Sunday 5 April 2020

Twice Was Enough


Today on this Fifth Sunday of Great Lent we commemorate Saint Mary of Egypt, "the humble Mary," who suffered greatly for the Lord in the Judean desert across the Jordan River.

Few of us will ever be called to suffer as she did: 
  • burning heat by day and shivering cold by night; 
  • clawing for roots until her nails bled and her fingers were raw; 
  • complete isolation from others and physical distancing to such an extent that she fled from anyone she saw, even at a distance; and 
  • finally achieving theosis through her suffering in this life, dying a holy death, and gaining Paradise.
And her nourishment for all of this was the spiritual food of the Mystical Supper, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ which she received twice – one at the beginning of her forty-seven year voluntary isolation in the desert across the Jordan, and once more at the beginning of her eternal dwelling in the Garden of Paradise. Twice. And twice was enough.

Most of us cannot count the number of times we have received the Holy Mysteries, but almost all of us can remember the last time we received these precious Gifts. For my wife and I it was on Sunday, March 15th, the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas (Lent II) when most of us remember St. Gregory’s teaching that while God is unknowable in His Essence, he is knowable and can be experienced in His Energies. We do not have to be content with merely knowing about Christ our true God. We can know and experience Him directly.  None of us can truly say that we understand the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, but we can all on a daily basis participate in that ineffable and incomprehensible Mystery.

For me – for us – if we believe what we profess, then the last time we received Holy Communion is and will be enough to nourish us through our journey of isolation and physical distancing. For Saint Mary of Egypt twice was enough.  For us the last time is enough.

Monday 16 March 2020

Conquering Fearfulness

Just over three months ago I was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer which had metasticized to my bones – a cancer which is treatable but incurable. Eventually this cancer will kill me.

One of the decisions which has been most difficult to follow through with was the decision not to live in fear. Almost every day I have felt fear, even dread at times, but for the most part I have been able to fight it off. I know the best case scenario for this cancer and following Chemotherapy it looks like that's the road we're on. But I also know the worst case scenarios (yes, there's more than one), and the hardest thing about every scenario – best or worst - is that they are all beyond my control. Living without fear has meant giving up the illusion that I'm in control of my life.
Sure, there are details over which I have control. Like eating when I have no appetite, or exercising when I feel like a couch potato. Being allowed to drive now that most of my “brain fog” has dissipated gives me another modicom of control. But being in control is ultimately illusion – “Vanity, all is vanity, says the Preacher.”
One of the hardest things for me about this Co-vid19 crisis is that it feeds the fear I don't want controlling my life. Because of my cancer (not to mention my age) I am at high risk. Co-vid19 has become another “worst case scenario” for me. The climate of fear and fearfulness sometimes gets to me.
Though I am at risk, I refuse to live in fear. I also refuse to be foolish shout it. My dear wife and I are pretty much self-isolating ourselves for the duration – trying to find the balance point between being foolish and being consumed with fear.
And there is a balance point. For me that still point is the knowledge that God loves me and that His will for me transcends best and worst case scenarios – His will is for my salvation and the salvation of those whose lives touch mine. This divine reality is how my fears are conquered. This is the prize upon which I set my gaze and toward which I strive.
I encourage you to find that still balance point in your life as we all live in this crisis.
Glory to God for all things!

Saturday 4 May 2013

Weariness in Holy Week



I am weary as the end comes to this Holy Week. Someone posted on Facebook at the beginning of this Week that there are something like thirty hours of Services between Lazarus Saturday and Pascha. Yes, I am weary. I am supposed to be. We are all supposed to be. Watching and waiting, as the Disciples found in the Garden, is wearying work. Being in the Upper Room between the Crucifixion and Resurrection is wearying. Participating in Great Lent with its ascetical disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving (not to mention at least three Lenten Services each week) for forty days and then going through an Orthodox Holy Week - if we actually attend most of the Services – is wearying. It is painful work. It is difficult work. But it is important work – work which is a necessary part of our salvation. 

Part of my own personal weariness as priest and pastor has to do with people’s participation – or lack of participation – in the Lenten and Holy week Services. This year’s attendance was the lowest in our little Mission's history. And so I suffer what to most of my brothers in the Holy Priesthood will be familiar: priestly weariness.  This is not to blame the Faithful. Each of us – lay and clergy – has to struggle with our own levels of commitment and participation. And we who have been called to the Altar also have to struggle with how we react to how others engage with their own struggle. It is tiring – not because it must be, but because of my own weaknesses. This weariness, too, is a necessary part of my salvation, being disappointed by others (my problem, not theirs) and learning – again – that everything I do I am called to do first and foremost for the Lord, in the presence of His angels and saints.

The Temple is set up for the Paschal Liturgy tonight. Most of this was done late this morning after serving the Vesperal Divine Liturgy of St. Basil for Holy Saturday – the celebration of Christ’s victorious descent to the dead and the annihilation of Death and Hell. A little of the set-up for tonight I did this afternoon. It looks beautiful, but it’s not Pascha yet. It will be, however, because Christ – the Destroyer of Death – is in our midst.

Many of us are tired – perhaps even most of us. And we’re tired of being tired. It seems to be almost the normal thing these days to be too busy to rest. Our calendars are full to over-flowing, pressed down squeezed in. But with what are they full? Are the things that occupy our non-working and non-sleeping hours things that contribute to our salvation and the salvation of those around us, or are they the things that our world – a world which is passing away – tells us that we must do in order to be successful, or good parents, or good neighbours? When I think of some of the things that I hear keep people from Church Services – especially weekday Church Services – I wonder where our values are. (And just a note: as I say this I am thinking of many more people than just the few Faithful ones in my own parish community).

We are tired. But are we tired enough of the emptiness of our full to overflowing lives to do something about it? Perhaps what we lack is a vision that proclaims that there is another way – the radical way of Christ Jesus which was once known as “The Way”. Perhaps part of our weariness is a dearth of models for the fullness of the Orthodox Christian life, the absence of which leaves us with few alternatives to the busy but empty lives we are living. And lacking models of another way, we persist in our weariness.

Let us pray this Paschal Season for living models to counter the emptiness of our lives. Let us pray for vocations to monasticism here in North America, for lively committed Parishes which are not afraid to be counter-cultural and stand against the tides of evil that permeate our society. And let us pray that we who are enlivened by Christ’s Resurrection may ourselves become such models.

Glory to God for all things.







Friday 2 November 2012

A Little Piece of Heaven



Everyone needs some place – at least one place – that can serve them as a little piece of heaven. 

For me that place is a little 6’ x 8’ part of my study which is my prayer corner, although to be honest, it’s actually morel like a tiny Orthodox Temple. It’s a place where I can weep for my sins and rejoice in the gift of salvation which has been given, is being given and finally on the Last Day will be received. That fact that I use these words to describe the gift of salvation – been given (past tense), being given (present tense), and will be received (future tense) is not in any way to posit any weakness in God’s salvation. No, the weakness is in me.

I am unable to receive the fullness of the Gift of Salvation given in the Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ my true God. I am not – not yet – strong enough, whole enough to receive it and contain it, for it is all of heaven: union with Christ Himself.  I remember hearing someone once remark, “We mortal men and women are like sieves: we leak!”    God pours forth His grace, it sometimes it just flows right through me – seeming to make no difference at all. Of course It does make a difference. It always does. But I am too weak, to small-minded to perceive It, let alone fully receive It.

And so I need a little piece of heaven to enlarge my mind and heart. It doesn’t have to be immense or cathedral-like, just a little piece of heaven. And in that little piece, surrounded by the saints and myriads of angels, heaven gets a little piece of me. That’s how it seems most often to work. A little piece at a time, the tiniest amount at times. And even when I think I am giving an immensity of self, in those moments of prideful fantasy I likely give over even less.

And this little piece of heaven which I call my Prayer Corner – even this is more than I need although I love it. You see, I cannot take this with me when I leave my home, when I go shopping, when I go to classes. But even then, when I leave behind this little piece of heaven in my study I have a little piece of heaven with me. So that as I hold onto this little piece of heaven, Heaven Himself – our Master Christ – holds on to me.



Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.


Tuesday 23 October 2012

Divine Love

 
Divine LOVE given freely to a soul that does not desire it (for whatever reason) burns like fire and is torment. 

Divine LOVE given freely to a soul that desires it wholeheartedly brings illumination. 

To desire this Divine LOVE wholeheartedly is a definition of true REPENTANCE.


As for the idea of Divine punishment being “appointed” by God, it is not as if God has spend eternity ruminating on our rebelliousness and finally came up with something with which He could punish and afflict people because they turned away from Him. The 5th Ode of the Canon of Repentance, noting our slavery to the passions to which we submit, ends each Troparia with the refrain: “O MY SINFUL SOUL, IS THIS WHAT THOU HAST DESIRED?” God simply allows us to have what we, in our indolence and submission to the passions, have desired.

Friday 5 October 2012

Discerning the Will of God



What does it mean to follow God's will? Does it mean that God has a plan for our lives and that if we're not in the right place we've somehow left the will of God? These are important questions and many people struggle with them.
I suspect that God's will for each and every one of us is not very much like a holiday plan or itinerary in which each detail has been planned and in which any deviation means that we've departed from the plan and are in trouble.

No, God’s will for us – His plan for our lives – is simply that you and I achieve salvation, which is union with Christ – theosis.

The details of our lives are not “planned out in advance” as if choosing something else means we've left God behind, or so that we have to repent if we choose something else. Such makes a mockery of God (as if we could ever go somewhere in which He is absent) and His gift to us of free will. The details of our lives are what we as free beings freely choose, and what others in their free-will choose for themselves and for us, for we are all inter-connected, and just as our decisions take us places and often drag others along with us, so do the choices and decisions of others. God’s will for us – His desire and plan for our lives – is that we find Him in all of these various and often unpredictable details of life, and that finding Him we return to Him if necessary and cleave to Him, .

The point about living in the will of God – living according to His plan – is not that we are constantly second-guessing our decisions to do this or do that, or the manner in which we have ended up doing this or that, for not everything is in our control, but that in every moment we seek union with God, and ask not “Is this what God had planned for me?” but rather, “Where is God in this, and how can I draw closer to Him in this and through this?”

Only this way can we truly say, "Glory to God for all things!"

Thursday 30 August 2012

New Beginnings - Again

I have been away from this for far too long. My sincere apologies to any who have tried to follow this blog.
Today I returned to school after a thirty year hiatus, and part of my "new beginnings" will be to post more regularly on this site - and also to do a bit of reflective writing about the experience of being a "mature" student. For this purpose I have started a new blog: http://amongothersagain.blogspot.ca/