of it). I asked Madre Ivonne if she could do her best to help us maintain some contact with her. Such a story is part of the fabric of life at the Hogar. Yet, as life goes on, I have already spoken with Madre Ivonne of transferring our sponsorship to another child and I will keep everyone informed if and when that will occur. So please continue keep Francesca and her two brothers – Hugo and Alejandro – in your prayers.

For the moment I would like to share an anecdote that is both amusing but impressive and indicative of how the children are being raised at the Hogar. While at the zoo on Wednesday, we stopped for lunch at Polla Comparo – the Guatemalan equivalent of Kentucky Fried Chicken (which, by the looks of it , is just as bad and unhealthy as KFC). For the children, though, this is a real treat. Be that as it may, I asked one of the teachers if we should first bless the food. After answering, “Si, padre,” she informed the children that we would now have the blessing. Without any prompting at all, and as if spontaneously with one collective movement, all twenty-six children stood up and began to sing the troparion for Pentecost as loudly as possible right in the restaurant! Their total freedom from any self-consciousness or awkwardness was absolutely refreshing. One could only smile in admiration. The workers stopped and the other customers expressed surprise, amusement, and … respect. As a pastor I could not help but reflect: Are we – including or children – even able to make the sign of the Cross over ourselves before eating in a public setting; or are we restrained by that very self-consciousness mentioned above? It was good to see the children take the Church with them out into the world.

I look forward to this weekend’s celebration of All Saints. Great Vespers will begin at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday; and the Divine Liturgy at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday morning.

Dios los bendigas!

En Cristo,

Padre Steven

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)

Today is the fortieth day after the glorious Resurrection of Christ, and that is, of course, Ascension Thursday. We celebrated the Feast with the Vesperal Liturgy yesterday evening, and we had a good representative body of parishioners present for the Feast, including some of our children. I hope that one and all have a joyous and blessed feast day. 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 assured
that Thou art the Son of God,
the Redeemer of the world.

Fr. Steven