Ding, Dong, Irony on High

Dear Parish Faithful,

"But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are so little to be among the clans of Judah,from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient of days." (Micah 5:2)

 

"In these days" it is almost banal and trite to offer one more Christian critique of the crass commercialization of Christmas. For the simple reason that the pervasiveness of this phenomenon has become integral to the "American way of life" on an annual basis. But as Fr. Thomas Hopko has once written, we cannot, in response, grimace and gnash our teeth while swearing to "put Christ back into Christmas." That is a clearly a dead-end approach. 

 I wrote an earlier mediation that acknowledged the uneasy tension between the asceticism of the Fast and the consumerism of the holiday season. Our goal as Orthodox Christians is to somehow navigate our way through that terrain in such a way that the overall integrity of the Feast of the Lord's Nativity retains a place within our homes - and hopefully in our minds and hearts. Yet, to remind us of just how pervasive the droning of Christmas sales drowns out the Gospel proclamation of the Incarnation of the Word, I recently found this poem that I am sharing here. I am not a good judge of the quality of poetry, but this poem has a share of images and lines that nicely express the point:

Hush that anguished hymn you’re humming:  
“Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” 
Trumpet Christmas! Fix his coming 
firmly at “The First Nowell.” 

He’s already come in glory!  
Why plead, “Savior, come at last”? 
Let’s talk Christmas! Tell a story 
safely in the distant past.  

Drown out John the Baptist. Edit 
out “Prepare! Make straight the way!” 
Cut to Christmas! Buy on credit.  
Square things up another day.  

Advent’s dreary. Let’s start living 
Christmas now! Wear red and green! 
While we’re at it, skip Thanksgiving! 
Deck the halls at Halloween! 

Then, when the Incarnate Verb 
overnight becomes passé, 
carry Christmas to the curb.  
Pack the Prince of Peace away. 

- Julie Stoner (2009)

The line about "Buy on credit" has a certain resonance today, as I have recently read more than one article about the skyrocketing of credit card debt that Americans are dealing with. And with the Christmas season - and let's not lose the irony of this - that debt is shooting into the stratosphere. 

Are there some practical steps that we could take to create some balance in our lives as we approach the Feast? I would offer this humble suggestion: We will serve the pre-festal Vespers together with an appropriate reading to follow on Monday - Thursday, December 19-22. And the Royal Hours on Friday morning, December 23. As the Nativity has been called the "Winter Pascha" (Fr. Alexander Schmemann) these services are something of a "holy week" before the Feast, though far less intense then the Holy Week before Pascha. Make a point of attending at least one of those Vespers for some reorientation toward the "Orient from on high." Or the Royal Hours which offer an incredible insight into the scriptural passages that proclaim the coming of Christ. Christianity at its most expressive has always challenged prevailing cultural and social norms. In fact, it has often been "counter-cultural." Our role is to maintain that tradition on some level.

The Image of Giving in St Nicholas

St Nicholas provides gifts for three daughters to save them from poverty and harm.

 

Dear Fathers, Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

 

There are nineteen days of charity, prayer and fasting left before Christmas... Redeem the time.

 

Today we commemorate St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia, the Wonderworker (December 6). There is a certain unresolved tension that accompanies his person and memory: On the one hand, there are few "hard facts" about his life (to the point where many doubt his actual historical existence); and on the other hand, he is clearly one of the most beloved and universally venerated of saints within the Church. It is said that even many Muslims venerate St. Nicholas! A good example of an objective account of the few facts behind the saint's life can be found in a short introductory biographical note concerning St. Nicholas in the book,The Time of the Spirit:

Little is known for certain about the life of St. Nicholas, bishop of Myra in Lycia (Asia Minor). It is believed that he suffered imprisonment during the last major persecution of the Church under Diocletian in the early fourth century, and that he attended the first Ecumenical Council at Nicea in 325. Christian tradition has come to regard him, in the words of an Orthodox hymn, as "an example of faith and an icon of gentleness." (Time of the Spirit, p. 69)

For those interested in the historical background of St. Nicholas, the following note found in The Synaxarion, Vol. II, edited by Hieromonk Makarios of Simonas Petras, may prove to be of real interest:

Since the medieval period, St. Nicholas of Myra has been confused with St. Nicholas of Sion, who founded a monastery not far from Myra at the end of the 5th century. The Vita of the latter has come down to us but the incidents in it have been entirely ascribed to St. Nicholas of Myra, with the result that St. Nicholas of Sion has been forgotten n the hagiographical accounts.... (See The Life of Saint Nicholas of Sion, edited and translated by I. N. P. Sevcenko (Brookline, MA, 1984).

So, even if we are dealing with a "composite figure" when we venerate St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, we nevertheless are given a glimpse into the "mind of the Church" when it comes to an image of a true pastor. A powerful and enduring image of a genuine Christian shepherd has remained within the memory of the Church, regardless of the now unrecoverable "facts" behind the actual history of 4th - 5th c. Asia Minor. It is this "unerring" intuition of the People of God that the faithful respond to up to the present day that remains as a solid foundation upholding all of the wonderful stories that endear us to St. Nicholas. The Church today desperately needs bishops of the type embodied by St. Nicholas. A shepherd who is a "rule of faith and an image of humility" would mean a great deal more to the Christian flock, than legal-minded adherence to canon law. St. Nicholas both protected and interceded for his flock, according to the great Russian Orthodox iconographer, Leonid Uspensky. And he further writes:

This 'life for others' is his characteristic feature and is manifested by the great variety of forms of his solicitude for men: his care for their preservation, their protection from the elements, from human injustice, from heresies and so forth. This solicitude was accompanied by numerous miracles both during his life and after his death. Indefatigable intercessor, steadfast, uncompromising fighter for Orthodoxy, he was meek and gentle in character and humble in spirit. (The Time of the Spirit, p. 69)

Well-known as St. Nicholas has been, he is perhaps less well-known in today's world. In fact, he may be slowly slipping away from Christian consciousness. Santa Claus, that rather unfortunate caricature of the saintly bishop, clearly has something to do with this. But perhaps the very virtues embodied by this saint are slowly fading from our consciousness. A few weeks back, I wrote a meditation that passed on the name our social and secular world has "earned" for itself through its rampant commercialization of Christmas - and that is Getmas. The author who coined this new term - I forget his name - claims it came to him based on a conversation he had had with a good friend about the "spirit of Christmas." The friend of our author said that Christmas was about "getting things." When the author countered by saying, "I thought Christmas was about giving," the friend quickly retorted: "Sure, people are supposed to give me things!" Out of this sad exchange came the unfortunate, but accurate, Getmas.

St. Nicholas was about the proper understanding of "giving." Perhaps the most enduring quality of his image is that of giving to children in need. Our children learn that those who already "have" more are those who will yet "get" more. And that is because they are taught this by their parents who yield to their childish demands. So we persist in widening the gap of imbalance between the "haves and "have-nots" without too many pangs of (Christian) conscience. St. Nicholas wanted to restore a sense of balance, and so he looked first to those who were in need, so that they could also taste some childlike happiness from receiving an unexpected gift. In a simple manner, this imitates the giving of God Who gave us Christ at a time when everyone - rich and poor alike - were impoverished through sin and death. 

I sometimes fantasize that an ideal celebration of Christmas would find a relatively affluent family making sure that they spent more on those in need than on themselves. If Christianity is indeed the "imitation of the divine nature" as St. Gregory of Nyssa once said, then that need not necessarily be such an unrealistic idea. I do not believe that I have ever actually done that, so I convict myself through the very thought. Yet, I am convinced that our children would respond with an eager spirit of cooperation if properly prepared for some approximation of that ideal. Why should it be otherwise if, according to the Apostle Paul, Christ said that it is more blessed to give than to receive?

Once again, just a thought based upon the image of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker.

Becoming Rich Toward God

 

Icon of the Parable of the Rich Man and his barns

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

At the Divine Liturgy this past Sunday, we heard the Parable of the Rich Fool/Landowner. This is a relatively short parable, so I will simply present what we will read at last Sunday's Liturgy:

And he told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully, and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' And he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things your have prepared, whose will they be?' So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." (LK. 12:16-21)

 

Whenever I hear this particular parable, I think of the words of Tevye the Dairyman in Shalom Aleichem's delightful Yiddish stories about that warm and attractive character. (Also, of course, the main character in the musical "Fiddler on the Roof"). In his musing about God one day, Tevye said: "The more man plans, the harder God laughs." Profound theological thought from a poor dairyman!

It is hard to recall a more straightforward parable in terms of its over-all meaning and intent. The Lord is here speaking of the inevitability and unavoidability of impending death. Death is universal and ubiquitous. And it remains the great equalizer between rich and poor. More specifically, though, the Lord is here dramatizing an unexpected death, one that catches a person totally unprepared and thus rendered a "fool" in the process. The rich landowner's foolishness is revealed in the fact that he had forgotten about God in his pursuit of his "treasure." His forgetfulness is his foolishness. 

There is no indication that the landowner was a particularly sinful person. He may have even seemed pious and God-fearing on the surface. But Christ often specifically warns against surface appearances, or what we call "lip service" to God, while the heart is actually quite distant. Then again, the word sin, from the Gk. amartia, actually means "missing the mark." So, while a person may refrain from committing sinful acts, that same person can be completely "missing the mark" when it comes to a real relationship with God. One can have social status and be totally lost at the same time. The rich landowner reached a point where he began to evaluate everything in life based on the "self" and not on God. His "portfolio building" resulted in an impoverished relationship with God. 

Universal truths are often taken for granted or limited to banal platitudes of recognition. This is probably the most true when we speak of our own impending deaths. It is so true, that that very truth has lost any revelatory dimension. There is also the unconscious denial and the rationalizations that we use to "cope" with the hard truth of death. And we cannot spend our time living in fear of an unexpected death. That would only paralyze our capacity for living. Yet, how many human beings throughout the world will this very day experience what the rich landowner of the parable did! A "cardiac episode," a fatal accident, victimization through a horrific crime. This is the "stuff" of daily living. And these things will happen to countless human beings this very day. A Christian needs to have a realistic awareness of precisely such possibilities. But beyond such a realistic awareness, is hopefully a life rich toward God.

This parable is not about creating a sense of fear or trembling in the face of death. Our Christian hope is meant to liberate us of just such anxiety and fear. However, I believe that we can speak of a "warning" given to us by the Lord. Or perhaps a call to vigilance and preparedness. Of setting our "priorities" in order, as we may say today. We need not be so swept up in our activities and pursuits that we forget God in the process. There is no real excuse for that. Such an outcome renders our "successes" null and void. When we inevitably die and leave behind everything that we have accumulated, we can either hear the words, "Fool!" as in the parable; or "Well done, good and faithful servant!" According to Christ this will depend on whether or not we spent a lifetime trying to get "rich towards God."

Fr. Steven

The Entrance of the Theotokos - Sanctifying Time through the Feasts of the Church

 

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

"Today let Heaven above greatly rejoice ..."

I will assume that today began and will continue as a normal weekday for just about everyone who reads this email communication. In addition to our responsibilities, tasks, appointments and over-all agendas, that may also imply the tedium associated with daily life. Another day will come and go, never to be repeated again in the unceasing flow of time ... 

However, today (November 21) also happens to be one of the Twelve Great Feast Days of the Church's liturgical year:  The Entrance of the Theotokos Into the Temple. For those who came to the service this evening, that will hopefully be more apparent; but if we "keep time" with our Church calendar, as well as with our regular calendars, we may not be "caught off guard" by the coming of the Feast. The festal cycle of the Church sanctifies time. By this we mean that the tedious flow of time is imbued with sacred content as we celebrate the events of the past now made present through liturgical worship. Notice how often we hear the word "today" in the hymns of the Feast:

"Today let us, the faithful dance for joy ... " 
"Today the living Temple of the holy glory of Christ our God, she who alone among   women is pure and blessed ..." 
"Today the Theotokos, the Temple that is to hold God is led into the temple of the Lord ..."

(Vespers of the Feast)

 

Again, we do not merely commemorate the past, but we make the past present. We actualize the event being celebrated so that we are also participating in it. We, today, rejoice as we greet the Mother of God as she enters the temple "in anticipation proclaiming Christ to all." Can all - or any - of this possibly change the "tone" of how we live this day? Is it at all possible that an awareness of this joyous Feast can bring some illumination or sense of divine grace into the seemingly unchanging flow of daily life? Are we able to envision our lives as belong to a greater whole: the life of the Church that is moving toward the final revelation of God's Kingdom in all of its fullness? Do such questions even make any sense as we are scrambling to just get through the day intact and in one piece, hopefully avoiding any serious mishaps or calamities? If not, can we at least acknowledge that "something" essential is missing from our lives?

I believe that there a few things that we could do on a practical level that will bring the life of the Church, and its particular rhythms into our domestic lives. As we know, each particular Feast has a main hymn called the troparion. This troparion captures the over-all meaning and theological content of the Feast in a somewhat poetic fashion. As the years go by, and as we celebrate the Feasts annually, you may notice that you have memorized these troparia, or at least recognize them when they are sung in church. For the Entrance of the Theotokos Into the Temple, the festal troparion is the following:

Today is the prelude of the good will of God, of the preaching of the salvation of mankind, 
The Virgin appears in the temple of God, in anticipation proclaiming Christ to all, 
Let us rejoice and sing to her: Rejoice, O Fulfillment of the Creator's dispensation!

 

A great Feast Day of the Church is never a one-day affair. There is the "afterfeast" and then, finally, the "leavetaking" of the Feast. So this particular Feast extends from today, November 21, until Friday, November 25. A good practice, therefore, would be to include the troparion of the Feast in our daily prayer until the leavetaking. That can be very effective when parents pray together with their children before bedtime, as an example. Perhaps even more importantly within a family meal setting, would be to sing or simply say or chant the troparion together before sitting down to share that meal together. The troparion would replace the usual prayer that we use, presumably the Lord's Prayer All of this can be especially effective with children as it will introduce them to the rhythm of Church life and its commemoration of the great events in the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary.

Do you have any Orthodox literature in the home that would narrate and then perhaps explain the events and their meaning of the Great Feast Days? Reading this together as a family can also be very effective. A short Church School session need not be the only time that our children are introduced to the life of the Church. The home, as we recall, has been called a "little church" by none other than St. John Chrysostom. Orthodox Christianity is meant to be a way of life, as expressed here by Fr. Pavel Florensky: 

The Orthodox taste, the Orthodox temper, is felt but is not subject to arithmetical calculation. Orthodoxy is shown, not proved. That is why there is only one way to understand Orthodoxy: through direct experience ... to become Orthodox, it is necessary to immerse oneself all at once into the very element of Orthodoxy, to begin living in an Orthodox way. There is no other way. (The Pillar and Ground of the Truth)

 

As this Feast Day falls during the Nativity Fast, the Church calendar tells us that "fish, wine and oil" are allowed today.

[NOTE: Special articles and resources on the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos and all the Great Feasts are available on our parish website.]

Forty Shopping (and Fasting) Days Until Christmas

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

The meditation presented here is found in my book of collected meditations in a somewhat longer version, but with the certainty that in some areas of life "there is nothing new under the sun" (and that shopping sprees before Christmas will assuredly be with us until the sun burns out), I thought it remains timely enough, especially for those who may not familiar with it.


Forty Shopping (and Fasting) Days Until Christmas

Dear Parish Faithful,

Tomorrow, November 15, we will observe the first day of the 40-day Nativity/Advent Fast, meant to prepare us for the advent of the Son of God in the flesh, celebrated on December 25. (The Western observance is from the four Advent Sundays before Christmas). For some/many of us this might very well catch us unaware and unprepared. However, as the saying goes, “it is what it is,” and so the church calendar directs us to enter into this sacred season tomorrow. 

This indicates an intensification of the perennial “battle of the calendars” that every Orthodox Christian is engaged in consciously or unconsciously. The two calendars – the ecclesial and the secular – represent the Church and “the world” respectively. Often, there is an underlying tension between these two spheres. Because of that tension, I believe that we find ourselves in the rather peculiar situation of being ascetical and consumerist simultaneously.

To fast, pray and be charitable is to lead a simplified life that is based around restraint, a certain discipline and a primary choice to live according to the principles of the Gospel in a highly secularized and increasingly hedonistic world. That is what it means to be ascetical. It further means to focus upon Christ amidst an ever-increasing amount of distractions and diversions. Even with the best of intentions and a firm resolve that is not easy! From our historical perspective of being alive in the twenty-first century, and leading the “good life” where everything is readily available, practicing any form of voluntary self-restraint is tantamount to bearing a cross. Perhaps fulfilling some modest goals based on the Gospel in today’s world, such as it is, amounts to a Christian witness, unspectacular as those goals may be. 

Yet, as our society counts down the remaining shopping days until Christmas; and as our spending is seen as almost a patriotic act of contributing to the build-up of our economy; and as we want to “fit in” – especially for the sake of our children – we also are prone (or just waiting) to unleashing the “consumer within” always alert to the joys of shopping, spending and accumulating. When you add in the unending “entertainment” that is designed to create a holiday season atmosphere, it can all get rather overwhelming.

Certainly, these are some of the joys of family life, and we feel a deep satisfaction when we surround our children with the warmth and security that the sharing of gifts brings to our domestic lives. Perhaps, though, we can be vigilant about knowing when “enough is enough;” or even better that “enough is a feast.” An awareness — combined with sharing — of those who have next to nothing is also a way of overcoming our own self-absorption and expanding our notion of the “neighbor.”

Therefore, to be both an ascetic and a consumer is indicative of the challenges facing us as Christians in a world that clearly favors and “caters” to our consumerist tendencies. To speak honestly, this is a difficult and uneasy balance to maintain. How can it possibly be otherwise, when to live ascetically is to restrain those very consumerist tendencies? 

I believe that what we are essentially trying to maintain is our identity as Orthodox Christians within the confines of a culture either indifferent or hostile to Christianity. If the Church remains an essential part of the build-up toward Christmas, then we can go a long way in maintaining that balance. Although I do not particularly like putting it this way, I would contend that if the church is a place of choice that at least “competes” with the mall, then that again may be one of the modest victories in the underlying battle for our ultimate loyalty that a consumerist Christmas season awakens us to. 

The Church directs us to fast before we feast. Does that make any sense? Do we understand the theological/spiritual principles that is behind such an approach? Can we develop some 'domestic strategies' that will give us the opportunity to put that into practice to at least some extent? Do we care enough?

The final question always returns us to the question that Jesus asked of his initial disciples:  “Who do you say that I am?” If we confess together with St. Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, then we know where we stand as the “battle of the calendars” intensifies for the next forty days.

The Church calendar indicates the nature of the Nativity Fast. If I can be of any pastoral assistance in helping you formulate that "domestic strategy" referred to above, then please do not hesitate to contact me.