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 15^th, 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!"

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/

O Human Flesh Most Noble

Published in yesterday's issue of our local weekly newspaper, The Fort Saskatchewan Record

 

Forty days after the Sunday of the Resurrection – known as Pascha in the Christian East, and Easter in the West – Christians celebrate the Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ. All four Evangelists refer to it, and St. Luke tells us about the Ascension twice – once at the end of the Gospel which bears his name [Luke 24. 50-53] and again at the start of his letter which we know as The Acts of the Apostles [ Acts 1. 1-11]. But because it always occurs on a Thursday, many Christians miss out on it completely, or know it only from references in Scripture.

Ancient Christian teaching on the Ascension – much of it now in hymn form – tell us that Ascension is connected to the fullness of Christ’s Incarnation. We can conclude from that that we can not separate spirit and flesh like so many people have attempted to do, both in ancient times as well as today. You may be familiar with what I’m referring to. People are sometimes given the message that the spirit is good but the flesh is bad. After all, they say, it is the flesh that continually gets us in trouble. In addition we may have been taught that salvation is primarily something “spiritual” which doesn’t really concern our bodies.

But Jesus Christ came in the flesh. Taking a body from His holy Mother, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; (and) we have beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” [John 2. 24]  

 If God the eternally begotten Son of the Father took our flesh upon Him for our salvation, then human flesh – our human flesh – cannot be “bad”. 

Again, if He took flesh for our salvation, then our bodies need to be active participants in both receiving and participating in our salvation.

In the Ascension of the Lord we are faced with the astounding reality that He “Who sitteth on the right hand of the Father” – as the Nicene Creed affirms – does so in the flesh! One of the ancient prayers of the Church declares: “O Thou Who by Thy glorious ascension didst vouchsafe that the flesh which Thou hadst assumed should sit at the right hand of the Father, thereby ennobling it…” This reference, part of a centuries old prayer said by Orthodox Christians before receiving Holy Communion, along with other prayers and hymns like it, reminds us that not only is this flesh of ours not “bad”, it is of highest esteem – made noble in fact – because of and through Christ’s Ascension.

Real Christianity never leaves the body out of its worship and devotional practices. 

Apostolic Christianity always includes bodily actions such as eating and fasting, standing attentively or bowing to the ground, because you and I cannot be saved apart from our bodies.

And when we get into trouble particularly in the area of what are often referred to as “sins of the flesh”, it is not our bodies which have got us into trouble, but our passions, which are those thoughts and inclinations we give in to and which, if not curbed – very often through the exercise of physical disciplines – can even lead us out of salvation.

Therefore, let us praise, bless, and worship the Lord with both body and soul, rejoicing in Christ our true God.

"I WANT NOTHING OF THIS WORLD"

Last Friday evening I had the honour of attending a Memorial Service for His Holiness Pope Shenouda III at St. Mary and St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in Edmonton. Part of the evening included a youtube video based on one of His Holiness' poems "I Want Nothing Of This World", published in 1957 in his book "The Release of the Spirit." I found myself quite moved by the depths revealed in this poem, and by it's resonance in my soul. Truly His Holiness tapped into a universal Christian desire - the true desire of the Christian heart: to forsake all for the sake of the everlasting Kingdom of Heaven.

May his memory be eternal!

Sunday of Orthodoxy, 1903

A Homily of Holy New Hieromartyr Tikhon, Metropolitan of Moscow.

Given when he was Bishop of the Aleutian Islands and North America

This Sunday, Brethren, begins the week of Orthodoxy, or the week of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, because it is today that the Holy Orthodox Church solemnly recalls its victory over the Iconoclast heresy and other heresies and gratefully remembers all who fought for the Orthodox faith in word, writing, teaching, suffering, or godly living.

Keeping the day of Orthodoxy, Orthodox people ought to remember it is their sacred duty to stand firm in their Orthodox faith and carefully to keep it.

For us it is a precious treasure: in it we were born and raised; all the important events of our life are related to it, and it is ever ready to give us its help and blessing in all our needs and good undertakings, however unimportant they may seem. It supplies us with strength, good cheer and consolation, it heals, purifies and saves us.

The Orthodox faith is also dear to us because it is the Faith of our Fathers. For its sake the Apostles bore pain and labored; martyrs and preachers suffered for it; champions, who were like unto the saints, shed their tears and their blood; pastors and teachers fought for it; and our ancestors stood for it, whose legacy it was that to us it should be dearer than the pupil of our eyes.

And as to us, their descendants - do we preserve the Orthodox faith, do we keep to its Gospels? Of old, the prophet Elijah, this great worker for the glory of God, complained that the Sons of Israel have abandoned the Testament of the Lord, leaning away from it towards the gods of the heathen. Yet the Lord revealed to His prophet, that amongst the Israelites there still were seven thousand people who have not knelt before Baal (3 Kings 19) . Likewise, no doubt, in our days also there are some true followers of Christ. "The Lord knoweth them that are His." (2 Timothy 2.19)

We do occasionally meet sons of the Church, who are obedient to Her decrees, who honor their spiritual pastors, love the Church of God and the beauty of its exterior, who are eager to attend to its Divine Service and to lead a good life, who recognize their human failings and sincerely repent their sins.

But are there many such among us? Are there not more people, "in whom the weeds of vanity and passion allow but little fruit to the influence of the Gospel, or even in whom it is altogether fruitless, who resist the truth of the Gospel, because of the increase of their sins, who renounce the gift of the Lord and repudiate the Grace of God" (a quotation from the service of Orthodoxy).

"I have given birth to sons and have glorified them, yet they deny Me," said the Lord in the olden days concerning Israel. And today also there are many who were born, raised and glorified by the Lord in the Orthodox faith, yet who deny their faith, pay no attention to the teachings of the Church, do not keep its injunctions, do not listen to their spiritual pastors and remain cold towards the divine service and the Church of God.

How speedily some of us lose the Orthodox faith in this country of many creeds and tribes! They begin their apostasy with things, which in their eyes have but little importance. They judge it is "old fashioned" and "not accepted amongst educated people" to observe all such customs as: praying before and after meals, or even morning and night, to wear a cross, to keep icons in their houses and to keep church holidays and feast days. They even do not stop at this, but go further: they seldom go to church and sometimes not at all, as a man has to have some rest on a Sunday (...in a saloon); they do not go to confession, they dispense with church marriage and delay baptizing their children.

And in this way their ties with Orthodox faith are broken! They remember the Church on their deathbed, and some don't even do that! To excuse their apostasy they naively say: "this is not the old country, this is America, and consequently it is impossible to observe all the demands of the Church.", as if the word of Christ is of use for the old country only and not for the whole world. As if the Orthodox faith is not the foundation of the world!

"Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel into anger." (Isaiah, 1, 4)

If you do not preserve the Orthodox faith and the commandments of God, the least you can do is not to humiliate your hearts by inventing false excuses for your sins!

If you do not honor our customs, the least you can do is not to laugh at things you do not know or understand.

If you do not accept the motherly care of the Holy Orthodox Church, the least you can do is to confess you act wrongly, that you are sinning against the Church and behave like children!

If you do, the Orthodox Church may forgive you, like a loving mother, your coldness and slights, and will receive you back into her embrace, as if you were erring children.

Holding to the Orthodox faith, as to something holy, loving it with all their hearts and prizing it above all, Orthodox people ought, moreover, to endeavor to spread it amongst people of other creeds.

Christ the Saviour has said that "neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candle stick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house." (Matthew 5, 15)

The light of Orthodoxy was not lit to shine only on a small number of men. The Orthodox Church is universal; it remembers the words of its Founder: "Go ye into the world, and preach the gospel to every creature" (Luke, 16, 15), "go ye therefore and teach all nations." (Matthew 28, 19)

We ought to share our spiritual wealth, our truth, light and joy with others, who are deprived of these blessings, but often are seeking them and thirsting for them.

Once "a vision appeared to Paul in the night, there stood a man from Macedonia and prayed him, saying, come over into Macedonia, and help us," (The Acts 16, 9) after which the apostle started for this province to preach Christ. We also hear a similar inviting voice. We live surrounded by people of alien creeds; in the sea of other religions, our Church is a small island of salvation, towards which swim some of the people, plunged in the sea of life. "Come, hurry, help," we sometimes hear from the heathen of far Alaska, and oftener from those who are our brothers in blood and once were our brothers in faith also, the Uniates. "Receive us into your community, give us one of your good pastors, send us a Priest that we might have the Divine Service performed for us of a holy day, help us to build a church, to start a school for our children, so that they do not lose in America their faith and nationality," those are the wails we often hear, especially of late.

And are we to remain deaf and insensible? God save us from such a lack of sympathy. Otherwise woe unto us, "for we have taken away the key of knowledge, we entered not in ourselves, and them that were entering in we hindered." (Luke 11.52)

But who is to work for the spread of the Orthodox faith, for the increase of the children of the Orthodox Church? Pastors and missionaries, you answer. You are right; but are they to be alone?

St. Paul wisely compares the Church of Christ to a body, and the life of a body is shared by all the members. So it ought to be in the life of the Church also. "The whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." (Ephesians 4.16)

At the beginning, not only pastors alone suffered for the faith of Christ, but lay people also, men, women and even children. Heresies were fought against by lay people as well. Likewise, the spread of Christ's faith ought to be near and precious to the heart of every Christian. In this work every member of the Church ought to take a lively and heart-felt interest. This interest may show itself in personal preaching of the Gospel of Christ.

And to our great joy, we know of such examples amongst our lay brethren. In Sitka, members of the Indian brotherhood do missionary work amongst other inhabitants of their villages. And one zealous brother took a trip to a distant village (Kilisno), and helped the local Priest very much in shielding the simple and credulous children of the Orthodox Church against alien influences, by his own explanations and persuasions. Moreover, in many places of the United States, those who have left Uniatism to join Orthodoxy point out to their friends where the truth is to be found, and dispose them to enter the Orthodox Church.

Needless to say, it is not everybody among us who has the opportunity or the faculty to preach the gospel personally. And in view of this I shall indicate to you, Brethren, what every man can do for the spread of Orthodoxy and what he ought to do.

The Apostolic Epistles often disclose the fact, that when the Apostles went to distant places to preach, the faithful often helped them with their prayers and their offerings. Saint Paul sought this help of the Christians especially.

Consequently we can express the interests we take in the cause of the Gospel in praying to the Lord,

·  that He should take this holy cause under His protection,

·  that He should give its servants the strength to do their work worthily,

·  that He should help them to conquer difficulties and dangers, which are part of the work,

·  that He should not allow them to grow depressed or weaken in their zeal;

·  that He should open the hearts of the unbelieving for the hearing and acceptance of the Gospel of Christ,

·  that He should impart to them the word of truth,

·  that He should unite them to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church;

·  that He should confirm, increase and pacify His Church, keeping it forever invincible,

·  we pray for all this, but mostly with lips and but seldom with the heart.

Don't we often hear such remarks as these: "what is the use of these special prayers for the newly initiated? They do not exist in our time, except, perhaps, in the out of the way places of America and Asia; let them pray for such where there are any; as to our country such prayers only needlessly prolong the service which is not short by any means, as it is." Woe to our lack of wisdom! Woe to our carelessness and idleness!

Offering earnest prayers for the successful preaching of Christ, we can also show our interest by helping it materially. It was so in the primitive Church, and the Apostles lovingly accepted material help to the cause of the preaching, seeing in it an expression of Christian love and zeal.

In our days, these offerings are especially needed, because for the lack of them the work often comes to a dead stop. For the lack of them preachers can not be sent out, or supported, churches can not be built or schools founded, the needy amongst the newly converted can not be helped. All this needs money and members of other religions always find a way of supplying it.

Perhaps, you will say, that these people are richer than ourselves. This is true enough, but great means are accumulated by small, and if everybody amongst us gave what he could towards this purpose, we also could raise considerable means. Accordingly, do not be ashamed of the smallness of your offering. If you have much, offer all you can, but do offer, do not lose the chance of helping the cause of the conversion of your neighbors to Christ, because by so doing, in the words of St. James, "you shall save your own soul from death and shall hide a multitude of sins."

Orthodox people! In celebrating the day of Orthodoxy, you must devote yourselves to the Orthodox faith not in word or tongue only, but in deed and in truth.

"Horton" Hears A Tiny Orthodox Mission

Some people have asked from time to time what life in a tiny Orthodox Mission Community is like.

The best answer to that question comes from my wife, who made the following comparison after lunch today:

There is a wonderful climax in “Horton Hears A Who”, the delightful 2008 American CGI-animated comedy feature film based on the Dr. Seuss book of the same name. No one – except Horton the elephant – believes that there can possibly be life on a tiny dust speck on a flower, until, finally, at the end, the citizens of the microscopic Whoville gather together and shout “We are here! We are here!” They are not heard until JoJo, the teenaged son of the mayor of Whoville, adds his amplified voice to the proclamation pushing them over the top. The animals of the jungle hear, Horton is vindicated, and Whoville is saved.

My wife says: 

Life in a tiny Orthodox Mission Community is a bit like that. At Holy Protection in Fort Saskatchewan Alberta we are but a tiny dust speck on the flower of Orthodoxy, doing all we can to proclaim “We are here! We are here!”

May God grant us people like “Horton” who will champion us because they “have ears to hear”, and more folk like "JoJo" whose efforts will add to those already being offered and make the difference.

Glory to God for all things!