tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-271392332024-03-06T23:23:22.819-08:00Holy Nativity Orthodox ChurchAntiochian Orthodox Church.
4828 - 216 A St. Langley, BC, V3A 2N5
www.holynativitychurch.caFr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.comBlogger699125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-51285114023151990042024-01-08T16:48:00.000-08:002024-01-08T16:48:33.082-08:00We've Moved Agian<p> We've moved again! Follow me at www.holynativitychurch.ca</p><p>Fr. Michael<br /></p>Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-87844950383189265402015-06-26T10:50:00.003-07:002015-06-26T10:50:30.342-07:00We've MovedHoly Nativity Orthodox Church blog has moved!<br />
And we have changed our name. The new name of this blog is "Praying In The Rain."<br />
Our new home is with Ancient Faith Radio Blogs. You can find us at<br />
<a href="http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/prayingintherain">http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/prayingintherain</a><br />
<br />
See you there!Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-88916525384480370142015-06-20T15:16:00.000-07:002015-06-20T15:17:21.320-07:00Trusting God To Hold You<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi57vNE8Xd3iRZg1SrxTlTAG3QpHT-jYVwZZY4oScE9OsUYt5PmW-EzJglN2WgAs8utn7iDqoB55AOxo1HQgOhQ6fX2RniV3Pxu_oPYiSD_ovh7skApf0_A8ooqrRmc-mHti__D/s1600/Woman-Outdoor-Rock-Climbing-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi57vNE8Xd3iRZg1SrxTlTAG3QpHT-jYVwZZY4oScE9OsUYt5PmW-EzJglN2WgAs8utn7iDqoB55AOxo1HQgOhQ6fX2RniV3Pxu_oPYiSD_ovh7skApf0_A8ooqrRmc-mHti__D/s400/Woman-Outdoor-Rock-Climbing-5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One of the struggles I have as I strive to pay attention to my heart, is that (at the same time) I perceive in my heart very sad things and joyful, hopeful things. It’s as if two realities, or two reflections of the world around me are manifest within me. When I first started to notice this reality within myself I found the concept of “bright sadness” helpful. I first ran across this phrase, bright sadness, in the introduction of Alexander Schmemann’s little book, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha. In that context, bright sadness refers to the feeling one has at the beginning of Great Lent: on the one hand, sadness as we contemplate our sin and brokenness, which will be the theme of our prayers for the next forty days; but on the other hand, we also feel a kind of joy, a joy at the anticipation of Pascha, but not just anticipation, a joy as I begin to meet the Resurrected Lord even as I intentionally descend into the shadows of my own brokenness and misery. Christ is there, I find out, even in my shadows, even in the lowest pits of my sinful confusion and brokenness, Christ is there.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And perhaps we experience this bright sadness more intensely, or maybe just more easily, as Great Lent begins and as we are helped liturgically, guided by the hymns of the Church, to contemplate the brokenness and shadow in ourselves that we always know is there, but that we also always try very hard to ignore. And as we discover each Lent, looking steadfastly into our shadow, into our sin and brokenness, we discover that even there, even in the darkest recesses of our heart, even here there is nothing to fear for Christ has descended even into this hell.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Some of us, however, may go through periods of our life when times a painful awareness of our brokenness are not a feature just of a particular liturgical season, but are perhaps overwhelming, even sometimes debilitating experiences that seem to stay with us much of the time, a kind of Great Lent with no Pascha. When this happens, it is as though I cannot—or perhaps I refuse to—see Christ in my hell, it’s as though I am too ashamed of what I am, of what I see and what I know God sees so very clearly in me, I am so ashamed that I only look down at the mud on my feet and do not lift up my eyes to see my God, Master and Friend with a towel around his waist stooping to wash my feet. Maybe we are somewhat like Peter. We can’t imagine that our sinless Master would stoop that low, we can’t accept that we actually need our God to stoop so low, so low as to wash even our feet, to be with us in our shadow and sin. We wanted to offer God something more, something better; but as it turns out instead of being better than others, we realize that we are indeed the chief of sinners, the worst of the worst. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Have you ever noticed in the lives of the saints or in books about saints, that whenever they talk about themselves, which is not often, but whenever they do, they only have bad things to say about themselves. They only see their own shadow, they only see their own sin, and in their own eyes, each holy man or woman sees himself or herself as the chief of sinners? I’ve noticed it. I’ve noticed that part of our Transfiguration, or becoming more like Christ, part of that process is learning to hold within ourselves both the painful awareness of the depths of our own sin, our complicity in the pain, suffering and brokenness of the whole world, the utter darkness stubbornly lodged not far from the centre of our hearts, coming to know and see this about ourselves is part of our metamorphosis, part of our change in Christ from mere human beings to sons and daughters of the Light. This seeing of our darkness is part of the process. However, this seeing of our darkness is accompanied by an awareness of God’s nearness, a thankful doxology or joyful exulting in the gifts God graciously pours out—despite our sin, despite our failure. God draws near with the blessings and gifts of His presence and pours them out on us and around us even as we are deeply aware of how unworthy we are of even the slightest and smallest heavenly gift. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Joy and sadness, light and darkness, exaltation and lamentation, despair and hope, looking down and looking up—all of these can exist in our hearts at the same moment. Archimandrite Aimilianos seems to speak of this experience, this experience that I have sometimes likened to holding joy in one hand while also holding sadness in the other. Archimandrite Aimilianos says the following:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now, at this stage, you begin to sense that God rejoices over you…. Such a joy is a foretaste, an awareness that God is near, that He is coming. It is also a feeling of gratitude, because before you receive God’s gift [the joys of heaven] you see Him emptying His pockets to give them to you.</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Together with the joy that the soul feels, there comes a second feeling, which is always bound up with it: a feeling of pain. This is the pain of a soul which is so rich and yet so poor. It is the pain of a soul which, in the face of God’s mercy, understands its own hardness, its tragic failure, the dreadful state that it’s in. It understands how small and petty it is, and begins to feel pain. This pain is caused primarily by the soul’s consciousness of its distance from God….</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The soul is in pain because of its fall and exile. When we reach this point, when our soul begins to feel this pain, we come to the second, extremely critical stage in our communion with God. It’s what the Church Fathers call the “highest intellection.” What does it mean? It’s as if you were standing on some great height, from which you could fall into an abyss, but from where you can also see all there is to see. You’re conscious of having been seized and raised up to a place where you can look into the abyss of your transgressions and understand the depth of your fall.</span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But there is a problem when we begin to ascend the heights—or at least I can say that I experience this problem. The problem is that I am so used to looking down, I am so used to looking into the abyss, looking at my sin, that I fail to look up. It is as though I am afraid to stop looking at my sin, it’s as though I can’t trust God to hold me as I seem to stand on the edge of that abyss, I can’t seem to trust so that I might relax, breathe deeply a bit and look up and look out at the gracious acts of God happening around me, at the presence of God even in the midst of the brokenness of the world. Or to use a metaphor that I have used often before, to take my eyes off the dung in the dung pile and to look at the flowers growing up all around the dung pile. Yes, my life is a dung pile; but it is a dung pile experiencing God’s grace. Yes the world is a mess, yet still in this messy, messy world, beauty pokes through, kindness happens, gentleness and self-sacrifice out of love appear suddenly as if out of nowhere. God is here. God is present. God has descended even into the dung pile of our world, even into the hell hiding in my heart. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I wonder if this isn’t what St. Silouan was referring to when he said his famous aphorism: “keep your mind in hell and despair not.” Or if it isn’t what his disciple, Elder Sophrony meant when he spoke of going to the edge of the abyss, looking in, and then taking two steps back and having tea. I wonder if maybe these are ways of talking about the same spiritual experience. When God draws near to us and raises us up so that we can see the sin we have been wallowing in, the sin and brokenness and hell that we were swimming in all along, but that only now we ourselves are beginning to perceive the depth and breadth of, when God lifts us up, then perhaps we are at first shocked and ashamed at how much more broken and sinful we are than we had ever suspected. Perhaps we might even have the thought that God may not love us, may not want to be near us, now that we see how rotten we really are. But the truth is, God has seen it all along. God knew how broken we were long before we began to have an inkling of it. God knew and loved. And now, God has lifted us up a little so that we ourselves can see, or begin to see, the depth and breadth of our sin, not to lead us into despair, but to show us the greatness of His love, the immensity of His goodness. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A real long time ago, when I began to climb rocks, it took quite a while before I learned to trust the equipment: the ropes and the anchors. In the beginning, I could never take my eyes off of my hands, off of the rock itself and the next hand hold, the next place to grab onto. The higher I was, the harder it was to enjoy the scenery. But once I learned to trust the equipment, once I wasn’t so afraid of falling, then I could look around a bit. I could see for miles across the valley down below me. I could see the top of eagles as they soared below me. And maybe this is somewhat like our spiritual experience when God lifts us up and we see in frightening ways the depth and breadth of our sin. But instead of equipment, it is God Himself holding us up and instead of focusing our attention on holding onto the rock, we continue to focus our attention on our own sin and brokenness instead of looking about, instead of relaxing a bit knowing that God is holding us up, relaxing a bit and looking about at what God is doing, looking about to see God’s wonders to see God’s nearness, to see the glories that can only be seen from this new and higher perspective. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is frightening to be held up by God. It is frightening to look into the abyss of our own darkness and sin. It is frightening and it is glorious. Or at least it can be glorious, once you learn to relax in God’s embrace, once you learn to trust the One who has held you from the your mother’s womb, the One whose love never fails. Once you learn to trust, then it can be glorious, then you can see not only your sin, but also the amazing and glorious works of God despite your sin.</span></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-52317244900270085582015-06-12T17:50:00.000-07:002015-06-12T17:50:20.090-07:00Reflections From Tea With Bonnie<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkvScuU8vyAQ5N0JpdIH1E8HOs6uniI_R5Bu0Hp8riqRFzU7VXXLb-rJOi_Oebz4pAarKH_W8uadin-iIgYDz7AaLX5kVNdUyqTpIb8DngIhA9iNEUD8Ry6HJNKbBZ9tQ_gLoQ/s1600/clayburn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkvScuU8vyAQ5N0JpdIH1E8HOs6uniI_R5Bu0Hp8riqRFzU7VXXLb-rJOi_Oebz4pAarKH_W8uadin-iIgYDz7AaLX5kVNdUyqTpIb8DngIhA9iNEUD8Ry6HJNKbBZ9tQ_gLoQ/s400/clayburn.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tea At The Clayburn Store</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This morning my wife and I took one of our occasional half-day vacations. It’s a warmish 19 degree day (68 Fahrenheit) with the sun poking through the clouds. We walked a mile or so up a trail in the hills and then afterward stopped by a country tea and scone place for a bite and a chat and just some quite time together, Bonnie working on her knitting project and I reading a book (what else would I be doing?). Bonnie asked me what I was reading, so I read her a little quote from from Archimandrite Aimilianos. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What does it mean to be dispassionate? It means turning <i>exclusively</i> to God, with all your strength, energy, power, and love. There is no turning aside to anything else whatsoever….</span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Bonnie’s response to this little word was to say, well I guess you can’t experience dispassion outside a monastery and certainly not if you read novels in the evening (as she likes to do).</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I told Bonnie that I didn’t know if novels were absolutely detrimental to dispassion. A lot would depend on what kind of novels one was reading and why one read them and what was happening in one’s heart and mind while reading the novel. I have had moments reading, for example, the earlier George Elliot novels and some of Thomas Hardy and bits of Dickens and much of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, moments when what I was reading launched me into prayer, when the insight of the author expressed in a comment or action or reaction of a character gave me a sudden glimps into myself, into human nature, into the human condition in such a way that my only response was to stop reading because I was praying—or even to be praying at some level even while I was still reading. And as for monastic life being requisite in order to experience dispassion, I am almost certain it is not (though some monastic settings may be much more conducive to developing dispassion than most settings in the world). Nevertheless, there are saints in the world who have attained a high degree of holiness working, for example, in a bakery (here, Crazy John of Athens comes to mind) or as mothers and fathers (here the father of St. Siluan comes to mind). </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course, a sustained experience of dispassion is different from a moment, a brief encounter with dispassion. For Archimandrite Aimilianos, dispassion, or a “dispassionate capacity” is synonymous with “a state of union or intimacy [with God],” or “a state of prayer.” That is, a state of prayer “not [as] merely an address of words to God, but as an ascent to Him.” And we all, if we are willing, if we will offer ourselves, ascend to God from where we are, in our own octave, from our own place on the key board (to pick up again the metaphor I used last time). Even the beginner, even the prostitute soaked in sin can touch the feet of Jesus, shed tears and for a moment experience an ascent towards God. For a moment, she and even a religious hypocrite like myself, can experience dispassion—or if not dispassion proper (I guess a lot depends on how one defines it), if not dispassion proper then something like dispassion. For a moment. For a moment as the tears fall and as “all of our strength, energy, power, and love” is turned exclusively to God we experience ascent, we experience intimacy, union, prayer, dispassion. For a moment. And then the moment passes. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And I am certain that those who have trained themselves, either in a monastery or in the world to spend hours in quiet through night-time vigils or perhaps through hours of kneading dough all alone in the early morning hours at the bakery, those who have trained themselves to let go of the world even while in the world, these are able to sustain that experience of ascent longer, they are able (as St. John puts it in the Gospel) to abide in Christ and Christ abide in them. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As many of you know, Bonnie is an iconographer. She often laments her supposed spiritual poverty because she is not a bookish, teacherly person like Yours Truly. She thinks that that just because she doesn’t do what I do, she doesn’t write or speak or read books by Greek authors whose names she can’t pronounce, she thinks that because “all she can do” for God is paint icons and sew Altar covers, she the thinks that may never experience the prayer or ascent to God that I (Oh too easily) talk and write about. She will complain that sometimes she can waste a whole day painting and not even remembering to pray, only to have to scrape off a face and start over again the next day. But what she forgets, is that at other times she does pray, she prays so that she almost forgets that she is painting: it is as though the icon is painting itself. And this experience, in my opinion is, or certainly seems to be, that state of prayer, that ascent to God that Archimandrite Aimilianos is speaking about. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You know, to use the parable of the Land Owner entrusting his goods to His servants as it is recorded in Luke’s Gospel, whether one doubles one mina or ten minas, to work with and increase what you have been given is just that: to work with and increase what you have been given. Most people I know are one or two mina types. What I mean is that they really only seem to have one or two ways they feel that they are able to connect with God, to turn exclusively to God with all their strength, energy, power and love. I have a parishioner who is a professional house painter. Not only does he absolutely refuse to be paid for work that he does on the Church, he actually prefers to be left alone at the church while he works, so that he is there alone with God. Taking one of the minas God has given him, he offers his attention exclusively to God with all of his strength, energy, power, and love. I wonder what kinds of ascents to God he experiences as he is there alone on a ladder, with a roller in his hand, offering back to God what God has given him?</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">God has given all of us something that we can give back to Him, something by which we can ascend with all of our strength, energy, power and love. Do you wake up in the middle of the night? Offer that to God. Turn necessity into an offering—as the Church hymns say of the martyrs who reasoned: since we all have to die anyway, why not turn a necessity to our advantage and offer our lives to God? If you can’t sleep, chant akathist hymns. Turn necessity to your advantage. Is your work monotonous? Say the Jesus Prayer. Focus your inner attention exclusively to God. Take the one thing you have and bring it to God with all of your attention, all of your strength, energy, power and love. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“God is with us,” Archimandrite Aimilianos say, “at every stage in our progression.” No matter where we begin, no matter if we only have the strength to show up and stand at the back of the Church beating our breast and saying inwardly, “have mercy on me a sinner,” no matter if all we have to offer are two copper coins or the tears of our brokenness, no matter what the little bit of near nothingness we feel we have to offer to God, if we offer it with full attention, with all of our strength and energy and power and love, if we do this then no matter where we are, God is with us and we are beginning to experience prayer, beginning to experience in some small way and for at least a brief moment union and intimacy and dispassion before God.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And even though I am writing about this right now, I must confess that I often forget this. I often get bogged down in sadness because I seem so inadequate, so ungifted, so completely lacking in any gift from God that I might offer back to Him that I am tempted to cave in on myself. I am tempted to not offer God the little bit I have, the laundry, for example, I have to fold, the floor that needs to be cleaned, the peas that need to be picked in the garden. These I can offer to God. I can fold laundry with my attention on God, certainly not with the kind of attention that a holy person might. But I can fold laundry attending to God with all of the strength I do have (which isn’t much), with all of the energy I have (which is even less), with all of the power and love I do have. With what I do have to give God, I can enter the garden and pick peas, I can get down on my knees and clean the kitchen floor, alone, just me and God. With what I have, my work can be an offering, my words of prayer can, perhaps—even if only for a moment—my words of prayer can transform into a state of prayer, a brief, a little ascent to God. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And when I do offer what I do have instead of lamenting what I don’t have, then, as Archimandrite Aimilianos says, “God is with us at every stage in our progression.” Then even in the mundane and the boring, even in the frustration of trying to put in words thoughts I barely grasp, even when I can’t seem to do any more than keep my mouth shut praying that I do not hurt someone by speaking the unkind words that are coming to my mind, even when I know that there is something I should be doing, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is and so I wander around the house saying, “Lord have mercy.” Even then, God is with me. And that, I think, is the beginning of heaven even while I am still on a sometimes hellish earth.</span></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-36941975952900552572015-06-10T16:45:00.000-07:002015-06-10T16:45:49.271-07:00From the Plain To The Foothills<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7xN3HGNd08TtYmxv7cjLG5nDhyphenhyphenl-ndM0K1aakyIsLmb2eSE7sW9GU3uK-rmO2RhDqD5cByyEMdVYcMBAo8czCzlIFQz1ihTqtKUCqTXCHtKXQIsnsWSI7A7hC7cYAd76r4f0r/s1600/Snowy_San_Jacinto_Mountains.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7xN3HGNd08TtYmxv7cjLG5nDhyphenhyphenl-ndM0K1aakyIsLmb2eSE7sW9GU3uK-rmO2RhDqD5cByyEMdVYcMBAo8czCzlIFQz1ihTqtKUCqTXCHtKXQIsnsWSI7A7hC7cYAd76r4f0r/s400/Snowy_San_Jacinto_Mountains.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mt. San Jacinto</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“So there you are on the heights, surveying the earth below and the sky above. Your intellect [<i>nous</i>] now begins to feel its freedom and wants to fly.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I enjoy reading spiritual literature from holy people in the Orthodox Christian tradition. I like it because I often catch glimpses of myself, of my own struggles and my own triumphs. In many ways, books have been like a surrogate spiritual father to me. However, there is also a great danger in reading books for spiritual guidance. Often—actually, just about always in my experience—the writers of spiritual books, especially the classical spiritual books of the Orthodox tradition such as The Ascetic Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John of Sinai, and the the writings found in the Philokalia, these were written to be read by monastic men and women who have already attained to a high degree of spiritual life. They was written, we might say, for those who have already attained the foothills and have now set their eyes on the heights.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But what about us, what about us who dwell on the plain, both those of us plain dwellers in the world and in monasteries, what about us? Why would we read such literature written for those so far ahead of us and what are the dangers of reading such literature? As far as I can see, there are two dangers, both of which I have struggled with—the second more than the first. The first danger is to read of the spiritual heights of holy men and women and lacking a flesh and blood spiritual father who will help us see who we really are, we read of these sublime experiences with God and think that we have already attained to them. The second is just the opposite: having read of extreme ascetical struggle and the profundity of the encounter with God these men and women experienced, we despair that we will ever really discipline ourselves at all and we wonder if we have really ever actually encountered God at all.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The first danger, thinking that you have already—or just about—attained to the heights of the life with God described by the Holy Fathers, this danger comes about because first of all we think we understand what these fathers are talking about because we can define (to our own satisfaction) the meaning of the words they use. We can do this because we find certain parallels to what they say in our own experience. And I don’t think we are always mistaken when we think this. There is a sort of scale to spiritual realities and our experience of them, somewhat like scales on a well-tuned piano. That is, starting at one end of the piano we strike certain notes, shrill and of small duration—but notes nonetheless. And as we move across the keyboard, we encounter the same notes, but with each octave offering a deeper experience, a longer reverberation, a less shrill, but more deeply moving encounter. So yes, even reading of very holy monks and nuns who have disciplined themselves to the extreme and who have walked with God in the heights—even while still in the body—yes, even reading these we can sometimes see parallels to our own spiritual experience on the other end of the keyboard.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Life of St. Seraphim of Sarov is an excellent example. I will certainly never experience the self discipline that he experienced nor the spiritual heights, but still reading about his life can inspire me where I'm at. I have never knelt on a rock to pray—much less for three years, outdoors, and during the Russian winter. However, I do get tired kneeling at the Kneeling Vespers of Pentecost. My feet do get sore standing for prayers. Sometimes, when I endure this discomfort, I experience a kind of spiritual high, it is as if my body finally submits at some level and I stop thinking about it. Then, maybe only for a brief moment, I sometimes feel a kind of spiritual freedom, a moment before God, a moment in which I am not just saying the words of prayer, but I am somehow actually before God, somehow actually entering into a prayer that is beyond saying the prayers. St. Seraphim can inspire me, and in a very scaled down sense, I may indeed be experiencing some small part on my end of the keyboard of what he experienced on his end of the keyboard. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So I don’t think it is necessarily arrogant to think or say that you have experienced in some small way the life with God described in the Philokalia or described by St. John of Sinai. The problem is when we forget where we are on the scale. It’s like knowing where you are on a hike up a mountain. Northeast of Palm Springs is Mt. San Jacinto (Mount Jack, we used to call it). Mount Jack is about 11,000 feet tall (3,300 meters). I have climbed Mount Jack a few times, but never all the way from the valley. I have also hiked the foothills of the same mountain, and there is one thing I can tell you: the experience of walking up a foothill is in many ways very similar to walking up to the peak. It is very similar and very different. Walking up hill is hard work whether you are starting in the valley going up the foothills or already in the heights walking to the peak. However the dangers of the foothills are different from the dangers of the peak. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the foothills there are cacti and various venomous snakes and no water. In the heights, the air is thin and cool, the weather can change quickly and dramatically, and a slip at many points means certain death. Nonetheless, an experienced hiker in the foothills could learn a lot about hiking foothills from the stories of men and women who have scaled the peaks. However, just because, for example, Archimandrite Aimilianos speaks of a spiritual height where the passions cease to bother you—we might liken the passions to the snakes and cacti of the foothills—that doesn’t mean that I no longer need to be on my guard against besetting sins and passions that arise in me. Although I am inspired by the mountain climbers, I cannot forget that I am still just rising out of the plain. I have to stay vigilant against the dangers of the plain and of the foothills.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And yet, sometimes these dangers, the snakes and the cacti, the passions and my lazy, selfish tendencies, are sometimes so much on my mind, that I forget to look up to see the mountains before me. When I am hiking in the desert my eyes are continually on the ground. Rattlesnakes, and the much more poisonous sidewinders, are common. There are “Spanish bayonets,” a yucca-like plant with poky leaves that grow near the ground and are so strong and sharp they can pierce a leather boot—experience is speaking here. The dangers of hiking out of the valley and into the foothills are many. If I am not careful, I can despair of ever getting out of the valley, of ever walking closer with God, of ever even seeing the heights, much less climbing them myself.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is the second danger of reading spiritual literature. When I compare what I read with what I actually experience, my life with God seems so paltry as to perhaps not exist at all. Sometimes I wonder, since my own relationship with God is so far from what I read about, I wonder if I really have a relationship with God at all. St. Seraphim prayed kneeling on a rock for three years, I moan if I kneel for ten minutes. Archimandrite Aiminianos speaks of “the highest intellection,” when “just as you can look down from the window of an airplane and see the world you've left below, so now you look down onto the self you've left behind, while your intellect ascends to the heights.” But for me, the highest point of my spiritual journey is to experience a moment’s peace, a moment when I am not besieged by tempting or tormenting or just plain distracting thoughts. For me the Jesus prayer is not, as some spiritual writers have said, a warm up leading into wordless ecstasy in prayer. For me the Jesus prayer is a club by which I beat back the coyotes and the snakes and the prickly pear cactus—my impassioned thoughts in all their forms—that seem always to be closing in on me. This is my spiritual life. No heights for me, just a step by step struggle to make it into the foothills. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But what I have to constantly call to mind as I slog through the sand of despondency is that God is with me here, even in the desert, even before I reach the foothills (or in the many sandy patches among the foothills). I would not be longing for the mountains, if God were not already with me, if the Holy Spirit were not already drawing me. Every now and then a vista opens up. Every now and then you can lift your eyes and see something a little higher than yourself, something that helps you to keep on going. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You know, it’s a funny thing. The further you are from the mountain, the easier it is to see it’s peak. Once you get close, once you get close enough to start climbing the foothills, you are too close to see the peak any more—except for very occasional glimpses. All you can see most of the time is the next hill, the next big barrier between you and your goal of drawing closer to God. And so sometimes it helps to read the stories of those who have been to the peak. Even though I am no where near the peak myself, even though I am a spiritual infant, a beginner who seldom looks up because he is too often encountering snakes and cactus, even though I am not very near God in my heart, still I know that I can grow closer to God because others have. I can climb a little higher because others have been to the top, so I know it’s possible; it’s possible to really know God, to walk with God and to be transfigured like Christ by the Holy Spirit’s presence. I know it’s possible because others have been there. And that helps me to keep on climbing.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; min-height: 13px;">
<br /></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-42285647222126985922015-06-08T09:51:00.001-07:002015-06-08T09:51:39.525-07:00On What Is Only Mine To Give<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4MxN7bxh85gtJpesE3NLGiFackl0Mcn116n_ez8J_SkcAK0WCN8wWGEEzkrN2YDW08tEgZ2FCNB1Vr7Z6dWf0Ap7FUPKJclWr8KIUTaeadAq0F0aruWhw3EIF0s2U0xMLFfwH/s1600/our+father.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4MxN7bxh85gtJpesE3NLGiFackl0Mcn116n_ez8J_SkcAK0WCN8wWGEEzkrN2YDW08tEgZ2FCNB1Vr7Z6dWf0Ap7FUPKJclWr8KIUTaeadAq0F0aruWhw3EIF0s2U0xMLFfwH/s400/our+father.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Mother Alexandra, formally Princess Ileana of Romania, back in 1960 wrote a little booklet called “Our Father: Meditations on The Lord’s Prayer.” The booklet is divided into fourteen prayers each focusing on a phrase from the Lord’s Prayer and arranged to be prayed with one’s morning and evening prayers over a week (so there’s a morning and an evening prayer for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.). In the very last prayer, the prayer for Sunday evening, the prayer contains this sentence: “Only this have I to recommend me, that Thou has made me; nothing have I to give Thee, for all I have has come of Thee; only my love is mine to give or to withhold.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">“Only my love is mine to give or to withhold.” What a powerful thought. In our relationship with God, we have nothing to give, nothing that is actually ours, nothing but love. I wonder if this is also what Archimandrite Aimilianos is referring to when he speaks of longing for God, and what St. Isaac the Syrian is referring to what he speaks of tears that one sheds </span>before<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> God. Are these ways to talk about love for God, the feeling of love for God, how they felt and experienced their love for God? I have nothing to give God but love.</span></span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Archimandrite Aimilianos says that when we go to Church with longing, we often encounter God in our prayers. Not always, of course. Nothing is formulaic in our relationship with God. Nonetheless, if all we really have to give God is our love, then it seems that if we are going to encounter God at all, if we are going to offer ourselves to God in any way or through any service, then it seems to me that having love in our heart and being motivated by love are essential if we really want to know God, if we really want to see God, as Archimandrite Aimilianos puts it. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course love is not static, as though you can say, “You either love me or you don’t.” Love grows. Love fades, it can grow cold. So often for many of us, our religious life becomes routine. Even if it is rigorous, even if we do our best to keep the fasts and feasts, even if we give generously, and serve the Church in lots of small and large ways, even if we appear to everyone else to be zealous, pious Orthodox Christians, still all of this activity can become routine, mere habit, like a marriage that has grown cold—or if not cold, perhaps just lukewarm. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It’s not that habit is wrong. St. Isaac the Syrian speaks at length on the importance of developing good habits. It is good to have a habit of prayer and of fasting, a habit of giving to the Church and of going to confession and Communion of the Holy Body and Blood of Christ our God. Habit is good, but habit without love, that’s not good. Habit without love may be partly what Jesus was talking about when he spoke of the Pharisees (quoting the Prophet Isaiah), “These people draw near me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I think I do that. I think I sometimes draw near to God with only my lips, only the words of the prayers, only the outer actions. I draw near to God with my lips, but my heart is somewhere else. And as wretched as that makes me, at least I know that I am not alone with this problem. Apparently St. John of Damascus experienced the same problem. In one of his pre-Communion prayers, St. John of Damascus begins with the words, “Behold I stand at the gates of Your Temple, yet I refrain not from my evil thoughts….” This problem of drawing near to God with our lips, out of habit or convention, yet having our hearts far away, is perhaps a common problem. Many of us, and often, it seems, fail to bring to God the one thing we actually have to Give Him: love. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Love does not always have to be emotional. People are different, and how each person feels and experiences love can be different. However, one thing, I think, is certain: love always requires a certain attention, a certain focus, a certain intentionality and devotion of the mind and heart. I cannot say I am loving someone by doing some act of kindness for them if my principle thought before, during and after the action is how I will benefit in some way from the action. Sure it's always good to be kind. It is good to have a habit of kindness even if it is not really motivated by love, but we should not fool ourselves (and we cannot fool God). To give hoping to receive, to act kindly out of a sense of mere social obligation, to give so that I can get, this is not love. And love, according to Mother Alexandra is all that is really my own that I can give. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I can look into someone’s eyes and say the words, “I love you,” but if my mind is somewhere else, then the words have no meaning. And so, what should I do? If I have a habit of going to Church, of praying and of faithfulness in various religious obligations, but my heart is cold, what should I do? Should I just stop praying? Should I stop going to Church if my heart is not in it? What should I do if I realize—like St. John of Damascus—that though I draw near to God’s Temple, my heart is full of evil thoughts? Should I just stop drawing near to God with my lips if I realize that my heart is far from Him?</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Probably not. Probably, like in a marriage, you don’t actually need “space.” What you need is to kindle the smouldering spark of your love back into a flame. Probably what you need to do is start paying attention to what you are saying and doing. Probably, all you need to do is to start thinking about it, to start being thankful for the blessings you do have, to start choosing with intentionality to love, to direct the focus of your heart to attend to acts of devotion and kindness (as in a marriage) and to nurture longing, to nurture desire, and to bring that desire and longing with you when you go to Church and when you say your prayers. If your heart and mind is not where your body and words are, then probably what you need to do is work on bringing your mind and heart to where your body and words are. And I would say that this is probably the right </span>prescription<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> for most people most of the time.</span></span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, there are times when the right thing to do may indeed be to cut back on your actions and to curtail your words. This is sometimes the case with young adults who have been raised by very pious parents. Having been raised to say all of the prayers and attend all of the services and to keep all of the pious traditions, some young adults once they get a chance to do so, pull away from everything. They may lie to themselves and to everyone else that they are busy (after all, isn’t that the universal excuse we all use, the excuse no one dare challenge: I’m busy with studies, busy with work, etc.). Many parents lament when they see their children fall away from piety; however, something very important may be going on in their child’s life. It may be that the child is trying to find his or her level, trying to find what of the faith that they have received is really theirs. They are indeed trying to love God genuinely.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is a dangerous time, no doubt, and parents with children who have wandered from piety should pray diligently for them realizing that in no small way their own sins have contributed to their child’s struggles. Now is the time for parents to draw near to God with longing to find mercy and help in the time of need. Now is the time to pray, not preach, for only God is able to bring the prodigal home.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">There is perhaps also be another time in which pulling back may be appropriate when we find our religious life devoid of love. And that’s when our pious behaviour and good religious life have been motivated by pride, when we have come to base our identity on how good we are, how carefully we observe our religious obligations. In such cases, perhaps the best thing to do is to pull back, to not make ourselves do what we are supposed to do, what we have always done because it is the right thing to do and we have always tried to do the right thing. Perhaps it’s time that we too find our level, that we begin to let our outer behaviour reflect what's really in our heart so that with humility, as we are astonished at how lazy, sinful and </span>undevoted to God we really are, so that with humility we may begin again in small ways, but with our whole heart, to give to God the one thing that ours to give: our love—even if it is much less than we had supposed.</span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">An old priest once told me a story about a man who had confessed to him that he was always angry and frustrated when he came to Church. This man was a regular attender and active in many ways in the Church community. Do you know what this priest told him to do? He told him to not come to church so often, to come only once a month or so. After an initial struggle with guilt, this man began to pull back, he began to attend church only once a month. And for the first year or so, having most Sunday mornings to himself was a great joy, and he found many enjoyable ways to take advantage of the extra half day each weekend. But then, after a few of years, the strangest thing happened, this man started coming to church more often, started asking the priest for spiritual advice, started being more at ease and prayerful in Church. Why was this? It was because this man was now coming to Church out of love, out of longing, out of a desire to meet God. Having been freed from the self imposed “have to” and the “should” of strict religious observance, after a while, this man had started to become lonely of God, he had started to want to express his love, he had started to want to draw near to God again.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">All we have to give to God is our love. Religious observances, prayers, fasting, generous donations, all of these are ways we express that love. These are all ways that the longing to draw near to God is expressed and through which we can come to actually encounter God. All of these disciplines of the religious and spiritual life require practice and consistency and, yes, they all work best as they become habit for us, all of these are ways to express the one thing we have to give God, the one thing that is our own to give. Love is all that is really my own to give.</span></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-49990279712837008312015-05-30T07:07:00.000-07:002015-06-01T16:30:21.759-07:00On Needing God's Kneading<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOpGVKjqWBTrvv3QZFLAznyf20OgOmRZO5sWtqufJYA1-4myZkC9vkbeDKXL1Gy5yC4esC16W5CFa2M_yPwUNGkR73YCzcvcEV_ULnGXdW_QuglNM4u-s3qBiFwG0lo3yvSkZN/s1600/kneading.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOpGVKjqWBTrvv3QZFLAznyf20OgOmRZO5sWtqufJYA1-4myZkC9vkbeDKXL1Gy5yC4esC16W5CFa2M_yPwUNGkR73YCzcvcEV_ULnGXdW_QuglNM4u-s3qBiFwG0lo3yvSkZN/s400/kneading.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Archimandrite Aimilianos in a lecture entitled “On The State That Jesus Confers” says that the basic human problem is that we do not see God. In fact, most people cannot see God, but can only seek Him. This is because our eyes (both physical and the eyes of our souls) are earthly, they are trained to see, to think about and to contemplate only physical things and what can be deduced from physically perceptible things or what directly affects how we feel, that is, the emotional realities that are at work within us—although some people work hard to ignore even theses. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If, however, we want to see God, where do we begin? Archimandrite Aimilianos says that we must begin with what we can do. We can seek; we can come to God with longing. In other words, if you want to see God, you have to want to see God. I’m not being redundant. There is wanting, and then there is wanting. I can want to become a doctor, for example; but if I don’t want to become a doctor more than I want to play video games, more than I want to hang out with my friends and more than just about anything else, I will never become a doctor. There is wanting, and then there is really wanting: wanting so much that it is pretty much all I want. And so we might say that if you want to see God, you have to want to see God more than just about anything else.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now I may be stating the obvious here, but I should probably make clear that the word “see” is a metaphor. Archimandrite Aimilianos is not talking about physical sight, neither is he talking about some sort of inner vision or soul sight within our imagination. Rather, by seeing God, he is referring to a knowing of and encounter with God that is so real that it is like seeing. He is saying that one can know and encounter God with such clarity and force that “seeing” is the only adequate word to describe the experience. Just as we say that we know something to be the case, to be true, if we see it ourselves, test it, feel it, try it and in many physical ways experience it, so also Archimandrite Aimilianos tells us we can encounter and experience and know God in ways that involve so much surety that this knowledge of God is more real to us than the evidence of our physical senses. In fact, he would say, that this knowledge of God is indeed more real than the whole world perceptible through my senses and my logic, more real because the God whom we can come to know is not merely real, but is the source and ground of all reality. All that is immediately perceptible through the physical senses or through logic or even human feeling are only contingent realities, realities contingent on the One, on the unperceptible God whom we can, nonetheless, come to perceive if we seek for Him.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And yet seeking God is not like seeking things that I can physically or logically see because in seeking for God, we cannot find God. God is not to be found. But, you might ask, if God is not to be found by seeking, why seek Him? Actually the answer is quite simple. God cannot be found, regardless of how diligently we seek Him, God cannot be found, but God does reveal Himself. But when God reveals Himself, if we are not seeking Him, we will not see Him or know him. There is a passage in the Prophet Jeremiah (17:6-8) in which the prophet compares those whose hearts are not turned toward the Lord to a shrub in the desert that doesn’t even know when the rain comes. That is, when we are not seeking God, when we are not longing to see or be touched by God, then when God does come, when God does reveal Himself to us, we don’t see it, we don’t perceive it. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And so if we want to see God, we must seek Him, but in seeking Him we will not find Him; but rather, by seeking Him, we prepare ourselves to see Him when He reveals Himself to us. Someone once explained it this way, “You can do absolutely nothing to make the sun rise, but you can be awake when it rises.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Similarly, we can be awake, we can be watching, looking, seeking God so that when God reveals Himself we can perceive it. However, it is not as though God is one minute revealing Himself and the next minute not, as though God were playing hide and seek with us. God is continually revealing Himself to us, speaking to us and making Himself known to us in ways that can only be perceived as we allow our minds to be changed—or to use the biblical word—as we learn to repent. To repent means to change your mind, to think and perceive differently. In other words, God is only perceived by us as we change, or rather, as we allow ourselves to be changed. And the very seeking of God changes us because wanting one thing more than anything changes everything.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When we begin to seek God, according to Archimandrite Aimilianos, we ask God to satisfy our desires; and when He doesn’t, we think that He is ignoring us. We ask God to realize our hopes, and we are dismayed because they are not fulfilled. We ask God to let us feel His nearness, and God seems to stay far away. God does not answer these prayers because they are all, in a sense, requests to stay were we are, requests for God to strengthen what we already think, already envision, what we desire now. In fact, Archimandrite Aimilianos goes so far as to say that God does not answer these prayers because we are asking God to strengthen the very things that God, through repentance, wants to lead us out of. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And so we experience a kind of tribulation, a separating of the wheat from the chaff, a kind of suffering that takes us through what feels like a desert of God’s absence. But God is not absent. God is as near as He has ever been. God is near and is helping us change our minds, helping us to let go of inappropriate or immature ways of thinking about God and ourselves, helping us to let go of ways of knowing and feeling the nearness of God that rely primarily on our more shallow feelings or external serendipitous events that confirm our expectations, our hopes and our desires. God is forcing us to go deeper into ourselves so that we can come to know God more deeply. God is taking away what is familiar so that we can reach out to perceive and know God more as God is and thus to grow ourselves. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Archimandrite Aimilianos gives us a helpful image to understand how we begin to see God when we are seeking Him. He says that we do not begin by seeing God’s face or even his back, but we begin by first seeing God’s hands. We see God’s hands as God kneads us like dough. As our seeking brings us to Church, to the Tradition, to the people of God where we hope to find God, our expectations are thwarted in many ways, not the least of which are our expectations about what we expect from the Church. Instead of the Glory of God, a lot of what we see at first are jars of clay, broken, cracked and misshapen. We look to the place where God’s Glory dwells, and much of what we see in the beginning is the brokenness of others: foolishness, selfishness and hypocrisy—not greater than our own, mind you, if we are honest with ourselves. But still, we had hoped to find something different, we had hoped that people here would be different. And this very disappointment, for many, is the beginning of the kneading.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Disappointment leads to contemplation. We begin to think more deeply, and consequently, we begin to look more deeply, to seek more deeply, and through this contemplation, our eyes are adjusted, we begin to see things differently, we begin, first of all, to see ourselves as we hadn’t seen ourselves before, and thus we begin for the first time to see God, we see God’s hands pushing and pulling and pressing us, kneading us, changing us. Archimandrite Aimilianos puts it this way:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You contemplate the depths of your soul being kneaded by grace, like dough being kneaded into bread. Your soul is now a malleable lump kneaded by the hands of God. You see our soul being worked on, passing through His fingers…. All you see is His hand, as we see it in certain icons, emerging from a cloud in order to bless the saint standing below it. And now you are standing next to God, watching His hand as it kneads your soul.</span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And this is the real beginning of the spiritual life, of a life with God. Most of our spiritual journey is seeking, seeking and not finding much until we begin to see God: we see God’s hand. We see God’s hand opposing us, pushing us, kneading us, making us into bread. And when we can indeed begin to see God’s hand in all that we do not expect, in every disappointment, in every vicissitude of life, every uncomfortable change and unexpected outcome, when we see God’s fingerprints in everything that humbles us, everything that forces us to trust only in the mercy of God, when we see God’s hand here, we are now, according to Archimandrite Aimilianos, we are now beginning to see God, we are beginning to see the hand of God. </span></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-90284139595969204442015-05-21T16:34:00.000-07:002015-05-22T12:44:17.648-07:00Of Course There Are Many Inconsistencies <div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Theophan the Recluse is today one of the most popular spiritual writers of 19th century Russia. In many ways his great gift is that he was able to summarize the whole Orthodox teaching on inner growth and spiritual life and apply it to the very specific context of 19th century Russia, especially 19th century Russian monasticism. Like his near contemporary, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, St. Theophan recognized that the monastic institutions of his time were broken in many ways but were nonetheless </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“springs of sweetness…by which the soul is filled!—the Word of God, and daily church services, and the reading, and the fasting, and the guidance of the elders, and God’s enlightenments, both secret and open warnings, the ceaseless state of prayer from which come all goodness and [spiritual] gain.” </span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And while all of this is what is wonderful, or potentially wonderful, about a monastic life, about a life intensely focused on the inner life with God, while it is this that draws us to the monastery or to a disciplined ascetic life in the world, the reality of our lived experience, whether in the monastery or as a pious Orthodox Christian in the world, the reality of our experience is that much of the time, most of the time, the “springs of sweetness,” as St. Theophan calls them, seem to be hard to find and separated by long dry stretches. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The book, <i>Kindling the Divine Spark: Teaching on How to Preserve Spiritual Zeal</i>, is a collection of talks, letters mostly, given by St. Theophan to women monastics. In one of his talks, in the talk that I quote above, St. Theophan speaks of the glories of life in a monastery and then he makes a the following statement: </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Of course, many inconsistencies occur here, too…” </span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ah, there’s the rub. There’s the bit that throws us off, “many inconsistencies occur here, too.” And the saint says, “of course,” as though we should have never expected things to be consistent. But we do. We do expect things to be consistent and we are offended when they are not.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Part of the spiritual journey of our life with God is the work of uniting the mind and the heart. This is a dominant theme in St. Theophan’s various writings. This is an aspect or teaching of the spiritual life that I have found is relatively popular. People like to talk about bringing their mind into their heart. It’s an inner spiritual practice that takes a certain amount of attention and discipline, but with a little practice it often quickly brings peace, and (more to the point I want to talk about today) it is something I can do by myself, in my own private, little inner world. However, another aspect of the spiritual life, an aspect we touched on a little while ago when we spoke of <a href="http://holynativity.blogspot.ca/2014/11/a-charismatic-learns-to-take-up-her.html" target="_blank">Abbess Thasia’s</a> struggles at the beginning of her monastic journey, another essential aspect of spiritual life is inner crucifixion, or as St. Isaac put it, the unseen martyrdom.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We each of us want to have a certain amount of control over our life and circumstances. We want to understand what is happening to us. We want to see how what we are experiencing right now fits into what we <i>call</i> God’s plan for our lives, but what often turns out to be our own version or vision of what we think or want God’s plan for our lives to be. And we know this is so, we know that it really isn’t God’s plan for our life that we are concerned about by the very fact that we are so disturbed by the inconsistencies—or as St. Theophan puts it, “Of course, [the] many inconsistencies.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We all in various ways and at various seasons of our life fall prey to the temptation to think that we know how our life is supposed to go, how important people in our life are going to behave, how we are going to, or how we are supposed to, feel when certain things happen or don’t happen in our life. We think we know, and then we are so surprised, often scandalized, sometimes even offended to the point of turning away from God in some small or large ways, when our life is inconsistent, when spiritual leaders, church leaders, holy elders of the monastery, when men and women we trusted in and hoped in, when the people and institutions we trusted in are inconsistent. But inconsistency, many inconsistencies, St. Theophan tells us, are “of course” an essential part of our spiritual journey.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Why is that? Why must people disappoint us? Why must institutions (churches, monasteries, hierarchies of various sorts and orders) why must they “of course” be inconsistent? Why is this an essential part of our growth in Christ? Well, the first and most important answer to this question is that I do not know. I do not know why it has to be this way, but I do know that it <i>is</i> this way. I don’t know why people fail. I don’t know why I fail. I don’t know why sometimes I can say a word that sets someone free, and two days later say a word that offends and deeply wounds someone I love and want to help. I don’t know why I can do the right thing in one situation (and be praised unworthily for it, for I really didn’t know what I was doing); and in another situation do the wrong thing and be despised or even reviled for it (though I really didn’t realize I was doing the wrong thing at the time). I don’t know why I am so inconsistent—except for the fact that I am a sinner and that I am, at a deep level, very seriously broken. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And if I am deeply broken and that is why I am so inconsistent, perhaps that is also the reason why the men and women and the institutions that I look up to and depend on often seem to hurt and disappoint me. Maybe it’s because we are all human and for some unexplainable reason God has chosen to put His Glory in such jars of clay. Always in jars of clay, earthen vessels. There is no Glory of God in this world not hidden in a jar of clay.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In my experience I have found the question, “why do bad things happen,” in all of its various forms, is not a very helpful question. It is not helpful because it keeps our focus outside us, as though the bad things that happen are “out there,” as though the thing God really cared about was outside me, what happens to me, rather than God caring mostly—and I might even say entirely—about what my response is, what my response to what happens outside me is. That’s what God cares about—at least as far as I am concerned. Yes, God’s providential care is over all that He has created, but in as much as God’s calling for me (and for every Christian believer) is to be formed into His image, I can confidently assert that how I respond to what happens around me, how I turn to God for help in times of need, how I repent when I see my own sin (not the sins of others—that’s their business), these are the only things God cares about as far as <i>I’m</i> concerned. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And once we shift our focus inward, then everything changes. Once I see the darkness inside myself, then instead of asking why bad things happen to me, I begin to wonder why it is that anything good happens to me. Because I am so inconsistent, it is amazing to me that anyone shows any consistency at all. Because I am so easily confused, so self-obsessed and so tormented by passions, it is a bonafide miracle that I experience any Grace, any comfort, any love from those around me at all. If those around me are experiencing only one quarter of the inner conflict with depression, lust, selfishness, confusion and self-exulting pride that I do, it is truly a miracle of the Grace of God that I experience any good, any blessing, any encouragement of Grace through the people and institutions God has placed in my life.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In fact, we might even say that one of the reasons why there must, “of course [be] many inconsistencies” is because it is the very inconsistency of the world around us that forces us to go deeper into ourselves. When everything is going pretty much according to plan, when everyone is behaving pretty much as I expected, then it is very easy to stay stranded in a very shallow spiritual experience, a very shallow knowledge of God and of myself. So long as our spiritual life can be managed with nothing more than the rational aspect of our minds—as though progress in the spiritual life were somewhat like progress in mathematics or progress in the management of a construction project—so long as the spiritual life is mostly about just figuring things out, so long as this is the case, we will never grow to know God or ourselves very well. As many of the Church Fathers have pointed out, and as St. Theophan himself summarizes for us very neatly in the Book <i>The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned To It</i>, our true knowledge of God and of ourselves takes place at a deeper level of knowing than that which can be processed rationally. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If it weren’t for the inconsistencies of our experience, we might never learn to lay aside (or put in its place) the rational aspect of our mind to go deeper and come to know God and ourselves at that deeper level, the level that the Fathers of the Philokalia call <i>noetic</i> (which is sometimes misleadingly translated as “intellect”). This movement to a deeper knowledge of God seldom comes to us without our first coming to the end of our rational systems and expectations. It seems that it is only through disappointments, often experiences that seem death-like to us, experiences that seem like inner crucifixions, like a martyrdom that no one sees, it is experiences like these that create in us a crisis, a crises that forces us to become aware of something deeper in ourselves, a knowledge of God that transcends even death, even the death of disappointment, betrayal and failure. The outer pain we discover functions as birth pangs within us giving birth to a deeper, more secure, more profound relationship with God.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, all births in this fallen world are dangerous. Death is real, but so too is the Life that can come from death. Isn’t that what the Resurrection teaches us? Three days in the tomb can seem like an eternity to the one in the tomb, to the one in the belly of a Great Fish. But like Jonah, we cry out to God from the belly of the Great Fish, like Peter we cry out as we sink, “Help, Lord!” And in our distress we let go of our rational expectations, all that we had figured we could depend on, all of that is let go and in a kind of terror, all that is left is only God and me, only His help and my death.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And God does help, in various ways at various times, almost always unpredictably. God lets us suffer, lets us stew, lets us wallow in the mire for a while, and when the time is right, when we are ready, when we have come to our senses, when we have come to the end of ourselves, then God makes a way of escape, opens a door or provides us with another opportunity. This is the way of salvation, the narrow way, the way that few find, for it is the way of crucifixion, it is the way of transformation from the old to the new, from earth to heaven. This way of inconsistency is also a necessary part of our salvation.</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-144457991110472032015-05-19T10:22:00.000-07:002015-05-22T12:34:31.947-07:00On Raising Snakes and Losing Mittens<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYCMq8VmKfCzs1DreczWFNTbydJmLz_sxagaS24dqMZ68LiP1htHcibB1UV9Wn2jd5EOmkst2kryCVSw8hyphenhyphenazNhdQvrPwf1faGYKZULP9bd4cKWGjvD1e8-Z1eYYDpjFssaGVX/s1600/lost-mitten.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYCMq8VmKfCzs1DreczWFNTbydJmLz_sxagaS24dqMZ68LiP1htHcibB1UV9Wn2jd5EOmkst2kryCVSw8hyphenhyphenazNhdQvrPwf1faGYKZULP9bd4cKWGjvD1e8-Z1eYYDpjFssaGVX/s400/lost-mitten.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Remove from me the way of unrighteousness</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">and with Thy law have mercy on me.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Psalm 118: 29</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Theophan the Recluse in a wonderful commentary on Psalm 118 (119), commenting on verse 29, makes the following comment about sin:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Theophan’s comment:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The person who endures assaults from sin cannot but realize that he himself gave sin such power over himself; he reared the serpent in himself, and consequently suffers justly; and if justly, then where is his salvation, if not in [God’s] lovingkindness. And [the psalmist] prays in that sense: “I am guilty, and justly have to bear these attacks; but show me mercy, O Lord, according to the law of Thy lovingkindness set aside this way of unrighteousness.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Some important and reoccurring steps in our spiritual life involve the following: A) accepting that the temptations we experience are largely self chosen and self induced; and B) that the suffering we experience, the unseen martyrdom, is itself the judgement, you might even say God’s judgement, for these sins, for this “opening of the door for the demons” as St. Isaac the Syrian puts it; and C) that I cannot of myself overcome these temptations, that they are too strong for me, that the little serpent I nurtured within myself (when I thought I was in control) has become a great viper that is poisoning me to death; and D) finally, that God’s response to my predicament is according to the law of His mercy, the law of His lovingkindness.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Many people hit a roadblock in their relationship with God when the weight of their sins catches up to them, when they realize they are trapped in a cycle of sin or habit of ungodly behaviour that they cannot control. It is a road block because now that they see and are fully convinced of their wretchedness, their complete and repeated failure in an area that they also realize they had allowed to grow and develop, once they are convinced of their fault, many people shut down in some way their relationship with God out of fear of God’s wrath, God’s judgement—as though God hasn’t known all along what you have now recently come to realize. When we become intensely aware of our shortcomings, sins and failures, we are the ones who are surprised and ashamed, not God. God has known and seen everything all along and has been waiting patiently for you to see it, for you to become aware of it. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In fact, the very wrath of God that many fear at this point, when they come to see their own deep brokenness, is not something that God is waiting to reveal. No, it is the very pain and turmoil you are now experiencing. The wrath of God is what the Bible calls the painful consequences of our sins, the result of our own sinful wandering, the venom of the serpent we have nurtured in our heart. This is the “just judgement” St. Theophan is talking about, the just judgement that brings us to our senses—like the prodigal son suffering in the pigsty, we too come to our senses and say to ourselves, “I will return to my Father. Perhaps he will accept me as a slave.” And of course, what does the prodigal son find out? He finds out that coming to his Father, confessing his sin and having the humble willingness to be a slave, the prodigal son finds out that the Father has nothing but compassion for him, what St. Theophan calls “The Law of [God’s] lovingkindness.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But what about wrath? What about the judgement of God? What about the suffering that I justly deserve? I know now that I deserve God’s wrath, so now more than ever I fear it. I fear it, yet I know I deserve it. I deserve to suffer and there is a kind of pride, a kind of self-determination, that keeps me from seeking relief from God—no, not until I can do better. No, if I won’t show mercy to myself, then I will not ask God to show me mercy.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yes, I know this experience well. I have come to this crossroad many times. This is the crossroad where we choose, where we choose either to hide our shame, to wallow in the pigsty, to creep in the shadows of the fig trees in a mixture of fear, shame, self-justification, and pride—a strange mix indeed. We chose to hide and lick our wounds by blaming others—our parents, our teachers, our siblings, our culture, perhaps even God Himself. At this crossroad we can choose to hide and blame, or we can choose to step boldly out from behind the fig leaf. We can stand naked before God (who has know along that we were naked), we can stand naked before God not hiding our shame, not making excuses for our weaknesses, for our failures, for our addictions. We can stand naked before God and say, “Father I am unworthy, I do not deserve to have you clothe me; but I am naked, please clothe me.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is kind of like a child losing her mittens again. But unlike our parents here on earth (who are as broken as we are), God is our heavenly Father whose law is lovingkindness. We have lost our mittens and our hands our cold. This is the judgement, the wrath (if you will), this is the suffering that comes from losing our mittens. But our heavenly Father can clothe us again, in fact He longs to clothe us, he knows the suffering of cold hands. Our God has become human, He knows what it is to suffer from the consequences of sin, to be a victim, to have his mittens taken away by the schoolyard bully and to stand with red, stinging fingers in the cold. God knows, and so God longs to clothe you.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But God will not clothe you unless you ask, unless you confess, unless you are willing to come out from your hiding place, bearing the shame so that God can clothe you and take away your shame. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And this is the crossroad we must encounter again and again. Gethsemane is not for us a one-time experience. In His mercy, God does not force us to see all of our sin at once. Yes, it often seems that we have hit bottom when we are overwhelmed by the messiness and darkness we see in ourselves. Yes, every time I come to the Garden to sweat great drops of blood, and to say again, “not my will, but yours be done,” yes, every time I submit to the Cross and experience a Resurrection, every time I think, “OK, I’m glad that’s over.” But it’s not over, not until it’s over. This world is a crucible, and we are being refined like gold. So long as we live and breathe in this world we experience what St. Isaac calls “changeableness.” We are refined and purified so that we can more clearly radiate the Light of Christ, which is indeed the very clothing with which God clothes us. </span>Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-46568675777910659852015-05-13T13:03:00.001-07:002015-05-22T12:28:26.745-07:00St. Isaac, Dickens and Eating Away Gehenna<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXe0Hj5r-vU5e2I7P-jXmMgYwgsRDS7SY54Ot5iOUzCuqQK0vemoRnaNTe4HWGzCTqLbwY1gM0r6WkKKupr2XBYYXp_reNOKoQ1D7kWsw_QY-BWGR6VMJ9OALvyLLTXGSF9EcG/s1600/Marleys+Ghost.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXe0Hj5r-vU5e2I7P-jXmMgYwgsRDS7SY54Ot5iOUzCuqQK0vemoRnaNTe4HWGzCTqLbwY1gM0r6WkKKupr2XBYYXp_reNOKoQ1D7kWsw_QY-BWGR6VMJ9OALvyLLTXGSF9EcG/s400/Marleys+Ghost.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is difficult for some of us who were raised on a theology of substitutionary atonement, those of us Protestant converts to holy Orthodoxy, it is difficult for us to accept that our final judgement will involve anything more than the forgiveness of sins. But the Church teaches us otherwise. Parables such as the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the Separation of the Sheep and the Goats play a huge role in the hymnology of the Orthodox Church and in its understanding of what our judgement before God will look like. That is, judgement before God is not merely about forgiveness of sin. But rather, the judgement of the Age to Come is also about comfort and torment; or as Christ puts it in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Father Abraham speaking to the Rich Man who is in torment), “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A significant aspect of the torment of the Age to Come is connected to how we have reveled in comfort while those around us have suffered. Yes, forgiveness is part of it. Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, St. John tells us in his first Epistle (2:3), and while we might debate the role of faith or acceptance in the experience of the forgiveness of our sins, one thing is certain: the problem is not on God’s side. God has forgiven all. And yet, though we are forgiven, there there may still torment.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Certainly, some of this torment of the Age to Come—a torment that begins in this life, just as eternal Life begins in this life and continues into the Age to Come—some of this torment has to do with struggling to accept that God has forgiven us for our sins, that the abyss of our sins is not greater than the ocean of God's love. However, another aspect of the torment of the Age to Come has to do with what we have left undone: the good we could have done but didn’t, the help we could have given but held back, the good life we enjoyed (materially, socially, spiritually) refusing to reach out to and love those suffering from want of material blessings, from want of functional family or social support, or for want of a healthy church community and sound (Orthodox) teaching about the nature of God, man and the universe. Some of the suffering of the age to come will have to do with our failure to love.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One of the best depictions in English Literature of this torment over what is left undone, this refusal to care about those around us, and how it might be experienced in the Age to Come is found in Charles Dickens’ <i>A Christmas Carol</i>. After the ghost of Jacob Marley shakes up Ebenezer Scrooge and warns him of the three Christmas ghosts who will visit him, Marley’s ghost leads Scrooge to the window where Scrooge sees “the air…filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below on a doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The night is bitterly cold, we are told earlier in the story, and this poor woman is huddled on a doorstep with her infant trying not to freeze. And Scrooge’s departed friend, with an iron safe chained to his ankle, now wants to help, now wants to use the wealth of his resources, what is now bound to him as a burden, to help this poor woman and her baby. And this is the torment of the Age to Come. These are the flames and the gnashing of teeth and the worms that do not cease of the Age to Come. Freed from the voluntarily chosen blindness caused by sin, the old ghost in the white waste coat now feels human compassion, now loves the sister and brother whom he had for a lifetime ignored, now he cares, but now it is too late. Now he can do nothing.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And of course this torment isn’t merely about money and how it might have been better used to help others. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the torment of the Age to Come has nothing directly to do with money. It has nothing to do with money and everything to do with love. It has to do with seeing other people, seeing their pain, loving them and suffering in some small way with them, in some small way lessening your own comfort for the sake of someone else. And you don’t need to spend a dollar to do this. Who do you sit with at lunch break at school that others don’t want to sit with? Who do you hang out with at a party? Do you look for someone who would otherwise be standing alone? Who do you talk to on a bus? Are you willing to listen politely to an old man or woman who is desperate to talk to anyone? Who are you willing to see that you would rather not see? Who is hard to love whom you could try a little harder to love? You don’t have to have any money to love, to care, or to see. You just need to be willing to be a little uncomfortable, to feel a little compassion, to weep a little with those who weep.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I find it interesting that twice in the book of Revelation (chapters 7 and 21) it speaks of God wiping the tears from from every eye. In both contexts, the texts seems to be talking about saints who are already in heaven, already experiencing the blessing of the Age to Come. So here’s the question: where do these tears come from that God wipes away? I don’t know, but I wonder if those tears have something to do with this sudden awareness in the Age to Come of the people we refused to see and of the suffering in others that we did not allow ourselves to share. But as I said at the beginning, it is hard for some of us to conceive of a world to come in which one does not experience either Paradise and only Paradise or Gehenna and only Gehenna. But St. Isaac the Syrian suggests that the experience of the Age to Come may not be as segregated as we suspect. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Isaac emphasizes that there is no middle place between Paradise and Gehenna, there is no Limbo or “lesser heaven” or “higher hell.” However, for St. Isaac, both heaven and hell, Paradise and Gehenna, can be experienced in the human heart, in the same human heart. For St. Isaac, and some, perhaps many, Church Fathers, hell or heaven are referred to as places only metaphorically, in a way that makes sense in this current age of time and space as we know it. However, more precisely heaven and hell refer to experiences, or better, they refer to how one experiences continued existence in the Age to Come. The great gulf fixed between the Rich Man and Lazarus spoken of in the parable does not refer to a literal amount of space (as though it could be measured with a long-enough ruler). What it exactly refers to we do not know, for it is part of the mystery of the Age to Come. However, I suspect that the great gulf has something to do with the life lived and that is now over, a lifetime on earth that cannot be changed for it has been lived, it is what it is and it’s over, just as I cannot change yesterday for it is gone: a great gulf is fixed.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But so long as I continue to live in this world, change is possible. I cannot do anything about yesterday, but I can love today, right now. I can open my eyes now and see the Lazarus at my gates, the poor, the lonely, the stranger, the hard to love. And St. Isaac says (in Homily 32), that one who suffers to love others, as one is “chastised” or suffers in his or her struggle to love God and neighbor and to avoid sin, as one suffers now for righteousness sake, for the sake of mercy and love, St. Isaac says, “He who is chastised here eats away his own Gehenna.” For St. Isaac, there is no contradiction between the experience of heavenly rest and the experience of punishment for pleasures that we allow ourselves through sinful and selfish licentiousness. These are experienced by each of us now, in time and space as we know it, generally sequentially: “Every rest is followed by hardship, and every hardship endured for God is followed by rest.” </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">How hardship and rest, Gehenna and Paradise, may be experienced in the Age to Come, we don’t know; but St. Isaac assures us that the rest (or perhaps what we would more likely call peace) that we experience as a gift from God now is only an earning that “does not eat away its own capital.” That is, when God grants us peace, comfort and encouragement now in this age, it takes nothing away from the peace, comfort and encouragement of the heavenly reward. It’s just a foretaste, a bit of interest paid out that in no way diminishes the capital of the heavenly blessing God has stored up for those who love Him. But suffering for Christ’s sake, suffering to avoid sin or to love our neighbour, suffering for righteousness sake is actually a gift of God’s “rich mercies” because suffering now “eats away” the Gehenna, the suffering that may await us in the Age to Come, especially those of us like me who love God with only part of my heart, part of my soul, part of my mind and part of my strength. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is not a theology of works righteousness, not exactly. Past sins cannot be undone. Only God forgives sin. However, that I recognize that I have sinned against God and my neighbor (which, by the way, is the same thing) and that I attempt to do something about it to the extent that I willingly suffer somewhat for love, for righteousness sake, this is a great gift to my own conscience. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As I have said before, some of what St. Isaac writes is controversial, mostly because he is not a systematic theologian. He is a mystical theologian who speaks of what he has experienced and known in his relationship with God, who speaks in a way that has for more than a thousand years helped millions of holy men and women (mostly Orthodox monastics) grow in prayer and the knowledge of God. St. Isaac did not write to be systematized, he wrote to help men and women meet God. He writes in paradox and parable about the actual experience of a life in God, what the Orthodox Church often calls theology, but nothing like the rational explanations you find in academic books, what popularly passes for theology. Therefore, it would be a mistake to hear anything I write as I reflect on St. Isaac’s homilies as a challenge to Orthodox dogma. Everything St. Isaac says assumes Orthodox dogma. Everything he says fits squarely in the teaching of the Orthodox faith—even if sometimes it is a fit that cannot be rationally squared. It is a mystical fit, a fit that mystically resonates in the hearts of millions of holy men and women who have come to actually know God within the Orthodox Church.</span></div>
</div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-74158253986090946242015-05-11T11:54:00.000-07:002015-05-11T19:36:04.163-07:00The Unseen Martyrdom<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi2_p7qqsoRhd77m7QOrRivbhaLcsabme0NI6Ol3iF2VpfNTHOkKSkFGpoRYhKEf1M753egJOKb0GyEAzTGS0n8DlmPRAf8E0xsIUJdzYxg_pLPumU_-3a5G1awLE17qoS25Xm/s1600/Gladiator.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi2_p7qqsoRhd77m7QOrRivbhaLcsabme0NI6Ol3iF2VpfNTHOkKSkFGpoRYhKEf1M753egJOKb0GyEAzTGS0n8DlmPRAf8E0xsIUJdzYxg_pLPumU_-3a5G1awLE17qoS25Xm/s400/Gladiator.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“This is the fiercest struggle, the struggle that resists a man unto blood, wherein free will is tested as to the singleness of his love for the virtues….It is here that we manifest our patience, my beloved brethren, our struggle and our zeal. For this is the time of unseen martyrdom…”</span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What is this struggle that St. Isaac speaks of and how can it be overcome? Is it some dread mysterious experience that only the very holy or only monastics or only spiritually advanced strugglers experience? No, not at all. St. Isaac names two specific areas or perhaps better, arenas, in which this fiercest of struggles attacks believers, all believers, the young and the old, the spiritually advanced and the spiritually negligent, the married and the monastic. These two areas are, first, the struggle to maintain chastity and, second, the struggle with the feeling of abandonment. Let’s take a closer look at these two areas of struggle and St. Isaac’s advice on how not to be overcome by them.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What is chastity and how do we maintain it? Chastity refers to moral purity generally, but specifically to sexual purity. It does not necessarily refer to sexual abstinence. The hymns of the Church refer to Sts. Joachim and Anna as “chaste” even though they were evidently sexual active: they are the parents of our Mother Mary, God’s Birthgiver. Rather, chastity, when it is referring specifically to sexual activity, is referring to properly ordered sexuality. The struggle with chastity is the struggle with disordered passion. Disordered sexual passion is desire that is inappropriate, untimely or perversely directed. And keep in mind that the word “perverse” doesn’t mean “bad,” but rather means “twisted,” diverted from its appropriate use and purpose. So when we speak of perverted sexual desires, we do not mean bad sexual desire, for sexual desire of itself is good as God created it. We are talking about sexual desire wrongly guided or directed, sexual desire that is uncontrolled.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Every human being, in my experience, struggles or has struggled with maintaining chastity. Tolstoy in the beginning of <i>Anna Karenina </i>says, “All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I think something similar can be said about chastity. We all know, at least approximately, what chastity looks like, but each one of us struggles to maintain it in his or her own way. Our struggles to maintain chastity are intensely personal, as personal as our own story, our childhood experiences and traumas, our secret indulgences and the bad habits of thought and action and the degree to which we have or have not resisted them. Each person struggles to maintain chastity resisting his or her own perversions.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But it’s not that sexual perversions are that unique. There is nothing new under the sun. It is rather that each person experiences his or her struggle uniquely, the particular form of the twisting or perversion he or she suffers from being influenced by a myriad of factors from DNA to social conditioning, from childhood experiences to the availability and kinds of pornography or other models of immorality. All of these influence the exact sorts of perverse desires any one of us may experience and how each of us then struggles to maintain chastity. However, and this is very important, everyone struggles or has struggled to maintain chastity—you are not the only one. Your struggle almost certainly is in secret, the unseen martyrdom as St. Isaac says, but your struggle in this area one of the common human struggles.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The second arena St. Isaac points out as giving us the fiercest spiritual struggle is when we feel abandoned, abandoned by people, but most importantly, abandoned by God. Sometimes this feeling of abandonment is manifest as despondency or depression and is accompanied by a strong urge to give up, to just sit and do nothing, or not to get out of the bed in the morning. However, sometimes the feeling of abandonment manifests itself as an urge to cast off restraint, to give oneself over to wine, women and song; to eat, drink and be merry. And while both of these symptoms or manifestations of the feeling of abandonment are dangerous, the most dangerous in my opinion is when the feeling of abandonment leads to cynicism. A depressed Christian or an unrestrained Christian are both spiritually ill, but they are both usually aware of their sickness and, if they are willing, are relatively easy to help. I say <i>relatively</i> easy because even though both depression and licentiousness can have many possible causes and take a long time to understand and overcome, people who have the spiritual disease of cynicism often do not even realize that they are sick. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A Christian who is cynical may consider him or herself to be in many ways a model Christian, a leader, someone who sees clearly and knows the dark side of every Christian leader, institution or tradition. Cynicism is very difficult to heal because it is very difficult for the cynical Christian to admit that he or she is very sick. But once recognized as a spiritual illness, cynicism can be healed. Keep in mind that the root of cynicism, very often, is the feeling of abandonment. Christians, Orthodox Christians, become cynical often because the people or institutions they had relied on failed them in some serious ways. They then become cynical because God seems to have abandoned them, God seems far away, God does not seem to come to their aid, does not help them in the ways they thought He would. But because they do not want to give up faith completely, because they perhaps cannot give up faith, they cope with their pain and the incongruities of their religious experience through cynicism. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And so the cynical Christian is stuck in a kind of eddy at the side of the River Life. He or she moves in little circles, making what she or he considers to be insightful, cynical comments on the River as it passes by. But the cynic is stuck, not going anywhere out of fear, fear which can be seen only as they are willing to look deeply into themselves. The Christian cynic fears that the shadows he or she has focused on for so long are all that exist, that the Light has abandoned them. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So what do we do then? How do we keep from being overcome by these struggles, these, “fiercest struggles” of the Christian journey, whether they be struggles to maintain chastity (in all of its various and possible forms) or struggles with abandonment issues (again, in any of its various forms or manifestations)? According to St. Isaac, all of these struggles are won or lost through thoughts and habits, and it is the struggle not to give in to our perverse sexual thoughts and the thoughts generated by (and generating) feelings of abandonment that he calls "the unseen martyrdom.” But how do we control our thoughts and habits?</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Isaac compares vice, be it sexual perversion or the depression, lack of restraint or cynicism that come from feelings of abandonment, to a potted plant or tree that one waters regularly. If you want the tree to die, you have to stop watering it. The more you water it by thinking about it, actively remembering it and doing it (in your mind, with your body or with your words), the stronger the tree becomes. The stronger the tree becomes, the harder it is to kill it. That is, the more you give in to thoughts that lead to sexual perversion, depression, lack of self control or cynicism, the more you associate that vice with yourself, the more you associate that vice with who you really are, who you think you really are. Often when people say to me, “That’s just the way I am,” I am tempted to say back, “No, that just the way you have become.” Actually, I seldom say that because the person I am talking to is not yet at a place where he or she can hear it, but it is true nonetheless. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But just as it is true that we become who we are (or we think we are) by means of accepting certain thoughts as though they were our own, we can also become who we want to be, who we really are, by rejecting thoughts, by resisting images and turning our attention away from thoughts that lead us where we don’t want to go. I cannot become you, nor you me. We can only become ourselves, our best selves, our selves in Christ. And what St. Isaac seems to be saying is that our broken selves, our selves driven to unchaste thoughts and actions, our selves suffering from and trying to cope with feelings of abandonment, our broken selves are not who we have to be. Who we have become is not who we have to be. We can change, but change does not come easily or quickly. Habits of thought and action that have taken years to develop, with also take years to overcome. St. Mary of Egypt, for example, lived a life of wantonness for seventeen years, and so we read in the story of Her life that for Her first seventeen years in the desert, she suffered greatly with a desire to drink wine and to sing lewd songs. It took a while, after she ceased her immoral behaviour, a long while, for the habit of immoral thought to change. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So we too must struggle with thoughts. We too may find ourselves, like St. Mary of Egypt, struggling for days at a time with impure thoughts or with fears that God has rejected us. We too, for example, may be constantly tempted to make cynical comments, to think the worst of others, or to doubt whether it all makes any difference. We may be tempted to stay in bed, not to get out of our chair, not to brush our teeth (someone once told me that, that was how he knew he was struggling with depression: he didn’t want to brush his teeth). However we personally experience this fiercest struggle of the Christian life, this unseen martyrdom, we must each through patience, through long suffering, learn to do battle in our minds, for there and only there will the battle be won.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There are two techniques that I have found helpful in this unseen martyrdom. The first is recommending by St. Isaac in homily 32: “Be on you guard against idleness.” St. Isaac goes on to point out that on the day of judgement, God will not judge us regarding our idleness, regarding what we did not accomplish (contrary to what the cultural theology of our capitalist society teaches us: God is not concerned with what we do or do not accomplish). Rather, God will judge us because by abandoning what He had given us to do to keep our minds active and busy in healthy pursuits, we have become idle thus opening “the door to the demons.” That is, the perverse thoughts and feelings of abandonment are able to enter our mind because we are not keeping our mind busy with what God has given us to do. In the case of the hermit monk (the specific person St. Isaac is addressing) this would be psalmody, prayers and handiwork. In the case of a mother or father, avoiding idleness may have more to do with caring for family members and their needs, along with personal spiritual disciplines.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You see disciplines like saying the Jesus Prayer, cleaning the house, or paying attention to your spouse and children are not only good in themselves, they are also good in that they keep our minds and hearts from being idle, thus limiting the ability of the evil one to plant perverse thoughts in our minds. And even when perverse or depressing thoughts and feelings enter our minds, we do not have to identify with them, we do not have to claim the thoughts or feelings as our own. Rather, we can say to ourselves, “Oh, that old thought again.” Or, “Oh, I know what that yucky feeling is and where it comes from.” </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And this leads me to the second helpful technique. It is something I picked up a long time ago from reading the life of St. Francis of Assisi. St. Frances used to refer to his own body as “brother ass.” For example, if he were hungry, he would sometimes say, “brother ass needs to be fed.” He also said things like (and here I don’t remember the exact quotation), we must be gentle with brother ass, but not allow him to lead us. In other words, when our mind or body is experiencing urges or feelings that we do not want, but that we cannot seem to control, it is helpful to give these thoughts or feelings a name and then to deal with the thought or feeling as though you were dealing with someone or something else, not yourself, but someone or something that has sort of hitch hiked a ride on you. If I have a cynical thought, I can say to myself, “Oh, that’s my high school science teacher talking again.” Then I can separate that thought from myself and move on to think more clearly about the matter. St. Paul uses this very technique in his epistles when he talks about the old man and the new man, the old Adam and the new Adam. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When I am able to separate a depressing thought from myself by naming it, I am then more easily able to dismiss the thought—or at least to corral it somewhat, to put it in a box for a while so that I can ask myself more helpful questions such as, “what does Faith say?” or “What is the least I can do?” or “Is this lustful thought really loving?” or “what else could I be doing right now?” Taking the time to ask these questions often opens a door of escape, a door by which I can free myself for a moment from the thoughts that are oppressing me.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What does martyrdom look like? We all know about the martyrdom of blood, but few of us know about the unseen martyrdom, “the fiercest of struggles,” as St. Isaac calls it. Every Christian is called to martyrdom, called to be a witness for Christ (after all, the word “martyr” comes from the Greek word that means to be a witness). Some are martyred publicly though the shedding of their bodily blood; most of us, however, are called to the unseen martyrdom, to “the struggle that resists to the shedding of blood [unseen].” Most of us take our stand for Christ in the arena of our mind, with our thoughts, and through the bloody inner struggle to learn to control them.</span></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-47653578266695034052015-04-30T12:42:00.000-07:002015-04-30T12:42:16.089-07:00I Am Naked, Clothe Me<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6iKh8SrJWCacx75RQ12uKIRhPaRDMugqgrAfKXUnkWzvM1fr0AYDRQ-3fuvtMG2-pMGpv1TD1sjFV9eLxT8L4VzGji_FMP6X5l8D1Eu7lgRtpoFoYxImRAcWcwElYpk9mDDZu/s1600/Clothing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6iKh8SrJWCacx75RQ12uKIRhPaRDMugqgrAfKXUnkWzvM1fr0AYDRQ-3fuvtMG2-pMGpv1TD1sjFV9eLxT8L4VzGji_FMP6X5l8D1Eu7lgRtpoFoYxImRAcWcwElYpk9mDDZu/s1600/Clothing.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra Monastery, in the first half of a transcribed (and then translated) speech called “The Progression of the Soul” speaks of stages to the beginning of the spiritual journey. The beginning point for him is found in rightly negotiating the second stage. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The first stage of the spiritual journey he calls the feeling of exile, the feeling that we are far from God, that there is a wall between us. This feeling of exile is the feeling of Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise. It is the feeling of pain, not necessarily physical pain; in fact, physical pain is not at all what he is speaking about. The pain he is speaking of is the pain of longing, the pain that induced Adam and Eve to listen to the serpent. Being lords of the universe, possessing everything, Adam and Eve came to feel they didn’t have enough, that somehow God was holding out on them. Being very rich, they thought themselves poor and thus were easily deceived by the serpent. This is the pain Archimandrite Aimilianos seems to be speaking of, the painful feeling that something very important is missing.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And of course, something very important is indeed missing. We are children of the fall. We are born in pain and raised among thorns and thistles. Everywhere we turn we are poked and prodded by needles of want, envy, fear, and desire (just to name a few). Yet we don’t want to admit it. We want to explain it, explain it away. We say, "It is someone else’s fault. I’m not really <i>that</i> twisted, at least not as badly mangled as some others. And besides, I could change if I really wanted to, if I only tried harder, if I only got a break." And so we keep busy. We keep busy so that our focus can stay outside us, so we don’t have to feel the pain, the inner pain, the pain of exile from God, the pain that Archimandrite Aimilianos says is directly related to nakedness.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The pain that we do not want to feel is the pain of our nakedness. Having been clothed by God in the Garden of Paradise, clothed with God’s glory the Fathers and hymns of the Church teach us, having been clothed with God’s glory we intensely feel its absence, we feel exposed and unprotected, we feel the cold wind of our existential contingency: having been called into being from the dirt by God, what are we now that we have lost His glory? St. Augustine spoke of a God-shaped hole in our hearts. The experience of the orphan or of a lost sheep are metaphors pointing to this inner feeling of exile, of pain, and of nakedness. It is this very feeling, the feeling of this pain, this knowing that we are naked, that Archimandrite Aimilianos says the first stage of the spiritual journey.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The second stage of the spiritual journey, according to Archimandrite Aimilianos, comes when we confess that we are sinners, when we know intensely that something is separating us from God, when we no longer deny our nakedness. This, he says, is the most critical point </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">because at that point one of two things will happen: either I’ll get up and get dressed or I’ll remain naked. In other words, I’ll either present myself to God in my nakedness and say, ‘I have sinned,’ or I’ll try to hide from God like Adam and Eve. And when God says: ‘Adam where are you?’ I’ll say: ‘Hiding because I am naked.’ And when I emerge from my hiding place, He’ll see my fig leaves.</span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then Archimandrite Aimilianos asks why this is. Why do we hide ourselves? Why is it so hard for us to present ourselves naked and sinful before God? The simple reason, he says, is “that it is a terrible thing for us to realize that we are nothing”:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Do you know what it means to go from thinking that you’re special and important, from being respected publicly, from thinking that you’ve done great things, from being talented, wonderful, good-looking, charming and I don’t know what else besides, to recognizing that, on the contrary, you’re naked and of no consequence whatsoever? It requires strength to accept that, a lot of strength. And yet we can’t even accept the slightest blemish that we might have, or any fault, failure, error or sin that we may have committed, without covering it up with a lie, and then cover up that lie with a second one, and then the second with a third.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A person may conceal his or her nakedness by means of an inferiority complex, by acts of aggression, by self-justification, by donning various masks, or by many other means…. Such strategies of denial also involve concealment from myself. What does that mean? It means that, even though I’m naked, I’ll live as though I were not, and thus live a double life. Or I may refuse to grow and progress, as though I weren’t naked at all. And this is something much more terrible, for it is the rejection of reality, and such a rejection can only have tragic consequences for me. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Life is full of people like that They know they’re sinners, they know they’re naked, and yet they go through life doing the very things which they hate, which disgust them, which they know are beneath them. And they know that they must somehow silence the terrible cry of their conscience, which torments them. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The soul’s alternative is to accept its situation and say: ‘I’ll do something about my nakedness. I will declare my sin. I will confess my sin and my nakedness.’ And naked though I be, I will nevertheless present myself to God. I’ll tell Him: ‘You clothe me.’ And that takes great strength. To turn to God as if nothing else in the world exists requires tremendous honesty and authenticity. </span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is the crucial point: will I accept the painful reality of my nakedness or prefer my version of the lie, my version of the fig leaf? I think many of us are confused about the appropriate role of strength and will in our repentance. I think many of us invest a great deal of our will power and a great deal of our effort into sewing fig leaves. We think that is what we are supposed to do, we are supposed to get better, supposed to be better, we are supposed to make ourselves less naked. But we can’t, so we lie to ourselves; we shift our focus, assign blame, keep busy, and above all never spend much time alone and quiet, never give ourselves an opportunity to see and feel profoundly how naked we really are. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You know one of the most common things sincere believers confess in confession is the sin of laziness. However, much of the time I think the person has fallen prey to this confusion of the role of strength and the will in our journey to Christlikeness. They confess they are lazy because they have not been able to cover their nakedness sufficiently, they have not been able to fast or pray or do good works to the level they think they are supposed to be at. But I don’t think that is what strength and will power are for. St. Paul gives us the clue. He says, “When I am weak, then I am strong” and “I rather glory in my weakness that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Archimandrite Aimilianos tells us that strength really is about standing naked before God and before ourselves. Faithful application of strength and the power of the will is to deny our self-justifying delusions and unlike our forefathers and foremothers to step naked out of the bushes and to present ourselves to God without excuse, without prettying ourselves up first, embracing all of our weakness, all of our shadows, all of our inability and insignificance. This is where strength is needed. This is where the power of the will is redeemed. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And if, like St. Paul, we can learn to glory in our weaknesses, if we can learn to accept the reality of our brokenness, of our impotence, of our lostness, if we can find the strength to look squarely in the mirror of our conscience and not turn away, then, then we have the possibility of being clothed by God, then we have the possibility of returning in some small ways to the relationship our foreparents had with God in Paradise. It is a long road, but at least according to Archimandrite Aimilianos, this is the real beginning. Everything up to this point is preparation. Preparation is important. The Holy Spirit is active in this preparation. But the turning point, the beginning of the actual return to Paradise is here. It is here in the acceptance of our nakedness, in the forsaking of the various fig leaves we sew and have sewn for ourselves. This is the beginning.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Strength is called for, “tremendous honesty and authenticity,” as Archimandrite Aimilianos puts it. Strength is called for, but not the strength to change, but the strength to accept yourself and to accept God’s love for us as we are. That’s the beginning.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Now a final word. Archimandrite Aimilianos points out that this first step, this beginning, is not like the beginning of a journey in a straight line. It is a journey of </span>transformation<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> that is circular. That is, we are continually having to begin, continually </span>having<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> to gather the courage to step out of the bushes of our self delusions to stand naked and broken and sinful before God. And even though we have </span>experienced<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> God's gracious love in the past, each new beginning has its own new insecurities and fears, shame and disappointment with ourselves. Each new beginning requires strength, </span>strength<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> to stand before God again and say, "O my heavenly Father, again, I am naked, </span>please clothe me."</span>Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-78899445498457497302015-04-21T17:01:00.000-07:002015-04-23T13:11:39.384-07:00Fear, Doubt and Closed Doors<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">While the tomb was sealed, You shone forth, O Life. While the doors were closed, You came to Your Disciples, O Christ God, renewing in us through them an upright spirit, according to the greatness of Your mercy, O Resurrection of all.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Dismissal Hymn for Thomas Sunday</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyqia4GB8gsrv7qdisbaVEOzIg8AAhHcSIo4Cu0xTedJJSL8Te9WDIfN3y5K7KVDpTmtD7ff8oM4pDrx-dKLL5ZBtw_zuSFRUZJ8HHAdJzfjtmLZQYi62hFTV54RunEEW0LvMo/s1600/thomas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyqia4GB8gsrv7qdisbaVEOzIg8AAhHcSIo4Cu0xTedJJSL8Te9WDIfN3y5K7KVDpTmtD7ff8oM4pDrx-dKLL5ZBtw_zuSFRUZJ8HHAdJzfjtmLZQYi62hFTV54RunEEW0LvMo/s1600/thomas.jpg" height="289" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As I have sung this hymn over and over again for the past few days, I have begun to think about what it means for Christ to come to us through closed doors. The disciples were in an upstairs room with the doors shut, the scripture says, “for fear of the Jews.” Now since all of the disciples were Jews, probably it refers only to the Jewish leaders, their own leaders, the leaders of their people. They were afraid of their own leaders because the leaders had not, and in some places in the Gospels it says “could not,” see in Jesus of Nazareth what they had seen. But later on, many of these same leaders, would believe. In the ferment of the earliest days of the Church, after the Holy Spirit had come into the disciples and they had struggled through their first several weeks as a Christian community (not even yet called “Christians” but just “Followers of the Way”), once the Church had got going, then we are told that also “a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But at the very beginning, the Jewish leaders didn’t see, couldn’t see, what the disciples had seen. Consequently, the old persecuted the new. Those who had drunk the old wine could only say that the new wine was better. The old guard could not, at first, make room for something new. John’s Gospel tells us that a big part of the reason why the old guard rejected Jesus was because they didn’t want the Romans to take away “their place and their nation.” At first blush, this seems to be a selfish motivation; we read it individualistically, we read it as we ourselves perhaps would mean it if we were to say the same thing: “I don’t want to lose my place, I don’t want to lose my position of power and privilege.” However, it can be read a little more compassionately. The Jewish leaders knew very well that the uneasy peace between them and the Roman authorities could easily fall apart. There had been recent attempts at insurrection (Barabbas, who had been released instead of Jesus, was being held for murder committed during a recently attempted rebellion). And the Jewish leaders knew that the Romans would spare neither women nor children, nor distinguish between combatant and civilian. Jerusalem would be crushed if the Romans thought that rebellion of any sort was stirring.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Jewish leaders—in their blindness, for sure—may have been sincerely looking to what they thought was the best and safest way to move forward to protect their people from the vicious Roman authority. As Caiaphas says, “it is expedient…that one should die…and not the whole nation perish.” After the fact, we find out that he is unintentionally prophesying, but at the time, he may have indeed been expressing sincere concern for the safety of the entire Jewish nation. And so, after the resurrection, like mad men trying frantically to stop one leak after another in the wall of a dyke, the Jewish leaders persecute the followers of Jesus, trying to save their nation from what they fear the Romans might do. And that’s why the disciples are hiding, they are hiding because of fear, and Christ comes to them.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As I have thought about my own spiritual journey in the light of this early Christian narrative, I have come to wonder if this story of misunderstanding and persecution of the new by the old doesn’t represent a common, even perennial Christian experience, maybe even a perennial human experience. The old guard just doesn’t see what the new kids see. And because those in authority have the ability to do so, they persecute or belittle or shun or just don’t take seriously the ideas, concerns and insights brought by the younger, the less educated or the socially less important. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sure, it may be because those in positions of authority and power don’t want to let any of their authority go—I know that is what I have generally thought whenever I was the junior team member and I felt my voice wasn’t taken seriously. However, it may be that there is a kind of blindness, a kind of deafness, an inability to conceive of a different scenario without it suggesting danger to the health of the community or institution that those who are in charge feel responsible for. That is, those with authority may indeed have in mind what they sincerely think is best for the whole when they shut down and shut out the minority voice, the new kid on the block.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But to those of us who have been or who are shut out, those of us who are persecuted or who are forced to conform to patterns that don’t make sense to us, to rules and regulations that seem to us to cause more harm than good, for those of us who are hurt or offended or just squashed by the heavy hand of those who are in authority (be they priest or politician; parent, police or principal), those of us who are hurt may be likened somewhat to the disciples hiding in an upstairs room with the doors tightly shut. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We don’t want to be hurt again. We are afraid we will be misunderstood again, we will be belittled and persecuted again. We don’t want to be told yet again to shut up because we don’t know what we are talking about. It hurts too much, and we are afraid it will happen again; so we close the doors, the doors to keep out the Jewish leaders (whomever they may represent in our lives). But when we shut the doors, we start to push everyone away because when we live in fear of being hurt, just about everyone can be a potential abuser.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">But no door can keep out Jesus. No fear can keep Christ from coming and speaking peace to us. This is certainly one of the points John is making for us when he tells us this story. And yet it is one of the ironies of life that the persecuted is also sometimes a </span>persecutor<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">.</span></span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now that I am an older man, a priest and a grandparent, now that I have almost a whole lifetime of experience and experiences to back me and often too, too settled opinions about life and how best to embrace it, now that I am often the one in authority, the one with responsibility, it seem that I regularly find myself in the position of the one who is feared, the one who misunderstands, the one who persecutes. I’m the Jewish leader that the disciples feared. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And whether I am actually fearsome or not matters little. Those hiding in upper rooms </span>out of fear only have to see that I look like or sound like or have the same position of authority as someone else who has hurt them in the past to keep their doors tightly shut against me. Someone, for example, who has a<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> few bad experiences with teachers in elementary school will find it very difficult to trust and engage whole-heartedly any teacher for many years to come, perhaps for a lifetime. One bad experience with a religious leader or an overly zealous relative can cause a person to hide for the rest of his or her life in an upstairs room with all the doors shut anytime a priest or pastor comes near. </span></span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My wife’s paternal grandfather, for example, was quite a foul-mouthed man who hated anything to do with religion. However, he loved his granddaughter, even though he regularly, and with the language of a sailor, lamented her religious inclinations. They loved to spend time together on weekends working around his avocado and citrus farm and doing art projects together. When she was a little girl, my wife asked her grandfather why he didn’t love God, and he told her this story: When he was about 14 years old, he had to walk many miles somewhere and along the way a preacher offered him a ride on his buggy (automobiles hadn’t yet made it to California at that time). Once he got up with him on the buggy, the preacher went on and on about how sinful and wicked he was and how he need to repent and go to church. After a while, her young grandfather couldn’t take it any more and hopped off the buggy cursing the preacher and swearing that he would never be set foot in a church again. And he kept his word, not even for a wedding or funeral. The doors of his upstairs room were shut tight. He wasn’t going to let himself be verbally abused by a religionist again. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And here’s the question I keep asking myself: Can Christ even appear there, in my wife’s grandfather’s upper room, with the doors all shut from fear? Can Christ come into the heart and mind of anyone who has been hurt, who is afraid, who has shut the doors tight for fear of being misunderstood, hurt and rejected again? Can Christ come to the fearful and the doubting and show them the wounds in his hands and side, and invite even the ones afraid, even the ones who don’t want to be deceived or lied to or hurt again, can Christ even invite these to touch and see and know that despite the fear, despite the misunderstanding and persecution and lies and even abuse, despite it all, Christ carries our wounds in His own body?</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I think so. I think Christ comes even to those hiding in upstairs rooms and who shut the doors tight for fear of the religious leaders. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So what’s my takeaway? What have I realized through this refection on the dismissal hymn of Thomas Sunday? Two things: first, I am in the position of the Jewish leaders. Even without realizing it, even thinking I am doing the right thing, doing my best to guard the faith and institutions entrusted to my care, I can be the one ignoring or belittling or even persecuting the disciples of the very One who has saved and called both them and me. Care is called for. Gentleness is called for. Humility is called for.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Second, I have realized through this reflection that my friends and loved ones who seem completely locked up, who have been so hurt or offended or lied to or betrayed by religious leaders, so offended that they are mentally hiding in an upstairs room with the doors shut for fear of it happening again, that even these are not beyond the loving and peaceful power and presence of Christ. Those who doubt, those who fear, those who hide and shut the doors are not cut off from the One who appears in rooms with closed door, they are not hidden from the one who comes to those in fear, they are not beyond the touch of the One who invites those who doubt to touch and feel and see for themselves.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; min-height: 13px;">
<br /></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-73081957898845177782015-04-18T17:06:00.000-07:002015-04-18T19:31:50.104-07:00We Must Not Must<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">“What must I do to be saved?” This is a natural question when we reach the stage of our spiritual journey at which we begin to realize that something is wrong, something is wrong between me and God. It is a natural question, but it is the wrong question, at least according to Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra (monastery on Mt. </span>Athos)<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">. Archimandrite Aimilianos says the following in a lecture called “The Progression of the Soul” that has been transcribed and translated into English and can be found in the book, </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The Way of the Spirit: Reflections on the Life in God.</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Thus the first element we need in order to embark on our path is the feeling of exile” </span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Archimandrite Aimilianos concedes a little later that words like “feeling” are inaccurate and perhaps misleading because they are words that we usually use to describe a huge range of passions and sensations: I feel hungry, I feel sad, I feel a pebble in my shoe. However, he is intentional in using such words as “feeling” because he wants to emphasize the actual experience of the spiritual life as opposed to a metaphysical or philosophical speculation about the spiritual life. He likens the spiritual journey to a walk to the corner store. You know what you will encounter along the way to the store because you have actually experienced it before: you have seen, heard, smelled and felt it. Archimandrite Aimilianos says that it is the same way on the spiritual journey except you don’t experience it with physical senses, but you experience it inwardly. And because one does indeed experience the spiritual life, “feeling” is an adequate word to use to begin to describe the experiences of the spiritual life.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And this initial experience, or at least the one that gets us moving with intention on the spiritual journey, this “first element” as Archimandrite Aimilianos calls it, is the feeling of exile, this feeling that all is not right between me and God, that there is somehow a barrier, a wall between me and God.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Before us now is the shaken soul, the cast-away soul, closed in by four walls and unable to see a thing. This same soul, however, is thinking about breaching the barrier, about breaking down the walls within which it has come to live, and to live instead with God. How must it proceed?”</span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Archimandrite Aimilianos asks the question using the word “must,” and then he immediately makes the following statement:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Here we need to know that, contrary to our expectations there is no “must.” Such a word does not exist within the Christian life. The idea that something “must” be, or “must” take place, is a product of the intellect; it is something that I arrive at as a logical conclusion, a deduction based on something in the Gospels, or which Christ taught in his parables, or with respect to His ethical teachings to do this or that. But the word “must” has never moved anyone to do anything. On the contrary, it makes you feel like a slave and discourages you from moving forward. The force of “must” moves neither God, nor the [human] heart. It pertains only to the logic of human deliberation, to the endurance of human determination, which as we all know is something that unravels and comes apart very easily."</span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Because “must” is a product of human deliberation and determination, it can never work in the spiritual realm because the human heart is so weak. What I am convinced of today and determined with all of my heart to do can change in a moment. New information, different circumstances, changing relationships, all this and more effect our hearts and minds. Archimandrite Aimilianos puts it this way:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"The most fragile thing in the world is the human heart, along with all of its deliberations and determinations. The things about you that I love, I may later come to hate. And the things about you that I now hate may later cause me to fall in love with you. I may condemn you, and on the same grounds proclaim that you’re the best person in the world. I can exalt you to the skies, and at the same time wish you were in hell. I may decide to become a saint, and at the very moment become a devil."</span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now I realize that some of my readers may not be aware that their heart is this fickle. Some of you may be saying to yourselves, “Well, I know of some other people who are that fickle, who don’t stick to their commitments, who lack the inner strength or will power to determine what must be done and to stick to it. But I am not like that.” For those who are thinking this thought let me tell you something that my spiritual father once told me. He said that every sin I see in others I am able to see because the same sin exists in me. I may not express the sin in the same way, I may not have had, as the detectives on TV say, the same “means, motive and opportunity” as others to commit in bolder, more external ways the sins that also ensnare my heart. But the sins are nonetheless there, and if I am willing to ask God to show me the sins in my heart, in this case the fickleness of my heart, mind and will, God will likely be gracious enough to show me. The hymns of the Church teach us that it is a spiritually dangerous thing to say along with the Pharisee, “I am not like other men” (Luke 18:11).</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But for Archimandrite Aimilianos, fickleness or changeability are characteristics of every human heart and mind which is why, for him, words such as “must” do not exist in Christian life. Whatever I determine based on my understanding about the ways or principles or “laws” of the spiritual life cannot be applied in any categorical way. Not to myself, and not to others. This does not mean that we do not discover principles or laws or guidelines for the spiritual life, nor that these cannot be shared with others. What it means is that they cannot be applied, either to myself or to others, as constraints, as “musts” that bind or enslave us. When one attempts to make progress in the spiritual life constrained by “musts,” according to Archimandrite Aimilianos, “it makes you feel like a slave and discourages you from moving forward.” </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So if there is no “must” in the Christian life, then what do we have? How do we teach and guide one another along the spiritual path? Well I think Archimandrite Aimilianos would say, first, very humbly, carefully and based on our own actual experience. To use his metaphor, it is like giving directions to the corner market. If I myself have never been to that market, then certainly, I had best keep my mouth shut about how to get there—even if I have studied all the maps. And if I feel I must speak, then I need to speak carefully, tentatively, realizing that much of what a person actually experiences along the journey will not be communicated by any map. And even if I have made that journey myself a hundred times, great care is called for in giving the directions, for what is to me an obvious landmark along the way may be completely missed by someone else walking that exact same path. Guiding someone along the way of their spiritual path to God is very similar. The landmarks of my experience with God that stand out in my mind as most significant, may not be exactly the same landmarks that another encounters or finds significant.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It has happened to me several times in the context of a conversation with my spiritual father or some other wise person or in reading a book by a spiritual writer that I have had the “aha” moment when I realized that I have indeed had a certain inner experience that at the time I did not consider significant. But when I hear or read someone else talk about the significance of what seems to be the same experience in his or her journey, then I begin to reflect on my own experience and begin to realize that there was indeed much more significance in that experience than I had previously realized. I just didn’t see it, or notice its importance at the time. Like walking to the corner store, even if everyone walks exactly the same route, everyone is likely to notice different landmarks and appreciate different sights and smells and sounds along the way. This is why “must” is such a dangerous word in our spiritual vocabulary.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I’d like to end today by pointing out that “must” can be communicated in many forms without actually saying the word “must.” Generally speaking, the word “should,” especially in the context of spiritual guidance, carries the same force as “must,” “have to,” or “ought.” It has become a kind of red flag for me, this word “should.” As soon as I hear the words “you should” forming in my mind, either to myself or to others, I take it as a sign that I have probably stopped having any real spiritual insight or helpful guidance, and I am probably just relying on my own rational analysis, my own deductions and conclusions. When I start to hear the word “should” in my mind, I like to say to myself, “Speaking of “should,” you should probably shut up now. Shut up and pray.” </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I don’t always. In fact, I don’t shut up nearly as often or as quickly as I would like. Sometimes rational analysis is all I have, or all I seem to have. And when that’s the case and the circumstances are such that I feel compelled to say something, then I try my best to couch my words in as much freedom as possible. I don’t want my spiritual child or whoever it is who comes to me for advice to feel trapped, to feel enslaved, to feel as though they must do what I tell them; because if they do feel trapped and enslaved, then, according to Archimandrite Aimilianos, they will not move forward, they will remain stuck where they are. Progress in the spiritual life, in the Christian life with God, is made only in freedom, only as we learn “to act and move forward on the basis of…a kind of vision, that is, on the basis of [the soul’s] inner perception and feeling for things.” When we act this way, there are no “musts.” There are only land marks noted by those who have gone before and bits of advice from seasoned travellers, those whom we call our spiritual fathers and mothers. </span></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-88250922600878613292015-04-08T16:57:00.000-07:002015-04-09T12:02:24.997-07:00The Least I Can Do<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One of the perennial struggles I have in the spiritual life comes from a form of pride that is lodged fast in me and manifests itself in an "all or nothing" attitude toward spiritual life and other life disciplines. It can take various forms in different arenas of my life, but it always follows a similar pattern. The pattern goes like this: I set a goal or rule or ideal for myself, one that I could easily achieve if I only apply myself a little. This goal could be a goal for work or for prayer; it could be a rule for conduct (such as how much computer time I will allow myself or how much and what I will or will not eat or drink); or it could be an ideal such as what a priest should look or act like. Any such goal or rule or ideal I set for myself I tell myself is reasonable and attainable if I only push a little, if I only apply myself.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, what I don’t tell myself, what my mind never reveals to me in this process of creating “shoulds” for myself, what is so obvious but what I never see, is that my mind accepts these goals and rules and ideals for myself assuming a very idealized view of myself, of my abilities and my circumstances. That is, on a good day, on a day when I have had enough sleep, no recent crises, no interruptions to my schedule, no meltdowns in the people or things I depend, on such a day, such a perfect day that only rarely comes along, on such a day—if I only apply myself a little—I can indeed do most of the “shoulds.” On such a day I can indeed attain my goal, follow my rule and live up to my ideal. But such days are very rare. And then what? What do I do on the other days? Well often, I do nothing. I give up. I tell myself things like this:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“If I can’t do my rule this morning, then I might as well just stay in bed.” </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“ Since I’ve already broken the fast, I might as well eat the whole thing.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“If I can’t be as kind as I should be, then people will just have to get used to me being grumpy.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Since I’ve already sinned by watching or listening to something I shouldn’t, then I might as well continue doing it.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Does this sound familiar to anyone? </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have, however, over the years discovered a strategy, a sort of trick I play on myself, that has helped me a great deal on most days, on days that are less than ideal. I discovered this trick when I was coming to terms with the fact that much of my despondency is rooted in pride, rooted in an idealized view I had of myself. I become angry with myself when I don’t live up to this, frankly, unrealistic self image I have. It is unrealistic because it only exists in my mind, not in the actual way I live my life. This was a frightening realization and I suspect is for everyone who experiences it. 'Will God love us?', we wonder. Can we really come to God in the condition that the brokenness of our lives reveals to us—rather than in the idealized image of ourselves that exists only in our minds? Can we, unlike Adam and Eve, step out of the bushes without covering ourselves with the fig leaves of our idealized image of ourselves? Can we say to God, I am naked and I cannot clothe myself?</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course, God already knows we are naked. God already knows that we fall miserably short of our goals and ideals for ourselves. God already knows: we are the ones who have to come to accept it. Jesus said of the Holy Spirit that when He comes, He would “convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgement.” I wonder if this realization of our miserable inadequacy is not actually the work of the Holy Spirit, the work of God, who already knows we are naked, the work of the Holy Spirit in us, convicting us of the idealized, worldly ways we think about ourselves and revealing to us the painful truth. The painful truth is that we are indeed the Laodiceans spoken of in the book of Revelation. We have not known that we are “wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.” Rather, we have struggled to ignore the cracks in the walls of our ego; we keep busy; we reassure ourselves that we are alright, or at least that we are not as bad off, not as broken, as some others. But the Grace of God is persistent. Like a dog owner house training a puppy: God keeps rubbing our nose in it. God won’t let us go. God will not let us easily live in our own idealized view of ourselves. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You know I have noticed something about the size of God, about the greatness or smallness of my view of God and His love and care for mankind. When I see myself in my idealized form, when I don’t seem so bad, when I’m pretty good, when I’m basically on the right track, God seems relatively small: it’s not hard to imagine that God could love me. However, when by God’s Grace I see my sins, when I see my failings and my brokenness, when I am forced by circumstances and experience to see, Oh so painfully, that I am much more miserable, blind, stupid and selfish than I realized --when I see myself as I really am, then God is huge, God’s love is amazing. God’s love must be amazing if God could love even me. And if God can love even me as naked, blind and wretched as I am, then it’s not so hard to see how God could love everyone. And if God loves everyone, then God must love me too. (I know this is a circular argument, but logic is just another ideal I try to put on myself. In reality my mind is seldom logical). </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the past (and still every now and then), when I would see myself as strong, as someone who “should” be able to do it (whatever the “it” is), when I viewed myself this way and yet at the same time I fell miserably short in an area, I would often just give up, I’d often just cave in to my weakness and do nothing. But when I start accepting that I am naked and that God loves and has loved me knowing all along that I am naked, then I can begin to pluck up the courage to step out from behind the fig leaves of my inflated view of myself. I can look at my failures to meet my goals, keep my rules or live up to my ideals and say to myself, “Well of course. What else would I expect from someone as messed up as I am.” </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And here is where the little trick that I mentioned above comes in. The trick goes like this: When I sense that I am failing or am about to fail again, I ask myself, “Since I cannot offer God what I should, what is the least I could do in this situation?” For example, if I can’t seem to get out of bed to say my prayer rule in the morning, then I ask myself, “What is the least I could do?” The answer I give myself might be something like, “Well, at least you can get up and say the Trisagion prayers and then get back in bed.” Or I might say something like, “Well, the least you can do is say the Jesus Prayer in bed.” Or "the least you can do is reset your alarm with just enough time to get up and light your vigil candle and say the beginning and end of your rule.” I tell myself, "well it is the least I can do."</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In such circumstances, I see myself as the fellow in the parable of the talents who received only one talent. The Land Owner tells him that the least he could have done, instead of burying the talent, was to give the talent to bankers so that it could collect interest. That’s me. I’m that fellow with the one talent. I cannot do what others do. I cannot invest and double my “talent of Grace,” as the hymns of Holy Week tell us to do. But I can at least do the least. That is, if I am going to break the fast because (well, because of any reason), then the least I can do is not give in completely to my craving: At least I can eat the cheese rather than the fish, or the fish rather than the chicken or the chicken rather than the steak. What is the least I can do? At least I can do that. And I have found that when I do this, when I offer to God the least, that God graciously accepts this. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I can imagine that some of you are screaming, or something inside you is screaming, “but we should give God our best, not our least.” And of course, you are right. But here’s the painful reality that we are not willing to accept about ourselves: often the least is our best. Best is not defined by the idealized picture we have in our head about ourselves. Best is defined by what we really are and what we really have and are able to do and offer God in the particular circumstances and reality of our life as it is, not as it should be or as we wish it were. What we really have to offer God comes from who we really are, not who we think we should be. And when we begin to offer to God the two widow’s mites of our reality, of who we really are, then we begin to really change. Then, I think, metamorphosis really begins. Up to this point everything has been getting us ready, ready to see ourselves as we are, ready to accept God’s love for us in our miserable condition, ready to offer to God, not what we should, but what we are.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And this experience, this movement from should to be, has been for me one of the more painful transitions of my spiritual life. And it is on going. I sometimes amaze myself at the depth of self delusion when I see anew the height of my arrogance, the breadth of my selfishness, and my unwavering good opinion of myself even in the face of daily, hourly, evidence to the contrary. Daily I have to return to myself. Daily I have to step out of the bushes naked before God. Daily I have to humble myself and offer to God the least, offer to God so very much less than what I should, so much less than I imagined I would. And yet, this is what I have and what I am. It’s not much, but at least what I have, what I am, at least this little bit I give to God. And God receives it, in his great love for mankind. And God receives it as he received the two copper coins of the widow. And God receives it, small as it is, taking the least and making it not just enough, but making it great, because that’s what God does. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; min-height: 13px;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-37093768707294993492015-04-01T16:05:00.000-07:002015-04-02T13:18:29.155-07:00St. Isaac, Gehenna and Hope<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Probably the most controversial teaching of St. Isaac the Syrian is his teaching on Gehenna, or hell. Homily 27 begins with the following statement and explanation of St. Isaac’s thoughts on sin, Gehenna and death:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sin, Gehenna and death do not exist at all with God, for they are effects [or acts], not substances. Sin is the fruit of the will; there was a time when sin did not exist, and there will be a time when it will not exist. Gehenna is the fruit of sin; at some point in time it received a beginning, but its end is not known. Death, however, is a dispensation of the wisdom of the Creator; it will have power over nature only for a time; then it will be totally abolished.</span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For St. Isaac, all suffering and torment is therapeutic, not vengeful or requisite from the perspective of God. God allows or causes suffering for sin so that the sinner may be healed. Even the curse at the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden was therapeutic. The sufferings associated with the curse were instituted not as retributive punishment, although the language of the biblical text does read that way. Rather, read through the revelation of the Cross, all apparent retributive action on the part of God in the Old Testament is now understood as redemptive. That is, God was not looking back at past sins to punish Adam and Eve and their descendants, but rather God was looking forward to prepare all human beings for redemption. God uses the painful results or consequences of sinful human actions as a means to heal the very root of sin in human beings. The sufferings associated with the adamic curse were to turn us to God by revealing to us our finitude. And even death itself is to be understood as the doorway into the resurrection. For St. Isaac, the biblical injunction, “mercy triumphs over justice,” is the interpretive principle when it comes to understanding eternal judgement. In the End, all will somehow be reconciled with God. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now, I understand that the fifth Ecumenical Council condemned Origin and his protology (his theory of preexisting souls) and condemned the form of universalism based on his protology. However, a few other Church fathers also held something like a universalist understanding of salvation, but not based on the preexistence of souls. Most notably among these is St. Gregory of Nyssa--whom (I believe it was) the second Ecumenical Council proclaimed as the Father of the Fathers. But to be sure, those who hold such universalist-like opinions are in the minority. And if we are going to be honest in reading St. Isaac, we have to admit that he is part of that minority. St. Isaac is a universalist of sorts. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Of course, a lot depends on what you mean by universalist. For St. Isaac, at least, that every creature will eventually be reconciled with God does not mean that there is no hell, nor that hell is not relatively eternal. I say “relatively” because what we mean by “eternal” depends on what we are talking about. Can any created thing be eternal in the same sense that God Himself is eternal? Certainly not. For example, in the Old Testament, God speaks of an “eternal covenant” with the biological </span>descendants of Abraham,<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> but St. Paul tells us (Heb. 8: 7-13) that the old covenant was faulty and was replaced by a new covenant. Eternity is a relative thing when God is involved.</span></span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Some have said that St. Isaac’s understanding of Gehenna is somewhat like the Roman Catholic understanding of Purgatory, but with some significant differences. Unlike the Roman Catholic understanding of Purgatory, Gehenna, according to St. Isaac, has nothing to do with retribution or payment for past sins. Gehenna is a place of torment in which suffering as a consequence of our sins (which does not mean the same thing as a recompense for our sins) somehow changes us, somehow turns our will so that every human being, and indeed for St. Isaac every creature, can be reconciled with God. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Isaac is very specific about the nature of the suffering in Gehenna. It is not punishment in the sense that God is balancing a scale or paying people back for what they did, as though God were somehow under compulsion to a sense of justice greater than Himself, greater than Love. Rather, St. Isaac says that “those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourges of love.” That is, they suffer because they now know and cannot escape or distract themselves from the love of God, and the torment they experience has to do with their realization that they have sinned against this great love of God.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Gods love works in two ways in the age to come, according to St. Isaac: </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It torments those who have played the fool, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; but it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties. Thus I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret. But love inebriates the souls of the sons of Heaven by its delectability. </span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So for St. Isaac, Heaven and Hell are not different places, but rather different experiences of the same love of God. Those who “have played the fool,” those who have spent a lifetime turning away from God will experience torment when they are plunged into the fiery lake of the Love of God, love that they can no longer ignore or distract themselves from, love that forces them to confront themselves as they really are, not as they have spent their lifetime on earth pretending to be. This will be torment to some. Others, those who have turned to God, those who have seen their own wickedness, hated it, but nonetheless confessed it as their own, those who have longed to know the love of God, these will experience the same overwhelming love of God as bliss, as heaven, as the fulfillment of their longing. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But those who experience torment will do so because of sin. And because sin is not eternal, neither can its consequences be--or so posits St. Isaac. St. Isaac tells us that Gehenna is the “fruit of sin” and that “at some point in time it received a beginning, but its end is not known.” Gehenna will have an end, for when the tree dies, the fruit will eventually pass away. But the end of Gehenna is unknown St. Isaac tells us. The end of Gehenna is really only posited, or assumed, based on its contingent reality--or rather based on the fact that Gehenna is not actually a reality at all, but an effect, a response, or an experience derived from sin, which itself (sin) is merely an effect and has no reality in itself, no substance, no being. Sin is merely the perversion or twisting of being. And so if the cause (sin) is not an eternal thing, then the result (Gehenna) can neither be eternal—at least not eternal in the same sense as a being that was actually created: sin has no being, so neither has its result.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Isaac’s understanding of Gehenna as the “scourges of love” and his understanding of the eventual reconciliation of all creation with the Creator is a minority opinion among the Fathers of the Church. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to say that St. Isaac’s understanding of Gehenna represents <i>the</i> Orthodox understanding. It is, however, <i>an</i> Orthodox understanding. I think <i>the</i> Orthodox teaching on Gehenna is that it is a mystery, that we do not really know much at all about it except this: there really is such a thing, or place or experience as Gehenna. How it exists, what it does, and the exact experience of those who enter it is unknown to us--except that it is very unpleasant and that it is eternal. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But we must be careful with words like “eternal.” When we speak of eternal life, for example, we are not speaking of life as we know it without end. Rather, we are talking about a different quality or kind of life, the life of the Age to Come. “Eternal” is often a quality word in the bible and in the writing of the Fathers, not a quantity word. And even when it is referring to duration, we must remember that time itself is a category of a certain created order. What has no limits from the perspective of the creature within a particular age or epoch (the biological descendants of Abraham before the Incarnation of Christ, for example), may indeed be finite from God’s perspective or even from the perspective of creatures in another age--such as the saints and angels in heaven. We just don't know what phrases like "eternal condemnation" or "eternal fire" or "the worm never ceases" actually mean in terms of duration especially from the perspective of the Creator who works according to <i>kairos </i>time even though <i>chronos </i>time as we know it will pass away.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Metropolitan Kalistos Ware says that at best the hope that all will be reconciled with God is nothing more than just that, a hope, not a dogma of the Orthodox Church. St. Isaac could be completely missing it on this one--or we could be completely misunderstanding him. Or, as I hope is the case, the majority of the Church Fathers could be missing it and the minority report is the correct one. It wouldn’t be the first time in the history of the Church when the majority missed the mark and only a later generation recognized the the truth in the minority report. It has happened before, just not very often. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Still, in the mean time, I think I would rather err on the side of hope, on the side that hopes that no suffering whatsoever, not even the suffering of Gehenna is vendictive punishment on God’s part, but rather that the God who came and suffered both with and for us has himself entered all suffering and redeemed it so that nothing is lost, nothing is wasted, no one is thrown away. This is my hope, because, like Moses, I don’t think I could bear to enter the promised land without all the people. But who am I to know anything about such mysteries. I only hope in the Love of God.</span></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-45519965333499308572015-03-30T10:46:00.004-07:002015-03-30T10:46:48.025-07:00Follow up on Coptic Martyrs National Geographic has done a small piece on the families of the 21 Coptic martyrs. Please check it out <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150316-isis-beheadings-egypt-pictures-photos-family/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
Fr. MichaelFr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-69948729882481321232015-03-26T16:10:00.000-07:002015-03-30T10:56:08.085-07:00Two Kinds of Confidence<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzz0Xi2ymM5yIRyejz8UmVmAUfrq2XO-hwYLVCeeP-i9xM68N2XVfK5YUxD0P2HgXFblBRbdhAMMUq4KaK-2W9DytU4OLTOMw39ytSriYJbOczZaDYJueCsfzpSKo8JB5bq0Kn/s1600/glass+darkly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzz0Xi2ymM5yIRyejz8UmVmAUfrq2XO-hwYLVCeeP-i9xM68N2XVfK5YUxD0P2HgXFblBRbdhAMMUq4KaK-2W9DytU4OLTOMw39ytSriYJbOczZaDYJueCsfzpSKo8JB5bq0Kn/s1600/glass+darkly.jpg" height="289" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seeing Through A Glass Darkly</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Homily 27, St. Isaac the Syrian speaks of two kinds of confidence. The first kind of confidence is what we generally mean when we say someone is confident. That is, the person is sure about what he or she is doing or saying. St. Isaac tells us that this kind of confidence is spiritually dangerous. It is dangerous because we live in an age of changeability, or “ununiformity” as it is translated in the Holy Transfiguration edition of St. Isaac’s text. This ununiformity refers to the mutability or inconstancy we experience in this world. Things and people don't stay the same.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On a basic biological level, human beings change. Not only do our bodies change with age, but even on a moment by moment basis, our moods and our ability to think clearly are easily altered by what we have eaten, how much sleep we have had or how we feel about what is happening around us. (Excitement or fear release adrenaline, for example. Other chemicals such as endorphin, dopamine, and oxytocin are also influenced by the foods we eat and external stimuli, dramatically affecting our moods, our ability to think clearly and how we feel about what we think or experience—thus further influencing our body’s chemistry).</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If this changeability truly occurs on a merely biological level, it is even more certainly occurs, according to St. Isaac, on the intellectual and even the spiritual level. St. Isaac says, </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The different states of men’s hearts and the dissimilar ways of thinking that are usually born of them…are greatly assisted by the ununiformity of the <i>theoria</i> that arises in men’s minds concerning God’s judgements.” </span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That is, people don’t think the same way about God, about God’s judgements (about what God is doing in the world and in their lives). As you probably know already, two people can have what seems to be exactly the same experience, but draw very different conclusions based on that same experience. Two people can hear the same lecture, for example, but go away with very different conceptions of what the lecture was about. Two people can read the exact same prayer or bible verse and one be profoundly touched, encouraged and motivated by it while the other person seems to get nothing at all out of it. Even the same person can one day find profound comfort and encouragement in a particular thought or reflection, but two days later see nothing at all profound about the same thought. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Modern western culture wants to deny, or at least seem to limit or control, this mental changeability. Culturally speaking, it seems that in the west science provides the mirage by which we are trained not to attend to this changeability. We tell ourselves that science is about the careful observation of measurable and repeatable phenomena, and thus we comfort ourselves that consistency in thought is possible, that there is indeed a foundation on which to base our confidence. However, as anyone who has spent much time in the world of the academy knows, scientists are not very good at listening to one another, despite the facts; not very good at putting aside their egos, even in the face of observed phenomena; not very good at acknowledging the whole truth—especially the bits that don’t fit well into their theory. Scientists are, basically, just like everyone else: struggling to make a living and a name for themselves within a structure that is generally agreed upon, a structure in which certain incongruences are politely overlooked while others are focused on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then suddenly, every now and then, a conceptual revolution or profound paradigm shift takes place, and how scientists see the universe deeply changes. But this change, this (we might say) evidence of changeability, does not produce humility in the mass of us scientifically-minded, university-trained thinkers—although it does seem sometimes to produce humility in a few of the most gifted and best trained scientific thinkers—but for most of us, a change in paradigm (such as the development of quantum physics) only increases our confidence as we arrogantly exult in our new found bit of insight and lament how misguided the previous generations were.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">We do not stop to think that if the foundational paradigms of science have been changing throughout history, then certainly they will continue to change. Humility is called for. Confidence, as St. Isaac suggests, must always be tamed by fear. And this is the beginning of wisdom, as the scripture say, “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” It is the beginning of wisdom because, according to St. Isaac (and as I have said previously), it is our awareness of the changeability that we encounter within ourselves, among ourselves and in our interaction with the universe, that begins to save us, that begins to humble us so that we can be enlightened by the Grace of the Holy Spirit to start to see what is behind what is seen. This seeing what is behind or beyond what is seen takes place through what is called contemplation or </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">theoria</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">. And of course what people perceive through contemplation differs greatly: to quote again St. Isaac: “different states of men’s heats and the dissimilar ways of thinking that are usually born of them” come from the “ununiformity of the </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">theoria</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"> that arises in men’s minds.” </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">This reality of “dissimilar ways of thinking” and “different states of men’s hearts” when it comes to the understanding of God, is for many, one of the most disturbing aspects of their growing knowledge of God. As well-trained western thinkers we assume along with Immanuel Kant that anything that is really true will be perceived as true in the same way by all well-informed and clear-thinking people. But, as seducing as such a philosophy seems to be, just a casual glance at the turmoil of the world today (and since its creation, for that matter), should be sufficient evidence to prove that Immanuel Kant was wrong. Nonetheless, facts have never hindered philosophy. Like the clear-thinking makers of foreign policy among the western nations, we just assume that everybody is basically just like us; and where we differ, it is only a matter of training: if we educate others and train them to think clearly, they will certainly come to see things our way. That's how most of us inheritors of the western philosophic tradition think </span>about<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> almost </span>everything<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> unless we intentionally and with great </span>effort<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> try to think differently.</span></span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And we in our spiritual lives seem to have this same incorrect philosophical assumption. We assume that true spiritual insight will be the same for everyone. That spiritual truth will be seen and understood the same by everyone who <i>really</i> encounters it. But St. Isaac tells us that “The ununiformity of <i>theoria</i>, which in one soul changes and varies, is [caused by] the incomprehensibility of God’s eternal mind.” He goes on to warn us that “if nature, which is inclined to aberration, should receive here the real truth, it would die by reason of the impetuosity of aberration.” That is, so long as we are in this world, so long as we are subject to changeability, “the real truth,” or the revelation of God as God, would kill us because we are broken and cannot take it, not in its full form. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Our capacity to know and encounter truth, especially spiritual truth, is kind of like a pipe that is designed to carry so many litres of water per minute. If that same pipe gets twisted and turned and shrunk and kinked, then the amount of water it can carry is dramatically diminished. And, in fact, if you try to put too much water through that perverted pipe too fast, you will burst the pipe (btw, the word “perverted” just means “twisted’). </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Or to try a different metaphor, it is as though we are attempting to read a letter, but we can only read every seventh word. What we do read in the letter is indeed genuinely what the author wrote, it is completely true in that sense; but how each one understands the letter varies—especially if we each understand a different word among each set of seven, or if, like me, we only really understand every tenth or twentieth word. Humility is called for. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We all, as St. Paul put it, “see through a glass darkly.” So we not only need to listen to one another, but we must also accept that we may never quite see things the way a certain holy man or woman sees them; we may never quite get out of certain spiritual disciplines or practices what other people get out of them. We have to accept that we are different and that’s OK. We are all twisted in different ways, all broken at different joints, all struggling with different handicaps. But God in His love knows this about us already. That’s why the contemplations are different: God is giving to each what he or she needs to take the next step, to straighten out one part of his or her pipe. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">That’s why we have to trust one another, be patient with one another, and give one another the benefit of the doubt. Basically we have to love and be patient, not only with one another, but also with ourselves.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Isaac tell us that our experience of changeability not only leads us to humility, it also teaches us to lift our spiritual eyes to God who is above all of this variableness. He says, </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“But when the understanding withdraws itself from [the changeable world] and ascends solely toward the Existent One by beholding the properties of that good Nature which possesses eternal knowledge that precedes all existent things, and by beholding all His properties, then immediately fear is cast out and the mind is sustained by confidence.” </span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For St. Isaac, confidence returns. No longer is it a confidence based on a presumptuous understanding of worldly things—no <i>this</i> confidence “breeds contempt and an impetuous way of thought,” according to St. Isaac. Confidence in or based on anything seen only leads to arrogance, to a further twisting our our souls, making it even harder for us to perceive what is real, to perceive what is behind what is seen. However, humility based on the fear of God has the ability to “bind up” or even “bridle” to some extent impetuous aberration, or changeability, so that we can to some small extent lift our eyes to God who is beyond change. When we do this and we begin to behold in our inner mind “the properties,” what I think the Greek Fathers might call “the energies” of God, then a new kind of confidence is born in us, a confidence in God.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And this is the confidence that casts out fear. It is the confidence of the martyrs, the saints, and the holy men and women who have manifest the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives amid what St. Paul calls “this crooked and perverse generation.” This is the confidence we all long for, but we cannot attain—at least not until we let go of our confidence in what is seen, confidence in what we think we know, confidence in that knowledge which St. Paul says "puffs up." </span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But it is a fearsome thing to let go. That’s why all of the evidence in the world does not persuade us that we really do not know, that we really are dependent creatures, that we cannot figure things out nor can we actually keep all of the balls in the air. We have to move to dependence, to humility, to the fear of God. This is the only path to the confidence that cannot be shaken, to the confidence based not on what is seen, but on what is not seen. This is the only path to the confidence that casts out fear.</span></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-92110175233423422722015-03-16T12:01:00.000-07:002015-03-16T14:26:11.769-07:00Fighting Boredom and Despondency <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV3QybAInLA05YEb_Yv4ekfD6veWpputkWYTMi83PElCkd9wotxwOhVhDJn3Jc2G_NjTZUW87VOOi-rroWqaQuWbK7W4n95pZEH58BYCzlWdlTkFkc8p9vARQI4jve_Eu5IiJv/s1600/Bible+reading+chart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV3QybAInLA05YEb_Yv4ekfD6veWpputkWYTMi83PElCkd9wotxwOhVhDJn3Jc2G_NjTZUW87VOOi-rroWqaQuWbK7W4n95pZEH58BYCzlWdlTkFkc8p9vARQI4jve_Eu5IiJv/s1600/Bible+reading+chart.jpg" height="299" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I read the bible through the first time when I was in high school. I was part of a youth group that made it a project. We made a big chart with all of the books of the bible in columns on it with everyone’s names at the side and each Sunday we would check off whatever books (or parts of books) we had read during that week. Since my main social reality in high school was with my Church friends and not my school friends, it worked well for me to read my bible during my lunch break at school most days. And although at that time I had the rather competitive atmosphere of my youth group providing most of my motivation to read the bible diligently, I also thought it was a good idea. After all, if I was going to be a Christian, I figured, then I should read the Christian holy book through at least once in my lifetime.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, there was also another, deeper motivation. I wanted to know God better and I wanted to be able to help others know God too. At some deep level, this also was my motivation--even though I experienced it faintly at that time and perhaps I couldn’t even identify that as a motivation at the beginning. However, as time went on, as I kept reading the bible, my awareness of that deeper motivation continued to grow. But it took time. And that is what I want to talk about today. In those early days of diligent bible reading, I discovered that often verses or ideas I had encountered several months earlier in my reading would suddenly take on life for me as I read other passages or as I encountered new situations in my life. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When I say diligent bible reading, I am distinguishing it from either casual bible reading (reading a little here or there when I felt like it) or crisis bible reading (opening the bible hoping to be divinely guided to a verse that spoke directly to a crises I was experiencing in my life at that moment). There is nothing wrong, I think, with reading the bible casually or in a crisis; but if we are really going to grow, not only in our knowledge of the bible as a text, but also to grow in our knowledge of God through the holy text, then we have to devote ourselves to diligence in reading. And while a casual reader might often find something interesting or beautiful to think about whenever she picked up the bible; and while, in His mercy, God usually provide some help, guidance or comfort to anyone who looks to Him for help by picking up and reading a bible in a time of crisis, yet reading the bible diligently does not usually produce immediate results. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As those who have read the bible diligently know, especially in the early years, you can go for months at a time reading faithfully and not encountering anything that strikes you as particularly beautiful, interesting, or divinely inspired. Unlike casual reading and crisis reading, the desired results are not so immediate, but they are longer lasting. And this makes sense, even on a purely literary level. To really appreciate a very well written novel, for example, you often have to read it twice or more. The first time I read the Karamozov Brothers by Dostoyevsky, I appreciated some bits, but I had no idea what was going on. Ten years later, when I reread it, I got the plot and saw some of the spiritual aspects of the novel thus appreciating the novel so much more. Ten years after that, on my third reading (now in my forties), I saw Dostoyevsky’s profound grasp of human psychology and was in awe of his ability portray with accurate detail and compassion (and mostly it is the compassion that awed me) the inner lives of the several very different characters in the novel. Now I am sure that I was able to see these things in my forties because of my own life experience, but if I had not already been familiar with the novel, I almost certainly would not have been able to have gained so much from reading it at that point in my life.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But if this principle of diligence bearing fruit is true at a merely literary level, it is even more profoundly true on a spiritual level. In homily 25 of St. Isaac the Syrian’s Ascetical Homilies, the saint talks about this very experience in the spiritual life as it applies to prayer. St. Isaac says:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“It is a sign of the beginning of a man’s recovery from his [spiritual] illness when he desires hidden [i.e. spiritual] things. There is, however, a delay until he witnesses true health.” </span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When a person begins to be healed of spiritual illness, when he or she begins to actually repent and draw near to God; then the sign that this is really taking place, according to St. Isaac, is that the person will also begin to desire spiritual, or hidden, things. This desire for hidden things is then the motivation that empowers one to diligently pursue a spiritual life. This pursuit of the spiritual life can take various forms depending on one’s personality, calling and circumstances in life. In my case, as a young man in a Protestant context, this pursuit of God took the form of bible reading. In contrast, my wife, or the young woman who would become my wife, who was in the same high school youth group, diligently sought God in ways that worked well for her. Although she also did her fair share of bible reading, that wasn’t where she found life in her pursuit of God. Bonnie is an artist, and since there was very little room for artistic expression in the frigid iconoclastic air of the Protestant context we found ourselves in, Bonnie found life in the diligent pursuit of God through music: playing the guitar and writing songs that were really more like prayers than songs.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And just as I had to slog through Leviticus and the prophecy of Habakuk, getting very little immediate edification for my effort, Bonnie had to slog through music theory (“the circle of fifths,” I think, is what she called her tedium). Discipline and diligence are necessary if one is going to pursue God whether it is through prayer or reading or painting or music. The hidden things in our heart, the spiritual treasures of a relationship with God, do not reveal themselves to the lazy. St. Isaac names the two enemies that keep us from acquiring the spiritual treasure we seek. These are “tedium” and “despondency.” “Tedium” refers to what we might nowadays call the “boring” nature of what we are doing. Let’s face it, until you know something about the history of Israel and the spiritual interpretation of the Old Testament, most of the the Old Testament is just plain boring. But the only way to learn is to begin to read. You have to pass through the boredom to the life. The same thing is true with beginning a prayer rule or learning music theory or basic drawing and brush strokes. You have to be faithful through the tedium before you can start to enjoy the fruit of life in what you are doing.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Despondency” refers to my own downward spirals, my own inability to motivate myself, my own struggle with bad days or weeks or months. When I am despondent, I just cannot motivate myself to do what I need to do, nor even, sometimes, what I want to do. When I struggle with despondency, it seems like it takes a herculean effort for me just to get my bible open and to read the same few verses over and over again, as though my mind has been greased and every word slides right off. Or I have to force myself with all my might just to light the vigil lamp in my icon corner, open my prayer book and stand there just whimpering for a few minutes. In times like these when I struggle with despondency, a saying from my days of athletic training has helped me a great deal: “Something is always better than nothing.” To open my bible is itself a prayer. To read the same verses over and over again making no sense out of it: this too is prayer. To light a vigil lamp is a prayer. To stand before an icon and just whimper, that too is prayer. Something is always better than nothing. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Isaac advises us that when we find ourselves confronting either tedium or despondency, we need to call to mind why we are doing what we are doing. Why do I pray? Why do I read my bible? Why do I do any spiritual discipline that I do? I do it because I desire the hidden, spiritual realities. I desire to know God. St. Isaac tells us that we must allow this desire to generate expectation in us: expectation that God will come to my aid, expectation that soon something hidden will indeed be revealed to me; expectation that this simple act of being diligent and hanging in there will indeed bear fruit. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Jesus loved agricultural metaphors. He sure used a lot of them. A sower sows, farmer plants and the crop grows. The farmer labors in hope, in expectation. Even though there is nothing he can do to hurry the crop along, the farmer knows that if he keeps at it, eventually he will have more fruit than he will know what to do with it all. But he has to hang in there. There is a delay, as St. Isaac tells us, between the beginning of our efforts in spiritual growth, between our desire to enter into the hidden things of our heart, and the time when we do actually begin to enjoy the fruit of our labor, what St. Isaac calls the witness of true spiritual health. And the meat, you might say, that we have to sustain us during this long growing seasons, through the tedium of weeding and through the droughts of despondency, the food that will sustain us during these sometimes dry and sometimes boring times, this food is expectation, expectation that we will indeed, if we do not give up, come to see and know the hidden things of our hearts, the hidden things of God and His kingdom.</span></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-5022669225151273242015-03-04T12:47:00.000-08:002015-03-04T16:31:54.262-08:00Humility By Accident<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In homily 24, St. Isaac points out a fundamental law of discernment: </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“Everything that can be perceived by the senses, whether an action or a word, is a manifestation of something hidden within.” </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This principle of discernment is not given to us so that we can spy into the hearts of others by trying to surmise what is hidden in their hearts by scrutinizing their words and actions. No, if we apply this principle to others then it ceases to be about discernment, and is rather about judgement, something none of us are called to do. Of course, in certain contexts and in certain roles in the world (teacher, parent, police officer, judge, etc.) we may be called upon to make distinctions and decisions based on other people’s words and actions. Even in the Church—actually, very often in the Church—we must make such distinctions and decisions based on people’s words and actions, yet we are never called upon to speculate about what may or may not be hidden in the hearts of others motivating their action. Only God and perhaps the person him or herself knows what is hidden in the heart.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I say <i>perhaps</i> the person knows what is hidden in his or her heart, but more accurately I should say <i>seldom</i> does a person know what is hidden in his or her heart motivating their words and actions. To know one’s own heart, many have said, is to begin to know God for the heart is the meeting place, the door, or the temple where the person meets with God. And so, the purpose of St. Isaac’s instruction that every word and action proceed from the heart is to help each of us to examine our own words and actions and begin to discern and discover what is hidden in our own hearts. It isn’t the warm fuzzy or cold prickly feelings we have inside that faithfully reveal to us what is in our hearts; rather, it is what we actually do and say that reveals what is in our hearts—often regardless of how we feel.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, St. Isaac tells us, that some occurrences, that is some words and actions that proceed from us, are accidental. These do not come from the heart, unless they become continual or typical. These accidental words or actions, according to St. Isaac, do not necessarily come from our will or our free choice. Whether or not they are freely chosen and come from our will, thus revealing our heart, is shown primarily by the fact that they continue to occur. If they do not continue, then they are less likely to be from the heart.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For example, I might in a moment of tiredness or stress snap angrily at my grandchild. If I immediately repent and do not do it again, then we could say that it was an accidental occurrence, and St. Isaac says it is “only slightly taken into account.” This principle applies not only to bad behaviour, but also to good. If on a good day, someone catches me in a good mood and hits me up for a contribution to a good cause, I might give a hundred dollars. However, if this is not something I am continually doing, then St. Isaac says that it also is an accidental occurrence not really revealing anything in my heart. You might call this accidental generosity, but because it is not a continual action, not something I’m always doing, not something that characterizes me, this accidental generosity does not reveal a genuinely generous heart.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Why does this happen? Why is it that I can sometimes say some terribly mean things to the people I love the most. Things that are not in my heart, things I do not want to be true. And why is it that I can suddenly be so amazingly patient or self controlled or generous in a particular unusual situation, but then immediately return to my normally impatient, intemperate and selfish self as soon as things return to normal? St. Isaac would chalk this up to human changeability, or to use his word, variableness. That is, human beings are able to change, able to repent, either for better or for worse. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Thus, for as long as we live we need to watch ourselves carefully and never allow ourselves to pridefully boast in our mind that we have pretty much got things under control. In fact, St. Isaac tells us in homily 5 that </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“in each matter about which a man boasts himself, God permits that he change, so that he should be humbled, and learn humility. This is why you must surrender all things to God’s foreknowledge, and not believe that there is anything in this life unchanging.” </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">No matter how holy a person becomes, change for the worse is possible; similarly, no matter how sinful a person becomes, changes for the better is possible. However, with habit in either virtue or sin, change becomes more painful with time. This is why St. Isaac advises us, “While the transgression is still small and blossoming, pluck it up, before it spreads to cover the field.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Isaac points out that although these accidental occurrences are not necessarily intentional on our part, neither are they random. God and our guardian angel, he says, work providentially to “pilot” these accidental occurrences, whether good or bad, so that they serve one of four functions in our lives. These four functions are (1) as incentive, (2) as a trial, (3) for training, or (4) as a recompense. St. Isaac advises us—in fact more than advises, he says we are blessed—if we compare every occurrence, that is everything we do and say, with what is really in our heart; and if it proves to be an accidental occurrence, then we should seek out its cause or function and see in it the instructing, providential hand of God. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For example, I might stay up too late watching “just one more” episode of my favourite new series on Netflix, and the next day snap angrily at my wife, something I generally don’t do. Upon reflection I might realize that this accidental occurrence, this unusually bad behaviour on my part was a kind of recompense, a reaping of what I had sown. If I foolishly squander the time God gives me for rest, then I am more likely to change in bad ways: I am more likely to give myself permission to take my tiredness out on other people. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Or here’s another example. Once (and only once—you will soon see why) the bishop asked me to serve vespers at a large conference. I have served vespers at least once a week for about twenty years. I know vespers. And yet, despite all of this experience, in the opening declaration of the service, I said the wrong words, which I realized right away, but it was too late, they were already loudly proclaimed for the bishop and all one thousand plus attendees to hear. And then the service went down hill from there. I must have made a dozen Jayvee mistakes in that one vespers service, all of which I noticed immediately and some of which I had been focusing very hard on immediately beforehand not to commit. But I made the dumb mistake anyway. The bishop’s one comment to me afterward was, “you need to study liturgics,” as though I were a seminarian celebrating vespers for the first time. Here, my accidental occurrences, my liturgical mistakes, were along the line of trial. It was a large spoonful of humiliation, and I just needed to swallow it calmly and move on.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And then there are the good accidents. Most of what I know about counselling, for example, has come from good accidents. Somehow in God’s mercy, I say something or do something in counselling that works, that bears good fruit. When this happens, St. Isaac calls it incentive. When an accidental occurrence creates or leads to something good, then we are given an opportunity to repeat it and learn it and ingrain it in our heart. I know nothing about counselling technique. Nevertheless, through trial and error, or rather through the incentive God has providentially given me through accidental occurrences producing good fruit, I have learned that I counsel best when I allow my heart to be open to the person I am talking to, to listen with an open heart and to love intensely the person or people sitting in front of me right at that moment. What begins as accidentally good behaviour on our part can be repeated and can sink into our heart making our own the character that will regularly produce this good behaviour. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Isaac ends this homily by reminding us that the purpose of this changeability, these accidental occurrences, whether good or bad, is to teach us humility and self-reproach. When we know that we can always fail, in fact that we often fail even though others may not see it, then we can more easily humble ourselves before God and before our fellow human beings. St. Isaac reminds us that when we see ourselves as feeble and despicable (which, by the way, does not mean evil, it just means “to be looked down upon,” as Jesus taught us, to see others as higher than ourselves) when we see ourselves humbly, then we can know “that in very truth [we] walk on the path of God.”</span></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-38544445255513190892015-03-03T12:08:00.000-08:002015-03-04T09:32:30.682-08:00When Apples Are Sometimes Oranges<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7bKcGdmKyQbO8pN01lH-8WKQWYgS84qvQvkLDsZ60nim03f6qPwPHUYy4WC8XMOrfUQVOurJb6ZlxgWppQpYH1-4Ir96NjRkDlHtvaNw1P6l8YZZldm3VmllqdldW1aWSGffG/s1600/apple+orange.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7bKcGdmKyQbO8pN01lH-8WKQWYgS84qvQvkLDsZ60nim03f6qPwPHUYy4WC8XMOrfUQVOurJb6ZlxgWppQpYH1-4Ir96NjRkDlHtvaNw1P6l8YZZldm3VmllqdldW1aWSGffG/s1600/apple+orange.jpg" height="330" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One of my big confusions during the first few years of my journey as an Orthodox Christian was caused by an assumption I had that words used by different Orthodox spiritual writers would refer to the same thing. There may be a philosophical name for this way of thinking about words and reality (other than ignorance), but I don’t know what it is. It took me a few years and abundant consternation to finally figure out that, for example, the words soul, or prayer, or <i>nous</i> (sometimes translated intellect) did not necessarily have the same meaning when used by St. Paul, the Desert Fathers, St. Gregory of Palamas or St. Theophan the Recluse. In fact, even within the writings of one Holy Father, sometimes words take on slightly different meanings in one context than they have in another. Figuring this out the hard way cost me several years of headache wondering why apples sometimes looked more like oranges.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Isaac the Syrian addresses this problem directly in homily twenty-three as he tries to address some misunderstandings about the nature of “spiritual prayer.” For St. Isaac, “prayer” refers to an act of the human will (manifested in various forms, or what he calls “modes”) by which a person “give[s] his attention to God, and he yearns for and awaits mercy from Him.” The highest form of prayer for St. Isaac is what he calls “pure prayer,” that is, prayer without distraction—a state that St. Isaac points out is exceedingly rare, especially as a sustained experience. Spiritual prayer, for St. Isaac is a state beyond pure prayer that is no longer prayer. It is no longer prayer because the human will is no longer leading or making the prayer happen, but rather the Spirit now leads and the will and mind now just go along for the ride. St. Isaac cites St. Paul’s experience in 2 Corinthians 12, “whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know” as an example of this spiritual prayer.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But then St. Isaac anticipates a question: If spiritual prayer is not prayer, why is it still called prayer? St. Isaac begins by explaining that “The Fathers were wont to call every good motion of the spiritual activity by the name of prayer.” Prayer, for the Fathers, is a general term that can refer to any motion (that means thought or action) that points one to God or by which one draws near to God. This is why you will often hear holy people say that almost anything can be prayer, if it directs your attention to God. All sorts of activity, everything from a walk in the woods (even perhaps a walk around a golf course) to a midnight vigil, from the practice of inner silence to the building of houses for the needy, all of these in some ways and for some people can be called prayer, if indeed the motion (the thoughts and activities) direct one’s attention to God in a way that the person “yearns for [God] and awaits mercy from Him.” </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But then St. Isaac goes on to point out that what is sometimes called spiritual prayer is other times or by other people called <i>theoria,</i> or knowledge, or noetic vision. “Do you see,” St. Isaac says, “how the Fathers interchange appellations for spiritual things?” And why, you may ask do they do this. He goes on to explain: </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“For the exactitude of designations holds valid for things here, while there is no perfect or true name whatever for things of the age to come, but a simple [state of] knowing only, surpassing every appellation, every rudimentary element, form, colour, shape, and compound name.” </span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When it comes to things of this world, yes, we can define and label them. Type 316L stainless steel is, well, type 316L stainless steel. It is defined and the definition is agreed upon. It can be counted and measured and weighed so that when an engineer calls for type 316L stainless steel, the manufacturer knows exactly what she means. But spiritual realities are not “rudimentary elements.” They cannot be measured, weighed or counted. Spiritual realities are just known.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course this causes problems for those of us raised and educated in the world of Einstein and matrix coding, a world in which we have been taught to quantify even the most intimate aspects of our experience. It seems we have come to believe that nothing really exists if it cannot be defined and reduced to numbers that can be compared to other numbers. The world of the spiritual Father is so far from us. It seems absurd to us to take the word of a holy man or woman about a matter that we ourselves have not personally seen, tasted or touched, that at least someone has not counted, defined and numbered. It seems quite irresponsible, even foolish to us that we would take the word of a holy man or woman about a spiritual reality just because, well, just because they are holy and they themselves have known it. What make this even more difficult for us is the fact that the transfer of such knowledge is deeply personal. It cannot be objectified into words which, if transposed into a different context, will have the same meaning. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Holy people use different words to describe the same experience, words that will help the hearer, the specific one(s) that the holy person is speaking to. There is no attempt (because it would be impossible) to objectify the language. The goal is not analysis, but the goal is to help the hearer also enter the experience and him or herself to acquire the direct knowledge of the spiritual experience or reality that the holy person is speaking of. St. Isaac puts it this way:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">For this reason, once the soul’s knowledge is raised out of the visible world, the Fathers employ whatever appellations they please to indicate that [state of] knowing, since no one knows its name with exactness. But to make the soul’s deliberations steadfast therein, the Fathers resort to appellations and parables, according to Saint Dionysius, who writes, “we use parables, and syllables, and permissible names, and words, on account of our senses; but when our soul is moved by the operation of the Spirit toward those divine things, then both our senses and their operations are superfluous when the soul has become like unto the Godhead by an incomprehensible union, and is illuminated in her movements by the ray of the sublime Light.”</span></blockquote>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">What does he mean? He means that there are no right words, there are no definitions for this experience of knowing that which is “out of this visible world” because, as St. Isaac says, “no one knows its name with exactness.” Nevertheless, “on account of the senses,” that is, because the saints are still in the body and still have mouths and minds and a reasoning faculty, because of this and in order to help others and to help themselves “remain steadfast” in what their souls are deliberating or knowing or thinking about as and after they have been “raised out of this visible world,” because of this very experience of illumination in the “sublime Light” and the soul’s transformation into the likeness of the the Godhead, because this happens while the saints are still in the body, they find that they are compelled in some contexts to talk about it. Some things they cannot speak of, as St. Paul tells us, there are “inexpressible words that are unlawful for a human being to utter.” However, there are some aspects of their spiritual experience that they can and apparently are </span>compelled<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> to talk about.</span></span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, when they talk, they do not use words the way an engineer or scientist does. They use “parables and syllables,” that is, they use the tools of this visible world to try to point to the reality of the world unseen. It’s kind of like using a wrench to model and explain open heart surgery. It is clearly not the right tool, but if you grasp the intentions of your teacher and follow closely his or her motions and if you already have at least a little familiarity with the experience of surgery and the human anatomy, you might just learn something new. And whether the teacher is holding a wrench or a screwdriver in his hand as he does his demonstration really makes no difference whatsoever. The wrench is just a parable. \It stands in for a reality that for whatever reason cannot be exactly represented. And this is also how it is with words when one is reading or listening to holy men and women speak of spiritual realities. The goal is not to understand the exact meaning of the words. The goal is to experience, or at least begin to experience, the spiritual realities to which those words point.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So, the next time you are reading a holy Father and are baffled by his words, don’t fret yourself very much. The words point to realities that have, as St. Isaac says, “no perfect or true name.” Nevertheless, through prayer, inner quietness, and contemplation (which, by the way, may all refer to the same thing), through these and with longing and desire to know the realities to which our holy Fathers and Mothers point, it is possible (at least in some small ways) ourselves to have our souls “raised out of the visible world” and to be ourselves illuminated by a small ray of the divine Light.</span></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-16256042293419223302015-03-02T11:29:00.000-08:002015-03-03T10:35:37.079-08:00A Christ-like Response To ISIS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOiKMnpnVkMdCoAZSmPQpViYfUEMKAosCCLJN8iuMzrkDLuggeggSLzWy09zwKBRfsYkfQLk8SFLZKjELhsRCbn9ftyEf0Xq5AIfGmes9qNtJ_YLgzu_Mw5Bv_PVrtVNl9WhWJ/s1600/21+coptic+christians+martyred+Feb.+15th.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOiKMnpnVkMdCoAZSmPQpViYfUEMKAosCCLJN8iuMzrkDLuggeggSLzWy09zwKBRfsYkfQLk8SFLZKjELhsRCbn9ftyEf0Xq5AIfGmes9qNtJ_YLgzu_Mw5Bv_PVrtVNl9WhWJ/s1600/21+coptic+christians+martyred+Feb.+15th.jpg" height="278" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One cannot help being deeply troubled by the latest wave of persecution against Christians perpetrated by the ISIS movement. It is a terrible situation that demands from Christians everywhere some sort of response. To do nothing seems intolerable. We feel we must respond, but how? From many different quarters I am hearing and reading the thoughts of Christians about what the appropriate response should be to such brutality against our brothers and sisters. It seems just about everyone has an opinion. But to tell the truth, I do not yet have an opinion. I feel very upset, angry even, but my experience has taught me that when I feel upset and angry about something, that is specifically <i>not</i> the time to be deciding what to do about something. I have always regretted words I have spoken and decisions I have made when I was angry and upset.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When I am angry and upset I am blind to the obvious—or rather, what seems so obviously the right thing to do or say when I am angry and upset is almost always (actually, is always in my personal experience) not life-giving, helpful or in any way actually salvific. When I speak or act while anger is still bubbling inside me, when I haven’t been able to return to peace in myself, and I speak or act with this disturbance still churning inside me, I have always just made things worse. But isn’t this also what St. James tells us when he says “the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1: 20)? I have found, however, that writing about my thoughts, does often help me clarify things. So who knows, maybe by the time were done here today, I will have found an opinion I can get behind.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There are many possible Christian responses to ISIS. In fact, basically any way a Christian responds is a Christian response to ISIS. Some Christians are more sophisticated than others in providing a biblical or theological or historical defence for their response, but basically, how any Christian responds to ISIS is a Christian response to ISIS. So I think this category of “a Christian response” in many ways is not very helpful. A different category, a category that I am finding more helpful as I am trying to think about my response to these very disturbing matters is not, “what is a Christian response,” but “what is a Christ-like response?”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I think a good example of a Christ-like response to ISIS is the official response of the Coptic Church to the martyrdom of twenty-one Coptic Orthodox Christian men working Libya. These men were given the opportunity to convert to Islam, and having refused were decapitated for their faith in Christ. How has the Coptic Church responded? It immediately canonized these saints, giving them a day on the Coptic Christian calendar to be annually venerated. The Coptic Church glorified these men, setting them up as examples for all of the faithful. I think this is not only a Christian response to ISIS, it is a Christ-like Christian response.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another Christ-like Christian response to ISIS is found in the words of a brother of two of the men who were murdered for their faith. Here I will quote my source directly:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In an interview with Christian channel SAT-7 ARABIC on Wednesday, Beshir Kamel, brother of two of the Coptic martyrs, even thanked the Islamic State for including their declaration of faith in the videos before killing them.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“ISIS gave us more than we asked when they didn’t edit out the part where they declared their faith and called upon Jesus Christ. ISIS helped us strengthen our faith,” he said.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Beshir said that he was proud of his brothers Bishoy and Samuel, saying that their martyrdom was “a badge of honor to Christianity.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But even more than Beshir’s response, I think the response of Beshir’s mother is the most Christ-like Christian response I have encountered so far. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">When asked what his reaction would be if he saw an Islamic State militant, Kamel recalled his mother’s response.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">"My mother, an uneducated woman in her sixties, said she would ask [him] to enter her house and ask God to open his eyes because he was the reason her son entered the kingdom of heaven,” Beshir said.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Basher’s mother seems to me to be the most Christ-like in her response. Loving one’s enemies, doing good to those who despitefully use and persecuted you—these are the ways Jesus told us to respond to violence.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You might ask me then, based on what I have said so far, “Is there never a time when Christians should use violence to stop evil? Are you a pacifist?” No, I am not. I am not a pacifist. I do indeed think there are times when in our fallenness we can see no other appropriate way to respond to evil other than with violence. Sometimes, it seems, that violence is the least sinful way we can respond in a situation. However, if we feel we must use violence, then at least we should acknowledge that this is not the way Christ showed us. Christ, our pattern, our type, our guide, never killed any one. He rather let Himself be killed. It is true that once Christ did forcefully drive money-changers out of the Temple—causing a few bruises and minor lacerations perhaps, but not killing anyone. And Christ did once tell his disciples to acquire swords (Luke 22:36), but then he rebuked the disciple who used a sword (John 18:11). And so we have these two ambiguous instances in the Gospel that suggest that violence may sometimes be appropriate; but against these two we have Christ’s behaviour before Pontius Pilate and his words, “My kingdom is not of this world, otherwise my followers would fight” (John 18: 36), and then there is the whole content of Jesus’ moral teaching (“if someone strikes on one cheek, turn to him the other,” etc.).</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It seems that if we are going to look exclusively at what Jesus did and said as our example, then a pacifist certainly does match more closely the example of what Jesus did and said than does almost any Christian military response that I can think of through out history. But this should not surprise us, Christians have never been very good at following Christ. I certainly am not. But then what human being doesn't fall woefully short of his or her ideals? </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And of course, Christians don’t simply follow the example and teaching of Christ as it seems best to them. They follow the example and teaching of Christ as it has been interpreted for them through the Church, through the Apostles and their successors the Bishops. And this is a very good thing. Sure, sometimes I chaff at this, sometimes I wonder if all of this interpretive tradition is really a good idea. I wonder this especially when in my self-righteousness I think that my interpretation of what Jesus said and did is better than everyone else’s. (Ah, yes, the ultimate experience of self-righteous delusion: if everyone would just see things my way and do what I say, the world would be such a better place.) No, it is really a good idea that we have and respect the holy tradition we have been giving.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yet even in the Holy Orthodox Tradition, there is ambiguity. There are warrior saints, on the one hand; but on the other hand, most of these these same warriors lay down their arms and submit peacefully to martyrdom or leave military service altogether to spend the rest of their life in prayer. Yes, on the one hand the Church gives us prayers for weapons and prayers for soldiers about to go off to war, and then on the other hand, the Church imposes a severe penance on soldiers who have killed in battle (it’s a ten-year excommunication, I think). On the one hand, the Church teaches us to honour the emperor (an archetype of a military despot) and on the other hand, a priest is not allowed to carry a weapon and is laicized if he kills, even accidentally. And so within the tradition of the Holy Orthodox faith, we have a certain ambiguity about war and killing. Yes it is, at times, allowed; but no it is never good.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I wonder if the Church’s view of the use of military force couldn’t be perhaps likened to its view of divorce. The Church teaches that divorce is never good. In the Orthodox teaching, one man and one woman are married—joined by God—not only for life, not only “until death do you part” (as in the western wedding service); rather the Orthodox Church teaches that not even death breaks the marriage bond: “Whom God has joined together, let not man break asunder,” Jesus said. Nonetheless, the Church recognizes that in our sin and brokenness sometimes marriages fail, and sometimes people are not able to remain continent after the death of a spouse. And when that happens, after a season of healing and repentance, the Church does allow a second and even a third marriage. But this is a condescension to human weakness. This is not the teaching of the Church on marriage. The church never encourages divorce and remarriage even if it does recognize that it is sometimes the least sinful response to an already very broken situation. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And if I am not too far off the mark in comparing the Church’s blessing of the use of military force with it’s blessing of second marriages, then I think the Church must always lead with the message of peace, the message that military responses to violence—fighting fire with fire—is not how God would have us respond to violence. Martyrdom is preferable to violence. This, it seems to me, should be the message that the world hears from the Church in times of persecution, as we have indeed heard from the Coptic Church in its response to the twenty-one martyrs killed in Libya. If our political and military leaders, those of whom St. Paul said they “do not bear the sword in vain,” if these decide to respond to violence with violence, then I think the church reluctantly should bless even this. The Church should bless not as though saying that the Church advocates or encourages violence as a response to violence, but because the political and military leaders have made their decision, and the Church needs to bring its blessing even into very broken places.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Well, I have rambled on enough about this. I still do not know what is right. I pray daily for the peace of the whole world and still people are killing each other every day. I marry people all of the time, and still some get divorced. But in as much as I do not teach that divorce is an option for married couples (even though some will divorce), so also I think that as far as what the Church teaches in the face of violence, the Coptic Church has got it about right. We teach that martyrdom is the way to heaven, even if we know that many Christians would rather fight than accept martyrdom.</span>Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-87149563118505172622015-02-26T14:04:00.000-08:002015-02-26T18:08:02.535-08:00Giving Birth To Prayer<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now that we are well into Great Lent and have, I hope, pushed ourselves a little in fasting and prayer, it’s probably time to take stock of what is really happening. I imagine most of us are failing miserably. Even if we have managed to keep a strict diet, obeying to the best of our ability the outer guidelines of the fast and even if we have attended most of the extra services, still I’m pretty sure most of the people reading this are frustrated or disappointed with their actual performance on a spiritual level, that is, their actual ability to draw near to God in the Fast. And so, what I am about to say may seem pretty depressing, but stay with me, it gets encouraging toward the end.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">St. Isaac the Syrian, in his homily twenty-three, speaks of prayer, what prayer is, what pure prayer is and what is even beyond pure prayer. Most of what he says in this long homily has no application whatsoever to my life at this point, or to the life of anyone I know living in the world. He speaks of pure prayer leading to a state of being swallowed up by the Spirit so that one no longer prays but merely dwells “with awestruck wonder” “in that gladdening glory.” Most of us never dwell anywhere near such a place. Most of us consider ourselves immensely blessed if we can experience just a brief moment of pure prayer now and then, that is, prayer without distraction. As to what holy Saints experience beyond pure prayer, I just have to take St. Isaac’s word for it. I have never experienced it. When I pray, I certainly do not dwell in a place of awestruck wonder in gladdening glory.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But despite the fact that most of what St. Isaac says in this homily is way out of my league, one thing he says does indeed comfort me quite a bit. It comforts me in that he tells me that I am not unusual in my struggle to pray. It comforts me in that he lets me know that my experience of distracting thoughts and wandering mind in prayer is indeed the beginning of genuine prayer—in fact, it is itself genuine prayer. There are many ways to pray. We pray in Church, we pray at home. We pray chanting and reading, bowing and prostrating. We pray while reading spiritual books and with inarticulate sighs and cries. We pray with petitions and with praises and by reciting the mighty acts of God in history. All of these and more are ways of prayer. And all of these ways of prayer, according to St. Isaac, are controlled by the authority of our free will. We decide if we will pray and, often, how we will pray (although here it seems we have less freedom: we don’t so much pray however we like, as we pray however we can, however we are able). We pray because we want to pray—or better yet, because something in us wants to pray.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And here’s the rub. Something in us wants to pray, but much in us doesn’t. But that’s not even it. It is more a matter that so much is running around in our mind unattached and uncontrolled, random and scattered. We don’t even know where it all comes from. When we want to pray, we must create a bit of quiet in ourselves and into this quiet floods all of the things I had forgotten to remember; random and petty thoughts, judgements, accusations; memories I hadn’t thought about for years; and a seeming limitless supply of filth, anger, resentment and envy. It all shows up when I start to pray. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And so, St. Isaac says, prayer is a matter of the free will. It is something one has to choose, and having chosen to pray, one must continue to choose to pray all throughout the prayer. Prayer is a choice one makes and keeps making; and for this reason, St. Isaac says, “there is a struggle in prayer.” This struggle in prayer, or this struggle to pray when you’re saying prayers, is, according to St. Isaac, the norm. In fact, one of the elders that St. Isaac himself consulted on this matter told him (back in homily twenty-one), “Reckon every prayer, wherein the body does not toil and the heart is not afflicted, to be a miscarriage, for it has no soul.” </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is, I know, sort of back-handed encouragement, but it does encourage me. By this elder’s standard, my prayer has lots of soul. My feet and back and sometimes my head often ache in prayer. My heart is often afflicted by its struggle with distracting and impure thoughts in prayer. In fact I sometimes wonder if I have wasted my time, if I have just done nothing for an hour while others were doing the actual praying. Or if my little prayer rule at home was just a joke because nothing seemed to happen—nothing more than me spending the whole time trying to pull my mind back into the prayers I am saying with my mouth. I wonder, “Is this really prayer?” </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Well according to St. Isaac, it is really prayer. In fact, according to one of St. Isaac’s spiritual fathers, this very struggle means that the prayer is alive, that it has a soul. <i>That</i> very struggle is the pain of childbirth—of prayer-birth. We give birth to prayer. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is, St. Isaac tells us, prayer beyond struggle. He calls this pure prayer, prayer that does not wander, where no foreign thought enters. But St. Isaac also tells us that this pure prayer is the regular experience of only one in thousands (not one in a thousand, but one in thousands). The point he seems to make is that only through regular and disciplined struggle to pray as an act of the free will is one able eventually to train one’s thoughts in obedience and as a gift of Grace (for all progress in the spiritual life is a gift of Grace) one is able to be at one with his or her prayers. That is, one is able to attain pure prayer. But this is not the common experience of prayer. Far from it. Most of us experience prayer as struggle, as something we must choose and continue to choose.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That only one in thousands attain this state of pure prayer, according to St. Isaac, is to me quite an encouragement. I have never been a one in thousands kind of guy. I don’t win contests (unless it is a free weekend in Las Vegas—I keep seeming to win those without even entering the contest). No, I’m no headliner. I’m always striving just to work my way up to the middle of the pack. And so for me to know that struggle in prayer is normal, that it is indeed prayer itself as I will mostly experience it, <i>that</i> for me is encouraging. Something isn’t wrong with me. It’s not “supposed to be” different. It’s supposed to be labour, like giving birth. My will is fighting to pray, my will is fighting to pray and this very fight according to St. Isaac is prayer. Yes! Man, I sure pray a lot, because prayer is never easy for me.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But having said this, I want to be quick to add that even though prayer is mostly struggle, it is not and should not always a terrible struggle. In fact, if prayer is always a terrible struggle for you, you probably need to talk to your spiritual father or mother or someone whom you think might help you because you might just need to try some different ways to pray. There are means of prayer, what St. Isaac calls “modes” of prayer that work better for some people than they do for others. My wife is an iconographer. She paints as prayer. I paint as torment. What works amazingly well for one person, can be nothing but torment for another. Some people find Life by chanting alone in the middle of the night, others pray better in a choir at church. Some pray akathists hymns, others find it works better just to say the Jesus Prayer. And then there are physical prayers such as prostrations and manual labour for the needy (including, by the way, vacuuming, washing dishes and fixing the plumbing at the Church). Some find Life in reading spiritual books, others journal as prayer. We each probably need to try lots of different modes of prayer until we find ways of praying that actually help us pray. The Church is a storehouse full of various modes of prayer. Don’t give up on prayer just because you can’t stay awake during the all-night vigil. There are lots of ways to pray. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And one more thing. There is such a thing as sweetness in prayer, which is not the same as pure prayer, for the experience of sweetness in prayer occurs in the midst of our struggle to pray. Sweetness in prayer, according to St. Isaac, is that experience when a particular verse or phrase or idea stays with you and evokes a small amount of joy or wonder that captivates you for a moment in prayer. You repeat the phrase, you stay on the thought, you read or repeat the line over and over again as though you were sucking the juice out of it. As though suddenly you have come across a sweet, plump raisin in a bowl of really dry granola. And when we have these experiences of sweetness in prayer, St. Isaac tells us that we should stop praying, or stop our outer activity of prayer and dwell for as long as we can on that sweet word or thought that has been given us, for here we have been given a gift from the One we are petitioning in prayer. Now is the time merely to receive the gift, asking is no longer necessary, the words of our prayer can, for a moment, be set aside. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, soon the thoughts start to wander again. Soon my hyperactive mind is in analysis mode, trying to figure out how I can apply or interpret or explain to someone else the little treasure that was given me. And so the sweetness slips away, and I must return to the work of my prayer, my reading or whatever it was I was doing. I return to the discipline, to the exercise of my will to focus my thoughts, to pay attention, to turn away from all of the thoughts that suddenly seem so very important. I return to birth giving, to the labour of giving birth to prayer.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; min-height: 13px;">
<br /></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-10838678843368876882015-02-23T12:18:00.002-08:002015-02-23T12:25:29.162-08:00None Of Us Can Do Everything<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSaC7NQXtnEY0wlCmJgjkLeuMT6pLC5yM1BfmDRx4yG9GcPZt1RzGeCBRCW9fuC6cLtDhsSJND9MoONaFA70fYJITreT_zgs8Wd-MFeuR-5pvgryJWWyN0DxEsME1GjGHb9Zx5/s1600/hermit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSaC7NQXtnEY0wlCmJgjkLeuMT6pLC5yM1BfmDRx4yG9GcPZt1RzGeCBRCW9fuC6cLtDhsSJND9MoONaFA70fYJITreT_zgs8Wd-MFeuR-5pvgryJWWyN0DxEsME1GjGHb9Zx5/s1600/hermit.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In chapter 21 of the homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian, the Saint gives some useful, but what may seem at first to be controversial, advice. St. Isaac presents this advice in the context of a conversation between a younger hermit and an older, more experienced one. The younger hermit asks the older one what he should do: </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“Many times I obtain a thing I have need of because of illness, or because of my work, or for some other reason, and without this I cannot remain in my discipline of stillness, but when I see that someone has need of this object, I am overcome by mercy and I give it to him. Often it also occurs that being asked by someone, I give away that which I need, for I am constrained by love and by the commandment to do so. Afterward, however, my need of the object causes me to fall into cares and turbulent thoughts, and thus my mind is distracted from solicitude for stillness. Often I am obliged to depart from my solitude and to go in search of that thing. But if I preserve and do not go out, I suffer much affliction and turmoil in my thoughts. I do not know which of the two alternatives I should choose: to interrupt and disperse my stillness for my brother’s sake, or to disregard his request and continue in stillness.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The problem that this young hermit presents is a common problem. Although very few of us are called to the life of a hermit, all of us are called to live faithfully whatever way of life God has given us for our salvation. That is, each of us has a way of following Christ that is appropriate to his or her own calling, gifts, and situation in life. Obviously, for example, a father of children is not called to a life of stillness, for he has to work to support his family (although, that doesn’t mean that he can’t learn to practice inner stillness to some small extent within the parameters of his lived reality. It’s just that he can’t give himself to it undividedly, for his calling as husband and father places other responsibilities on him). The calling of a father and a hermit are very different, but the problem that the young hermit describes is still the same problem that a father or any faithful follower of Christ encounters. That is, how does one faithfully follow all of the commands of Christ? </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Here’s the problem: When I strive faithfully to fulfill one of Christ’s commands, I often find that in fulfilling that one command, I of necessity cannot fulfill other of Christ’s commands. In the case of the hermit, his calling is to fulfil the command “to abide in Christ” and “ to pray without ceasing.” But by giving away what he needs to continue in stillness to anyone who asks of him (which is also a command of the Gospel), he finds that he cannot preserve in the inner stillness necessary to abide only in Christ and pray without ceasing. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The older monk’s reply may seem shocking to us, but if you think about it, it makes sense. Here is the older monk’s reply: (italics are mine for the sake of clarity and emphasis)</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“May <i>that</i> righteousness perish, and every form of mercy, love, compassion or whatever is <i>thought to be</i> for God’s sake, which hinders you from the practice of stillness; which fixes your eye upon the world; draws you into cares; shakes you from the memory of God; arrests your prayers; brings your thoughts to a state of turbulence and unrest; stops you from study of the divine readings (which is a weapon that rescues a man from wandering thoughts); disperses your watchfulness; causes you to walk about freely, though formerly you were bound, and to associate with men, though formerly you lived in solitude; awakens in you the mortified passions; abolishes the abstinence of your senses; resurrects your corpse which was dead to the world; causes you to fall from the angelic husbandry, whose labour has but one concern; and places you in the portion of men who live in the world.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You see what the older hermit is saying to the younger hermit is that in order for him to fulfill his calling in Christ, he has to limit or be very careful which commands of Christ he attempts to fulfill and how he tries to do so. If the hermit ceases to be what God has called him to be, then the commandment that <i>he thought</i> he was fulfilling, he was not. Or to put it another way, we cannot all do everything. Let me repeat: we cannot all do everything. The older hermit goes on to explain later that people who live and work in the world have a responsibility to care for others in the world: He says, “For the fulfilling of the duty of love with respect to providing for physical well-being is the work of men in the world.” We each have our place, we each have our calling in this life, we each have our bit to do, but none us can do everything.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But even in caring for the needs of those in the world, we all have limitations: limitations in our abilities and limitations caused by our weaknesses. When I was a young married man, I was very zealous to be an evangelist. I was constantly, and I’m afraid often annoyingly, on the look out for anyone who would listen to me present to them the Gospel (or at least the Gospel as I was taught to understand it at that point in my life). However, I soon realized that in sharing the Gospel with certain attractive young women, I often found my mind wandering down paths of unfaithfulness, paths I didn’t want to go down (either in my mind or in any other way). This problem became so disturbing for me, that it developed into a crisis for my inner life: “what if they never hear the Gospel”, the thought would occur to me. “Will they go to hell because I cannot control my libido?” At that time, my theology was not clear enough to challenge such a thought, so in my own mind I was stuck—like the young hermit—in choosing between, on the one hand, sharing the Gospel with attractive young women while I struggled with inappropriate thoughts, or, on the other hand, keeping relative peace in my mind by not sharing the Gospel with women whom I found attractive and trusting God that He was able to bring someone else along (probably another women) to share the Gospel with that person whom, I, in my weakness, could not. I was beginning to realize that, sometimes, attempting to obey one command of Christ opened the door to disobeying others.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And still now, even though I am at a different place in life and have different struggles and different conundrums, still there is so much that I just can’t do. There are so many commands of Christ that I cannot try too hard to fulfill without at the same time ceasing to fulfill others. I am weak. I am limited. I thank God that there are holy fathers and mothers who preserve in stillness and prayer, even if in doing so they are not able to care for the temporal needs of the poor and sick and suffering of the world. The Church is a body. We each provide for what is lacking in the other. The hermits preserve in stillness and pray in ways I cannot, yet I benefit from their prayer. In a very real sense, their prayers <i>are</i> my prayers. Similarly, acts of love and mercy that I may be able to perform in my station, in my calling in life, these acts of love and mercy belong not to me, but to the whole Church, the whole body of Christ. Your works and words of love and encouragement, your prayer and fasting, your gifts and sacrifices, these are not yours alone, they are ours, all of ours, for we each give and serve and love as we are able and where we are as parts of the one Body, which is Christ’s Body, the Church.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You know, what got me to thinking about this today is a conversation I had earlier with a friend about what is important to emphasize in Great Lent. It is easy, I find, to put a lot of emphasis on the external works and particularly Orthodox aspects of keeping Great Lent. It is easy to develop the misguided thought that what God rewards is how strictly we keep Great Lent, how Orthodox we are (that is, how well we follow the particularly Orthodox injunctions and prescriptions of Lent). However, when we think this way, we have fallen into the trap of mistaking the means for the end, of mistaking the road for the destination. The goal of Great Lent is not to fast well, but to become more like Jesus. The goal of Great Lent is not to attend more services, but to become more like Jesus. The fasting and the prayer services will help, they are part of the means, of the way; but they are not the goal. Furthermore, how helpful each person will find the particular practices the Church enjoins on us and the particular opportunities to pray that the Church offers us during the Great Fast will differ according to the strength of each, the calling of each and the circumstances of life of each of us.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And just as the young hermit learned, so we too must learn: No one of us can do everything. How each of us becomes more like Christ will be slightly different. Some of us will excel in prayers, some of us in fasting. Some of us will excel in chanting and public prayer, some of will excel in the prayer of stillness. Some of us will excel in love expressed in concrete actions, some of us will excel in words of encouragement. But all of us will do whatever it is we do within the Church, within the One Body of Christ. Or to use St. Paul’s metaphor, one of us will look more like Christ as he or she looks more like a foot, while another will look more like Christ as he or she looks more like a hand. But whether hand or foot, or mouth or ear, it is only together that we make the Body of Christ.</span></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139233.post-80337116044469846372015-02-19T17:02:00.000-08:002015-02-19T20:34:29.386-08:00Where's The Love?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifvh4XgZJuHdtbH6Cu3LT9f9H3M3Wm96d3vpTxofgJ8hU4uMHeFpJhRteoKEUj8Z_-AyfwZ2r55KiaAFkV3hOFf3aXE6YncpUj-7JHwkW6IBh0jwUjQua01WMbM5Fn9XeZS755/s1600/Abbess+Thaisia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifvh4XgZJuHdtbH6Cu3LT9f9H3M3Wm96d3vpTxofgJ8hU4uMHeFpJhRteoKEUj8Z_-AyfwZ2r55KiaAFkV3hOFf3aXE6YncpUj-7JHwkW6IBh0jwUjQua01WMbM5Fn9XeZS755/s1600/Abbess+Thaisia.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
In a recent post on the struggles of <a href="http://holynativity.blogspot.ca/2014/11/a-charismatic-learns-to-take-up-her.html"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(4, 46, 238); color: #551a8b;">Abbess Thaisia</span></a> I wrote of a young nun's struggle to find peace in her calling when there seemed to be no love in those around her. The following comment was left on that post, and I would like to respond to it now. Here's the comment:</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 16px; min-height: 19px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 24px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am struggling with much of the same issue in your excerpt posted from Thaisia in regards to discouragement with those in church leadership and a lack of love by those in the church. My thoughts often drift to the same place as her's... If no sincere love is seen and experienced, then there must not be any salvation. Perhaps in the future you might speak to this point, as I know many of the younger generation feel similarly.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 24px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Anonymous</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
Well Dear Anonymous, I think this is a pretty common experience. Anyone who has spent more than a little time in the Orthodox Church (or, for this matter, in any group calling itself church) quickly notices that the saints are in the minority, a very small minority, and that those who seem to be desiring to live a Christ-like life—while they may be found here and there—seem to keep themselves well hidden. In fact, sometimes it seems as though the nonreligious people in our life are more compassionate, more like Christ, than many of the religious people we know. This is a common experience.</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
To understand what's going on, I think we have to keep several things in mind. First, we have to keep in mind that this is very much how Jesus experienced the religious world into which he was born and raised. The religious leaders of Jesus' day were largely corrupted, selfish and lacking in basic compassion. Jesus constantly refers to them as vipers and hypocrites. But not all of religious leaders of His day were that way. There is the Lawyer to whom Jesus says, "You are not far from the Kingdom of Heaven" (Mark 12:34). Jesus also meets secretly with Nicodemos, "a ruler of the Jews" and explains His mission to him ("Light has come into the world, but men prefer darkness rather than Light... John 3). This same Nicodemos tries to defend Jesus before the other Pharisees (John 7:50) and in the end joins Joseph of Arimathea (a rich and "prominent council member," Mark 15: 43 and John 19: 38-42) in enabling and burying Jesus' Body. It says of Joseph that he is a secret follower of Christ "for fear of the Jews," yet he nonetheless boldly asks Pontius Pilate for Jesus's body.</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
Furthermore, that same religious world that, on the one hand, seems so corrupted, was the same religious world that produced Jesus' Mother, Mary, the holiest of women, and her parents Sts. Joacim and Anna. That apparently broken religious world also produced John the Baptist, his holy parents, Sts. Zachariah and Elizabeth. It was the religious world that also produced the twelve Apostles (one of whom was a traitor) and the seventy lesser Apostles. Clearly, despite the abundance of (both truly and apparently) unloving, corrupt leaders in Jesus' day, God was still able to produce from that religious world a lot of very holy people. And this is, by the way, exactly what Abbess Thaisia found out. In fact, it may indeed be that part of our growth in Christ must take place in such a context of seeming abandonment: abandonment by every human authority who should love and help and encourage us, abandonment that forces us to find strength in God alone, abandonment that teaches to love and forgive even those who seem to have no love and no forgiveness.</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
Some other things to keep in mind when we are confused and despondent about the lack of love in the Church are the parables Jesus told about what the Kingdom of Heaven would actually be like. For example, Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who sows good seed in his field, but at night an enemy comes and sows tares (weeds that look somewhat like wheat, but have no edible grain. Matt. 13:24 ff). This is what Jesus said the Church would look like: the real and the false growing side by side. </div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And of course we are all so like the servants in the parable. We want to rush out and separate. We want to determine who the real Christians are and who the impostors are. We want to make the determination. But the master in the parable says no. Ours is not to determine, to separate. Ours is to just let it be. God, we are told, will send His reapers, the angels, who will gather the wheat into barns and the tares into destruction. Whenever we try to separate, whenever we try ourselves to determine who the false Christians are, we end up making a huge mess of it and uprooting and trampling on the very precious wheat. Ours is not to determine the genuineness of the faith of others, ours is to discern the genuineness of our own faith. Am I being saved? Am I loving even those who are hard to love? Am I forgiving others as I want God to forgive me?</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
A final thing I encourage people to keep in mind when they are confused and discouraged by the apparent lack of love and lack of Christ-like virtue they seem to see in those who lead the Church is that what we see with our eyes is generally only a very small part of what is actually happening. This is particularly true when it comes to leaders in any institutional setting (and the Church is an institution—a God bearing institution, but an institution nonetheless). Those who lead both see much more than we see and at the same time see much less. What I mean is that even when we assume the best intentions, leaders are forced to look at the bigger picture and make decisions based on what seems to them to be best for the whole. And at the same time, because they are looking at the big picture, often leaders do not see or appreciate the pain of specific people and specific situations. The leaders themselves often do not realize the pain they are causing in specific situations in their desire to do what is best for the corporate good. It's a matter of basic human weakness. None of us sees everything. None of us knows everything. Even assuming the best intentions, none of us sees or knows clearly enough to encourage any good without at the same time unintentionally causing pain or misunderstanding somewhere. That's just the nature things in our fallen world.</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
I was at a seminar for priests recently. And as is usual, in the evenings we would gather in small groups in one another's rooms, drink a little (or a little too much) wine and talk about what's troubling us in our churches. One young and zealous priest was complaining about the apathy and lack of piety among his parishioners when an older priest told him the following story. There was an older woman in his parish who never seemed to keep the Church's fasts. She would bring food with "only a little bit of beacon" in it to coffee hour during lent. Her breath often smelled of coffee when she was receiving communion on Sunday mornings. This bothered the father greatly until one day he determined that it was his duty to teach this woman the importance of fasting. Then one Sunday, he seized the opportunity and drew the woman aside and said to her, Nellie (I think that was her name), we need to talk about the importance of fasting. Nellie's response shocked him.</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 16px; min-height: 19px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
Nellie said, "Father, I have always been confused by the Church's rules on fasting. I never knew what was allowed on which days. It was all so very confusing to me. So, as a young woman I made a determination: Since I didn't know which days to fast on or what to fast from on those days, I decided to fast completely, drinking nothing but water, for the first three days of every month. And so that is what I have been doing for the past thirty years. What was it, Father, that you wanted to tell me about fasting?"</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
The Father could say nothing. He, in his ignorance, had judged a pious woman harshly.</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
You see, we never know enough about a person or about a situation to judge fairly. Often what seems to us to be unloving, harsh or unChrist-like behaviour may indeed be the most loving, kind, and Christ-like behaviour possible, if we knew the whole story. Of course life is never just all one thing or all another. We are seldom completely Christ-like in anything we do. When I have a headache, my wife often asked me if I am mad at her. Trying my best to be loving, in my weakness my best attempts at kindness sometimes sound to her like anger. And then there is just plain carelessness. How many times have I been offended, not by what someone has said to me, but by the <i>way</i> he or she has said it to me or by the timing or by the context? Sure, they could have said it in a better way, or at a better time or in a better place, but then again, who is perfect except God?</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
But this then brings us back to Abbess Thaisia and how God uses broken people in this broken system in this broken world to save our souls. Jesus came to show us the way to heaven, the way of salvation. And the way that Jesus showed us was the way of Resurrection through the Cross. We must all die with Christ so that we can be raised with Him. And what does this death look like? Abbess Thaisia tells us that the death is a death of our will, a death of our expectation of how things <i>should</i> be, a death of our plan, our agenda, our way. It is often a death like the death of Jesus, a death that comes through the failures and weaknesses of religious leaders, that comes to us through the intentional and unintentional blows of those who should have loved and protected us. It's a miserable death, a painful death; it is a real death. It is a real death followed by a even more real resurrection. </div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px;">
This is the Christian way, the way of the ascetics, the way of the saints, the way of everyone who would take up their cross and follow Christ.</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 24px; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
Fr. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16981965403145920704noreply@blogger.com0