The Joy that allows for a Peaceful Death

The following is a excerpt from Henri Nouwen's On Dying and Caring. He speaks about two kinds of joy and paints an image of what it means to die a peaceful death. I hope this resonates with all of you as it did with me.

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Two of the greatest joys experienced are the joy of being different from others and the joy of being the same as others. The first of these I saw while watching the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona on television. Those who stood on the rostrum and received their bronze, silver, and gold medals experienced joy as the direct result of being able to run faster, jump higher, or throw farther than others. The difference might have been extremely small, but it had great significance. It was the distinction between defeat and victory, between rueful tears and ecstatic joy. This is the joy of the hero and the star, the joy that comes from successfully competing, winning the prize, receiving the honor, and walking into the limelight.

I know this joy myself. I know it from getting an award at school, from being chosen the leader of my class, from receiving tenure at the university, and from seeing my books published and receiving honorary degrees. I know the immense satisfaction that comes from being considered different from others. These types of achievements dispel self-doubts and bestow self-confidence. This is the joy having “made it”, the joy of being recognized for making a difference. We all wait for this joy somewhere, somehow. It remains the joy of the one who said, “I thank you God, that I am not like everyone else” (Luke 18:11-12).

The other kind of joy is harder to describe but easier to find. It is the joy of being the brother or sister of all people. Although this joy is closer at hand-more accessible-than the joy of being different, it is not as obvious, and only a few people ever truly find it. This is the joy of being a part of that vast variety of people-of all ages, colors, and religions-who together form the human family. This is the immense joy of being a member of the human race.  

At several times in my life, I have tasted this joy. I felt it most acutely in 1964, when I walked with thousands of people in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery in a civil rights march led by Martin Luther King, Jr. I will never forget the joy I experienced during that march. I had come by myself. Nobody knew me-nobody had ever heard of me-but when we walked together and put our arms around each other’s shoulders and sang “We shall overcome one day,” I experienced a joy I had never experienced before in my life. I said to myself, “Yes, yes, I belong; these are my people. They may have different way of life, but they are my brothers and sisters. They love me, and I love them. Their smiles and tears are my smiles and tears; their prayers and prophecies are my prayers and prophecies; their anguish and hope are my anguish and hope. I am one with them”.

In an instant, all differences seemed to melt away as snow in the sun. All my comparing disappeared, and I felt surrounded by the welcoming arms of all humanity. I was aware that some of the people with whom I held hands had spent years in prison, were addicted to drugs or alcohol, suffered from loneliness and depression, and lived lives radically different from mine, but they all looked to me like saints, radiant with God’s love. They were indeed God’s people, immensely loved and radically forgiven. All I felt was a deep sameness, a profound communion with all people, an exhilarating sense of brotherhood and sisterhood.

I am convinced that it is this joy-the joy of being the same as others, of belonging to one human family-that allows us to die well. I do not know how I or anyone else could be prepared to die if we were mainly concerned about trophies we had collected during our best years. The great gift hidden in our saying is the gift of unity with all people. However different we are, we were all born powerless, as we all die powerless, and the little differences we live in between dwindle in the light of this enormous truth. Often this human truth is presented as a reason to be sad. It is not seldom called a “sobering truth”. Our greatest challenge is to discover this truth as a source of immense joy that will set us free to embrace our mortality with the awareness that we will make our passage to new life in solidarity with all the people of the earth.

A good death is a death in solidarity with others. To prepare ourselves for a good death, we must develop or deepen this sense of solidarity. If we live toward death as toward an event that separates us from people, death cannot be other than a sad and sorrowful event. But if we grow in awareness that our mortality, more than anything else, will lead us into solidarity with others, then death can become a celebration of our unity with the human race. Instead of separating us from others, death can unite us with others; instead of being sorrowful, it can give rise to new joy; instead of simply ending life, it can begin something new. 

Henri Nouwen, Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring, Pages 21-24.

What Does it Mean to Forgive?

"Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a permanent attitude". Martin Luther King Jr.

The following is passage from Jean Vanier's book, "Becoming Human". This section is taken from the final chapter on, "Forgiveness".
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To forgive is to break down the walls of hostility that separate us, and to bring each other out of the anguish of loneliness, fear, and chaos into communion and oneness. This communion is born from mutual trust and acceptance, and the freedom to be ourselves in our uniqueness and beauty, the freedom to exercise our gifts. We are no longer contained and held back by fear, prejudices, or the need to prove ourselves.

So the sense of belonging that is necessary for the opening of our hearts is born when we walk together, needing each other, accompanying one another whether we are weak or strong, capable or not. This belonging will not bring feelings or superiority if we are walking towards inner freedom. It will not seek to exclude but to include the weak, the needy, and the different, for they have a secret power that opens up people’s hearts and leads them to compassion and mutual trust. This belonging becomes a song of gratitude for each one of us.

Of course, all this takes time. But are we not all called to take this journey if we want to become fully human, to conquer divisions and oppression, and to work for peace? If each one of us today begins this journey and has the courage to forgive and be forgiven, we will no longer be governed by past hurts. Wherever we may be-in our families, our work places, with friends, or in places of worship or of leisure-we can rise up and become agents of a new land. But let us not put our sights too high. We do not have to be saviours of the world! We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time.

Jean Vanier, Becoming Human, Forgiveness, Pages 162-163.    

The Path to Freedom

"Being human is difficult. Becoming a human is a life long process. To be truly human is a gift." Abraham Heschel

The following is a passage from Jean Vanier's book, "Becoming Human". This section is taken from the chapter, "The Path to Freedom".
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To be free is to know who we are, with all that is beautiful, all the brokenness in us; it is to love our own values, to embrace them, and to develop them; it is to be anchored in a vision and a truth but also to be open to others and, so, to change. Freedom lies in discovering that the truth is not a set of fixed certitudes but a mystery we enter into, one step at a time. It is a process of going deeper and deeper into an unfathomable reality.

In this journey of integrating our experience and our values, and of what we might learn we listen to others, there may be a period of anguish. We need to find links between the old and the new, links that will permit the integration of new, consciousness-expanding truths into what we already know and are living-our existing certitudes. As human sciences develop and the world evolves, we are called to grow into a new and deeper understanding of the source of the universe and of life. As we participate in this, our sense of the true expands. Freedom is to be in awe of this source, of the beauty and diversity of people, and of the universe. It is to contemplate the height and breadth of all that is true.

Freedom is to accept that when we belong to a group, a race, a tribe, a family, a community, a religion, that none of these are perfect, that each has its limits and weaknesses. Every community of humans has its light and its darkness. We are all part of something greater than ourselves. We all flow from a source that is unfathomable and we are all journeying towards it, carrying with us the light of truth and love. Each of us is called to be in communion with the source and heart of the universe. The infinite yearnings of our hearts are calling us to be in communion with the infinite. None of us can be satisfied with the limited and finite. Each cone must be free to follow the Spirit of God.

And this freedom is for love and compassion, to give our lives more totally and more freely to others. It is the freedom to be kind and patient. This freedom does not seek personal honours; it believes all, hopes all, bears all, and endures all. Freedom does not judge or condemn but understands and forgives. Freedom is the liberation from all those inner fears and inhibitions and that we need to ask forgiveness of those we have hurt.

There is a freedom that I sense exists but that I do not have. I cannot always describe it but I do want it. I sense I still have a long road to walk in order to reach this freedom. I see the goal but I am not yet there. I love and want it but sometimes I am frightened on the road I must take.

I am frightened of the disappearance of my walls of defense, sensing that behind them there is an anguish and a vulnerability that will rise up. I see that I still cling to what people think of me and am fed by the way people love, want, and admire me. If all that fell away, who would I be? But that is where freedom lies, the freedom to be rejected, if that is the path I am to take in order to live more fully. Is that not the freedom that Jesus announces in his charter of the Beatitudes, when he says, “Woe to you when people speak well of you”?

Jean Vanier, Becoming Human, The Path to Freedom, Pages 117-119.

Lenten Reflection: Healing

The church is place where one seeks healing. The purpose of the Church is to heal us, to overcome the divide between God and humanity which is caused by sin leading to our very death. Healing is achieved when we are united to one another and to God in the Body of Christ, which is the Church.

How is this healing achieved? When we come to know Christ, when we become one with Him and with one another then the healing process takes shape within all of us. Everything the Church does, through it's liturgical and sacramental life, is directed at restoring our relationships between God and creation. Our restoration is made possible through our interaction with creation which unites all of creation including all of humanity. The real meaning of Christian healing involves the whole person. The healing is made possible through the salvific events of the church, the Eucharist, Baptism which initiated us into the body of Christ.

As members of the body of Christ we enter this "membership" through Baptism which takes of the old "man" and puts on the new "man". The Eucharist is the means by which this membership is realized and continues to be lived out. In fact, everything the Church sets out for us, prayers, sacraments, feasts, have the Eucharist as their goal. We are the Church when we gather together, to celebrate the mystery of the incarnation, death and resurrection on behalf of all. Not only do we remember these events of the past, but we become partakers of Christ in the present, sharing in His divine nature for the restoration (healing) of soul and body. It is in the Eucharist that the famous line spoke by St. Athanasius is realized: "God became man, so that man might become god". This is what it means to be united to God and become divinized in His body; the Church.

Humanity and all of creation is created to be in union with God and the Eucharist is the realization of this union. True healing is precisely the restoration of union with God, the restoration of the proper relationship between God and creation. Every time we partake of the Eucharist we receive this grace of healing. This healing not only affects humanity but enters all of creation through our restoration with the one in whom salvation was realized through his body; the body which we all called to unite with.    

Forgiveness Sunday

In the Orthodox Church the Sunday before the start of Great Lent is known as Forgiveness Sunday. Vespers is celebrated in the evening and following vespers we ask for the forgiveness of all the parishioners while the choir sings, "Christ is Risen" and other joyful hymns. This is a beautiful service and one that speaks to the meaning of what Lent means. In the following Fr. Alexander Schmemann spells out the meaning and beauty of Forgiveness Sunday and tells us how we can benefit from it as we start our Lenten Journey. Enjoy!

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In the Orthodox Church, the last Sunday before Great Lent – the day on which, at Vespers, Lent is liturgically announced and inaugurated – is called Forgiveness Sunday. On the morning of that Sunday, at the Divine Liturgy, we hear the words of Christ:

"If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses..." (Mark 6:14-15)

Then after Vespers – after hearing the announcement of Lent in the Great Prokeimenon: "Turn not away Thy face from Thy child for I am afflicted! Hear me speedily! Draw near unto my soul and deliver it!", after making our entrance into Lenten worship, with its special memories, with the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, with its prostrations – we ask forgiveness from each other, we perform the rite of forgiveness and reconciliation. And as we approach each other with words of reconciliation, the choir intones the Paschal hymns, filling the church with the anticipation of Paschal joy.

What is the meaning of this rite? Why is it that the Church wants us to begin Lenten season with forgiveness and reconciliation? These questions are in order because for too many people Lent means primarily, and almost exclusively, a change of diet, the compliance with ecclesiastical regulations concerning fasting. They understand fasting as an end in itself, as a "good deed" required by God and carrying in itself its merit and its reward. But, the Church spares no effort in revealing to us that fasting is but a means, one among many, towards a higher goal: the spiritual renewal of man, his return to God, true repentance and, therefore, true reconciliation. The Church spares no effort in warning us against a hypocritical and pharisaic fasting, against the reduction of religion to mere external obligations. As a Lenten hymn says:

In vain do you rejoice in no eating, O soul!

For you abstain from food,

But from passions you are not purified.

If you persevere in sin, you will perform a useless fast.

Now, forgiveness stands at the very center of Christian faith and of Christian life because Christianity itself is, above all, the religion of forgiveness. God forgives us, and His forgiveness is in Christ, His Son, Whom He sends to us, so that by sharing in His humanity we may share in His love and be truly reconciled with God. Indeed, Christianity has no other content but love. And it is primarily the renewal of that love, a return to it, a growth in it, that we seek in Great Lent, in fasting and prayer, in the entire spirit and the entire effort of that season. Thus, truly forgiveness is both the beginning of, and the proper condition for the Lenten season.

One may ask, however: Why should I perform this rite when I have no "enemies"? Why should I ask forgiveness from people who have done nothing to me, and whom I hardly know? To ask these questions, is to misunderstand the Orthodox teaching concerning forgiveness. It is true, that open enmity, personal hatred, real animosity may be absent from our life, though if we experience them, it may be easier for us to repent, for these feelings openly contradict Divine commandments. But, the Church reveals to us that there are much subtler ways of offending Divine Love. These are indifference, selfishness, lack of interest in other people, of any real concern for them -- in short, that wall which we usually erect around ourselves, thinking that by being "polite" and "friendly" we fulfill God’s commandments. The rite of forgiveness is so important precisely because it makes us realize – be it only for one minute – that our entire relationship to other men is wrong, makes us experience that encounter of one child of God with another, of one person created by God with another, makes us feel that mutual "recognition" which is so terribly lacking in our cold and dehumanized world.

On that unique evening, listening to the joyful Paschal hymns we are called to make a spiritual discovery: to taste of another mode of life and relationship with people, of life whose essence is love. We can discover that always and everywhere Christ, the Divine Love Himself, stands in the midst of us, transforming our mutual alienation into brotherhood. As l advance towards the other, as the other comes to me – we begin to realize that it is Christ Who brings us together by His love for both of us.

And because we make this discovery – and because this discovery is that of the Kingdom of God itself: the Kingdom of Peace and Love, of reconciliation with God and, in Him, with all that exists – we hear the hymns of that Feast, which once a year, "opens to us the doors of Paradise." We know why we shall fast and pray, what we shall seek during the long Lenten pilgrimage. Forgiveness Sunday: the day on which we acquire the power to make our fasting – true fasting; our effort – true effort; our reconciliation with God – true reconciliation.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann, 1982. 

How To Deal With Sinful Condition

The following is a sermon given by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom!

In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

So often we ask ourselves and one another a very tormenting question: How can I deal with my sinful condition? What can I do? I cannot avoid committing sins; Christ alone is sinless. I cannot, for lack of determination, or courage, or ability truly repent when I do commit a sin, or in general, of my sinful condition. What is left to me? I am tormented, I fight like one drowning, and I see no solution.

And there is a word which was spoken once by a Russian staretz, one of the last elders of Optina. He said to a visitor of his: No one can live without sin, few know how to repent in such a way that their sins are washed as white as fleece, out there is one thing which we all can do; when we can neither avoid sin, nor repent truly, we can then bear the burden of sin, bear it patiently, bear it with pain, bear it without doing anything to avoid the pain and the agony of it, bear it as one would bear a cross; not Christ's cross, not the cross of true discipleship, but the cross of the thief who was crucified next to Him. Didn't the thief say to his companion who was blaspheming the Lord: We are enduring because we have committed crimes; He endures sinlessly... And it is to him, because he had accepted the punishment, the pain, the agony, the consequences indeed of evil he had committed, of being the man he was, that Christ said, ‘Thou shalt be with Me today in Paradise...’

I remember the life of one of the divines, the story of one who had come to him and have said that he had led all his life a life that was evil, impure, unworthy both of God and of himself; and then he had repented, he has rejected all evil he had done; and yet, he was in the power of the same evil. And the divine said to him: There was a time when you lapped up all this filth with delight; now you perceive it as filth and you feel that you are drowning in it with horror, with disgust. Take this to be your reward, for your past, and endure...

This is something which all of us can do: to endure the consequences, to endure the enslavement which is our patiently, humbly, with a broken heart; not with indifference, not with a sense that as we are abandoned to it by God, then, why not sin? But taking it as a healing perception of what sin is, of what it does to us, of the horror of it. And if we patiently endure, a day will come when our inner rejection of sin will bear fruit, and when freedom will be given us.

So, if we can, in a l l the ways we can, let us avoid sin in all its forms, even those sins which seem to be so unimportant, because the slightest crack in a dam sooner or later leads to its bursting. If we can — let us truly repent, that is turn away from our past in a heroic, determined act; but if we can do neither of them — let us carry humbly and patiently all the pain and all the consequences. And this will also be accounted one day by the Lord Who in a folkloric life of Moses, in response to His angels saying, ‘How long shall you endure their sins’ — the sins of the Jews in the wilderness, answered: ‘I will reject them when the measure of their sins will exceed the measure of their suffering’…

Let us therefore accept the pain as a redeeming pain, even if we cannot offer it as pain pure of stain. Amen.

Let Us Look at Each Other with Compassion: On the Sunday of the Paralytic

The following is a homily given by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom on the Sunday of the Paralytic (after the feast of Pascha).
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So we are surrounded, all of us, by people who are in the situation of this paralytic man. If we think of ourselves we will see that many of us are paralysed, incapable of fulfilling all their aspirations; incapable of being what they longed for, incapable of serving others the way their heart speaks; incapable of doing anything they longed for because fear, brokenness has come into them.

How tragic today’s story of the life of Christ is. A man had been paralysed for years. He had lain at a short distance from healing, but he himself had no strength to merge into the waters of ablution. And no one – no one in the course of all these years – had had compassion on him.

The ones rushed to be the first in order to be healed. Others who were attached to them by love, by friendship, helped them to be healed. But no one cast a glance at this man, who for years had longed for healing and was not in himself able to find strength to become whole.

If only one person had been there, if only one heart had responded with compassion, this man might have been whole years and years earlier. As no one, not one person, had compassion on him, all that was left to him – and I say all that was left to him with a sense of horror – was the direct intervention of God.

We are surrounded by people who are in need. It is not only people who are physically paralysed who need help.

There are so many people who are paralysed in themselves, and need to meet someone who would help them.

Paralysed in themselves are those who are terrified of life, because life has been an object of terror for them since they were born: insensitive parents, heartless, brutal surroundings. How many are those who hoped, when they were still small, that there would be something for them in life. But no. There wasn’t. There was no compassion. There was no friendliness. There was nothing. And when they tried to receive comfort and support, they did not receive it. Whenever they thought they could do something they were told, ‘Don’t try. Don’t you understand that you are incapable of this?’ And they felt lower and lower.

How many were unable to fulfil their lives because they were physically ill, and not sufficiently strong… But did they find someone to give them a supporting hand? Did they find anyone who felt so deeply for them and about them that they went out of their way to help? And how many those who are terrified of life, lived in circumstances of fear, of violence, of brutality… But all this could not have taken them if there had been someone who have stood by them and not abandoned them.

So we are surrounded, all of us, by people who are in the situation of this paralytic man. If we think of ourselves we will see that many of us are paralysed, incapable of fulfilling all their aspirations; incapable of being what they longed for, incapable of serving others the way their heart speaks; incapable of doing anything they longed for because fear, brokenness has come into them.

And all of us, all of us were responsible for each of them. We are responsible, mutually, for one another; because when we look right and left at the people who stand by us, what do we know about them? Do we know how broken they are? How much pain there is in their hearts? How much agony there has been in their lives? How many broken hopes, how much fear and rejection and contempt that has made them contemptuous of themselves and unable even to respect themselves – not to speak of having the courage of making a move towards wholeness, that wholeness of which the Gospel speaks in this passage and in so many other places?

Let us reflect on this. Let us look at each other and ask ourselves, ‘How much frailty is there in him or her? How much pain has accumulated in his or her heart? How much fear of life – but life expressed by my neighbour, the people whom I should be able to count for life – has come in to my existence?

Let us look at one another with understanding, with attention. Christ is there. He can heal; yes. But we will be answerable for each other, because there are so many ways in which we should be the eyes of Christ who sees the needs, the ears of Christ who hears the cry, the hands of Christ who supports and heals or makes it possible for the person to be healed.

Let us look at this parable of the paralytic with new eyes; not thinking of this poor man two thousand years ago who was so lucky that Christ happened to be near him and in the end did what every neighbour should have done. Let us look at each other and have compassion, active compassion; insight; love if we can.

And then this parable will not have been spoken or this event will not have been related to us in vain. Amen.

The Eucharistic Understanding of Marriage

An excellent book that tackles marriage from a historical perspective and ties in many issues in our modern time that couples face in marriage. 

The paradigm (starting point) of Marriage is Christ. And if Christ is the starting point off Marriage that brings us together in the anticipation of the kingdom then marriage is connected to the Eucharist. The difference between a "secular" marriage and a "christian" marriage is the Eucharist. It is through the Eucharist that the unity of the couple is manifested in the body of Christ. The connection is alluded to in the wedding story of Cana (Jn 2.1-11). The text is pointing to the climax of the marriage service which brings together the Baptism and Eucharist. The water is transformed into wine, so the life of the sinful human being in transfigured through the presence of Christ into the reality of the kingdom. Our life is transformed once we are united in the bond of matrimony. This explains why today the marriage service done within the full context of the church service is conducted within the entire liturgy. The culmination our our baptismal duty to the church which is to mission to the entire world and this culminates in the partaking of the divine gifts. Unfortunately, many have misunderstood marriage and the majority of all marriages are performed outside of the context of the liturgy.

Even in the early church when the administrative work was missing (before Constantine became emperor the church was not united) the church understood the importance of marriage and the Eucharist. Terturllian writing in the second century writes that marriage is arranged by the church, confirmed by the oblation (Eucharist), sealed by the blessing, and inscribed in heaven by the angels. The church had this understanding that marriage was not only important to civil society (each couple had to be registered a practice that still continues to this day) but their joint participation in the regular Sunday liturgy, in the presence of the entire community (not a private affair as is practiced today) was blessed by the Bishop or priest. The marriage became an eternal union when the Eucharist was distributed to the entire community. Ignatius of Antioch echoes a similar sentiment of Terturllian when he says those who get married must unite with the knowledge of the bishop, so the marriage may be according to the Lord, and not by human desire (Letter to Polycarp 5.2).

What makes a "sacrament" is not necessarily a set of specific, visible gestures, accomplished by a valid minister. The church itself-being a mysterious union of God with his people-is the sacrament as St. Paul talks about the mystery of salvation (Eph 3). When the union of marriage is done, this is indeed "sacrament", for the mystery of salvation is applied to the individual commitment. But all these "sacraments" are completed in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is itself a wedding feast as St. Paul reminds the community in Corinth that separating the table of thanksgiving is a mistake that needs to be corrects (1 Cor 11). After the wedding ceremony the couple are constantly working out their salvation in the body of Christ. Elder Elisha of Simonopetra tells us that marriage is a great sacrifice. This sacrifice is realized through the life of prayer. As prayer unites us to God our marriage unites us also to God through our struggles and pains within the marriage life. If we come to understand marriage through the lens of the Eucharist then and only then will a marriage be able to be made holy for the life of the world. But if we continue to think that marriage is based on materialistic (what kind of job they have and how much property do they own) objects then the 50 percent divorce rate (In the west countries) will continue to rise.    

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Therefore, don’t think that you aren’t praying. You pray daily, if for the sole reason that you have decided to offer yourselves to God, and to live apart, against the worldly mindset. Thus you should know that this constitutes prayer. This is prayer. Prayer is when I become a monk, to offer myself to God. This is prayer.

You pray when you offer yourself to the church and as a sacrifice towards each other within marriage. One who gets married, therefore, in his married life, is a prototype. Marriage is a return to the former state in Paradise, in other words. It is to offer yourself in the married life, for what does it do? To offer myself to someone else is to sacrifice myself for the other.

No one can distinguish the lay person from the monk, for what are they? Being a monk is a return to a former state, in other words, that of Paradise, without compromises.

We sell our freedom to God, because God is our freedom.  

Elder Eliseus (Elisha) of Simonopetra on Sacrifice in Marriage and Monasticism  

Matushka Juliana Schmemann on Mission

Fr. Alexander and his wife Matushka Juliana

A good friend shared this quote by Matushka Juliana Schmemann and it had me thinking about the paradigm of mission the church has been preaching to the people. Unfortunately mission has been based on a backlash, a misunderstanding of Christ and the Eucharist. Mission today has been reduced to a few fallacies based on the idea that we need to break away from "old archaic" ways of doing "certain actions" within the church. To give a few examples priests think that the liturgy must be done in English and the Arabic needs to be thrown out of the church (speaking about context of countries where the main language is English) and that we must incorporate worship songs into the service. Now I am not saying an all English liturgy is bad or worship songs need to be axed. On the other hand mission needs these tools in order to baptize all nations because if we are not using the language of the land as a tool for mission then all we have done is impose our own cultural heritage in country that does not share those heritages. Mission first and foremost as Matushka Juliana stresses is based on what we have to offer to people.

We must offer Christ to all. Christ is our starting point and our goal. Christ took on our humanity in order that we might share in his body. This is the paradigm the church needs to operate on. When translating this paradigm to mission it is no different. Mission begins and ends with the person of Christ. If Christ ceases to be our starting point then the church will become nothing more than mere activities done in light of social gatherings to cater to the needs of people. When theology is false Christianity is reduced to nothing more than mere activities. Mission is rooted in theology, a theology that is lived and expressed for the life of the world. Mission rooted in theology is a dynamic expression of what it means to be a Christian. Christianity being a way of life is a life lived for others. Mission is rooted in how we treat others through our offerings to them. (The first part of the liturgy is ironically known as the offertory). We offer ourselves because Christ showed us what it means to be a human through his incarnation. Our lives being rooted in the person of Christ has become a life offered to others. The first Orthodox missionaries who came through Alaska realized the importance of preaching the faith through the culture of the natives in Alaska and individuals such as St. Innocent and St. Herman understood this and were able to adapt the faith to the natives. Sadly today many Orthodox Churches have failed in this regard to missioning to all nations.

When you walk into a church today you will find the liturgy prayed in the language of the motherland (Arabic, Russian etc.) and the vernacular is not used. Worship songs are being incorporated into the service because we think this is what it means to be Christian. This however, is all rooted in the understanding that if we copy and paste protestant songs and continue using the old languages we will appease both the younger generations and the older generations. This however is not true. In fact the opposite is true in that many youths are leaving the church and the church fails in its missionary activity. The church, in order to be a place of mission must be rooted in the people who make the body of Christ. We must figure out how to talk to the people and the culture we are brought into (in my particular example-Canada). When we figure this out we must begin to incorporate this into our liturgy and language of mission. Simply coping and pasting does not solve the issue to the problem. We must be engaged in the culture in order to find beauty which is rooted in the person of Christ. Many have asked how does this look like? Are we to incorporate rap music in our hymns? Of course not (because this again is copying and pasting) however we must study carefully the culture and once we have come up with what it means "to be a Canadian" and how to express this in the liturgy it is only then that we can truly serve those around us through the context of mission. It is only then that the following words by Matushka Juliana will resonate throughout the life of the church.  
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I never stopped trying to exercise my missionary efforts while teaching or talking to or counselling my students. I wasn't bent on having them join my church, but I was trying to be contagious and to instill in them a sense of faith, of trust, of beauty, and finally of joy. 

My idea always was, and still is, to try to discover what is missing in a person's vision of life, what venue to use in order to reach people on their own ground. Whenever I feel a void, I try to fill it with hope and higher expectations from real life; not career, nor knowledge, but the poetic sacred aspect of life, so often missing from people's lives.

I insist that it is our sacred duty as those blessed with such abundant blessings from our life: our faith, our church and its services, Pascha, the beauty of nature, faithful friends, etc., to share these blessings with any and all who come into our lives, who cross our path and who dwell, if even momentarily, in our line of vision...

...Every one of us, every day has a chance to proclaim one's faith and love in deeds and works, in compassion and love, in bringing peace and being truly grateful. 

This is mission. Give unto others what we have in abundance." 

+ Matushka Julianna Schmemann, "The Joy to Serve" (Montreal: Alexander Press, 2009) 78-80. 

Fr. John McGuckin-The Church of Today

At the end of January the Fr. Alexander Schmemann lecture was given this year (2014) by Fr. John McGuckin. Fr. John spoke about the Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church and the following excerpt was his conclusion to the talk. He concluded on what the church is today and tomorrow.

I believe, the future of Orthodox theology is neither Sophianism or Neo-Patristic synthesis; neither Neo-Palamism nor ressourciement, not Nouvelle theologieor even ancienne theologie for that matter; not progressivism or conservatism. The future of Orthodox theology is fidelity to the Gospel lived out in the interim as we approach the eschaton. We have always known this; and accordingly have always known that we were supposed to resist the isms and secessions, scholasticisms, denominations, and all other sorts of factions that mark off a sectarian mentality from the ecclesial spirit. Now there have been endless temptations of the Christian church in recent generations to dissect itself in ever-diminishing circles. The ecumenical movement that once shone so radiantly in the early post-war years when these Orthodox thinkers of Lossky’s time were in their prime, excited and energized, is now a squeaking ghost of itself because of that spirit of divisionism that is rife. Conservative Christians can hardly speak to progressives. But when we Orthodox are being specifically conscious about our mode of discourse today, I think we should remember that the church has always used philosophical method very eclectically to exegete the Gospel; applying a purely utilitarian principle. It can never wed itself to any method or school or system except that which Gregory the Theologian calls ‘a fisherman’s dialectic.’   

Orthodox have sometimes begun to imagine themselves as a denomination alongside other multiple churches in a pluralist world, and to speak of themselves in that way. But Orthodoxy’s role is not to be a subaltern in a post-colonial ambit: to appear quaint when we speak to some putative West, as some putative East. On the contrary, we have to hold an important line: the church is not a sect. It contains within its living body, conservatives and progressives, liberal reformists and die-hard traditionalists, not to mention saints and sinners. Within Orthodoxy those who want to ‘synthesize’ for the future, and those who want to keep everything intact as it was in the past, both have to learn the hard reality that it is only God’s eschaton that makes the correct judgement on what is right and what is wrong with the Church. The spotless Bride who contains all that is necessary for salvation in her trousseau, is ever the same (just seen in a different light) as that annoying baggage that is the Church on earth, which is comprised of an awful lot of flawed and compromised individuals trying to do their best to make their pilgrimage to the Kingdom. The Orthodox always attempt to be ever faithful to the evangelical tradition they have received and which they seek tp preserve in the canons and the writings of the dogmatic and spiritual fathers, but above all they are called to live it out, live out that is the resurrectional presence of Christ, through his Spirit, in the largely unseen holiness of the ecclesial community.

Fr. John McGuckin      

How Atheists Can Help Us

A famous quot by Nietzche that Fr. Roberto makes reference to in his text: God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
-Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125, Trans. Walter Kaufmann. 

By Fr. Roberto Ubertino

How Atheists Can Help Us

We seem to face the reality of Atheism where we feel most vulnerable: in our children. Our children so often seem to be seduced by the Atheist position. They of course are simply the easy victims of an illness that affects a considerable, growing, large number of people. A recent author, Michael Buckley, suggests that Atheism is essentially a parasite that feeds off bad religion. Atheism, he suggest, feeds off bad religion and picks apart bad religion. If that is true, then atheists do us a big favour. Atheism shows us the log in our own eyes.

Feuerbach and Nietzsche, two famous atheists of the 19th century, criticized religion as the "opiate of the people." They criticized that by focusing on the next life, people cold then be subjugated in this one. But they had a much deeper criticism, namely that we use the idea of God and religion to rationalize our own desires. For these two atheists, God did not make us in his image and likeness, but rather, we've made God in our image and likeness.

It is a great temptation that we have not always overcome by using "God" as our reason to do whatever we want and then calling this "God's will". Bernard (St) of Clairvaux called the 2nd Crusade as "God's will". We justified slavery, oppression, injustice, imprisonment, pogroms, all in the name of God. We Orthodox are not exempt. There is much for atheists to feed on. Our endless discussions on jurisdiction, our zealous acceptance to break communion with each other over minute details, the brushing under the carpet of sexual and financial abuses, our lack of interest in the poor. There is much for atheists to feed upon. Today atheism sharpens its knives through popular writers such as Hitchens and Dawkins. When it is most painful is to see that bad religion is picked upon and thorn apart by our children. Going "on the defensive" is not helpful. Promising them hell if they don't start going to church is a waste of time. Rather than being defensive, we need to find a response to what often are valid criticisms. We need to find a way to speak to these challenges with a witness that has a chance to be heard. Preaching to the choir is no longer a sufficient response of the church to the challenge that atheism levels at us.

We first need to be humble and even grateful, because the challenge atheism levels at the church is really an opportunity that is offered to us, to purify our witness of the Lord and His gospel.

Second consideration. We need to humbly and without making excuses acknowledge to our children what is true in our failure to be the authentic witness of the true faith. We have failed miserable in many ways to live the Orthodox faith.

Finally, what is most important is to understand that the response that must be given to "bad religion" is not secularism or atheism but rather what St. Paul calls a "beautiful witness of the hope that is within us". How can we recognize authenticity when it concerns the Orthodox Church? What will convince our children to recognize where is the truth? In the same way we recognize beauty and goodness! They are self-evident! The same with the true faith! It declares itself! It attracts by itself. The reverse is also true: atheism is a parasite that feeds of the believers' betrayal of the truth.

When atheism becomes aggressive like it is today, when it even becomes nasty, this is perhaps a time to examine more closely what this phenomena mirrors inside many of our religious institutions.

Christmas Fast 2013 

God is Motion

Metropolitan Georges Khodr: God is Motion

Original Arabic here.

I am always struck by he words of the Nazarene, "Love your neighbor as yourself". He never once said, "strive for your neighbor to love you". Love is an act of going to the other, not of attracting an emotion. Christ never once said, "seek to be loved". You come into being by abandoning yourself. This is the mystery of humanity, that one of us subsists in himself or for himself. You exist in and with others. Human existence is communion: Your Lord knows you if you love. you exist if you forget yourself in your act of going to the other.

Individualism is true if you mean by it the independence of each one of us from the tyranny of the group, but individualism is not withdrawal or isolation. Personhood is contemporary philosophy does not mean isolation or inward withdrawal. It is the conformation of the self in love because the self exists in communion.

There is no contradiction between sound individualism and existing in society, because a good society does not eliminate the rational and loving self. Indeed, it can only exist in it. The group is not a herd because the herd has no love in it.

"Love your neighbor as yourself" because he is your equal, because the two of you are one before the Lord. The one whom you love is not necessarily your friend. You love because you come into existence through love insofar as it is going out from the "I" into the "we". Truth is in the "we". Egoism is exclusionary, but love is confirmed and confirms the other at the same time. It is not possible for you to love the other unless you subsist within yourself (and I did not say "subsist in yourself"). For you to subsist within yourself also means that you subsist in the other. You cannot be in yourself if you are not one with the Lord. If the Lord is not within you, you are deadly for yourself, you eat yourself.

Love is not in rejecting the self. It is rejecting the closed-off ego. If you go out to the other by casting egoism out of yourself, you return to yourself free. The one who loves does not hate himself. He hates to monopolize himself. Loving yourself, insofar as your self is from God, is loving God. It is gaining God for yourself, since if you do not make God your own, how can He be? If you do not understand that He is motion, He will not reach you. He is fixed in his motion.

God is a movement of love. We have only known Him in His supporting His people and no one knows Him unless the Lord Himself moves towards him. God is constantly in a state of coming down. This is the true meaning of inspiration. God is revelation. Yes, the Lord is fixed. This fixedness is His love.

Love is movement. It is you believing that the other is fundamental for you, even for your breathing. If you move toward the face of the other, you find the face of God. In your isolated tower, you have no god. It is your suicide. You do not face God by Himself. You find in Hi others, because God is in the group, in love. There is nothing that will be revealed to you if you do not go out of yourself to it and to others. You have no existence with your Lord if you are not with others. He is on their faces--it is there that you read Him.  

The Eucharist Dimension of Death

The Eucharist unites those who are broken in the body of Christ. Many times we think that because we are broken this brokenness we carry can never be restored. Humanity begins to develop different ideologies on how to be fix the brokenness of human beings in which, these ideologies, will always lead you back to step one. An example can be medicine. People take medicine in order to physically get better however, some individuals can develop an addiction which leads back to step one-brokenness. Now I am not saying medicine is bad, actually quite the opposite is true. With the rise of medicine, we as a specie have been able to advance far more in the past 150 years than we have in the last 2000 years before then. The natural question that stems from this then if we have advanced to this degree why is it that humans are broken beings? To answer a question is not easy but many points have been made from all sides. I would suggest that one common answer or common action that unites every human being no matter what religious belief or background one takes is death. Death, as we know it, will come to all human beings. Death is a certainty for all. Growing up I sarcastically was taught that two things that can never be avoided are taxes and death. Death is guaranteed to all, so by understanding death and what it means this will allow us to understand the brokenness of humanity.

What is death? Death in a physical sense and in a simple manner is when one's body stops functioning. Your heart stops to beat and life has left your body. You cease to exist. All human brokenness will cease once death occurs. However, society today treats death in the complete opposite manner. Death today is glorified and celebrated in way that people do not want to see death anymore. 50 years ago if a family member would die the body would remain in the home for a few days before the funeral took place. This practice today however, has ceased because people cannot see death no more. By not seeing death we as a society have forgotten what it means to be "dead". This is the simple reason why death is the hardest thing to accept. Death has become a "passion" and a form of brokenness to many because it is at the point of death that we as human beings cannot carry anything with us to the afterlife. This is a known fact that any human being can acknowledge no matter what one believes in. In death we lose all our positions. This is why death is hard for many. I would challenge the reader to take another perspective, or paradigm in regards to how one should view death. In order to accept death (seeing that it is the one thing that unites all human beings) we must understand what it means to live. It is in death that life begins. The church has always taught that through baptism and Eucharist we enter these mysteries through our death. We must die to the world in order to receive life. This is exactly what Christ gave to us through his own death. He was crucified and then was risen into life. This is why at the last breathe Christ said, "It is finished". What is finished?

The restoration of the human being. Humanity once again was restored in the image and likeness of our original creation. As God spoke in Genesis by making us in his image and likeness, through Christ death and life we have been restored. Brokenness is shattered and new life has been given to all. This is why we chant during Pascha (Easter) Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death. Through Christ death He abolished death and through death he gave life to all. Unfortunately, many in our society cannot comprehend such a notion of destroying death because there paradigm of death is limited. If death becomes a separation of the individual from their positions then death surely will be a great travesty to all. However, if we are "separated" from our positions and we learn to die daily to the "passions" that constantly bombard us then death will truly be a reward as the spirit goes to its rest in Christ. Positions are good and we need them to survive and expand however, when I speak of separation I speak of attachment. We cannot be attached to positions. To be attached means to be "addicted" (for lack of better terms). One example that comes to mind is Frodo from the Lord of the Rings. He grew attached to the ring that at the end he did not cast it into the fire until he realized how much pain it caused him. If we learn to live in harmony with creation and see the good in creation then surely death, when it comes to us, wont be painful, but rather a restoration to the one who gave us all that is good. This culminates in the Eucharist. What it means to partake of the Eucharist is to die daily to that which holds us captive. The passions we have created around ourselves are what we constantly need to die to in order to have life. Then and only then will we be able to say, "into why hands do I commend thy Spirit" as we depart from this world.    

The following are two passages that inspired this entry. Fr. Alexander Schmemann and Fr. John Behr look at the dimension of the Eucharist and what this means for us today. The life of the church has never been perfect, but we are all united in the body of Christ by our participation in the Eucharist. I highly recommend both books as they both lay the ground work of the Eucharist. Fr. Alexander was a liturgical theology professor at St. Vladimir's Seminary and the dean up to his death in 1983. Fr. John is a patristic professor at St. Vladimir's Seminary and is the current dean of the school.                      
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For more than thirty years I have served the Church as a priest and a theologian, as a pastor and a teacher. Never in those thirty years have I ceased to feel called to think about the Eucharist and its place in the life of the Church. Thoughts and questions on this subject, which go back to early adolescence, have filled my whole life with joy—but, alas, not only with joy. For the more real became my experience of the Eucharistic liturgy, the sacrament of Christ’s victory and of his glory, the stronger became my feeling that there is a Eucharistic crisis in the Church. In the tradition of the Church, nothing has changed. What has changed is the perception of the Eucharist, the perception of its very essence. Essentially, this crisis consists in a lack of connection and cohesion between what is accomplished in the Eucharist and how it is perceived, understood and lived. To a certain degree this crisis has always existed in the Church. The life of the Church, or rather of the people in the Church, has never been perfect, ideal. With time, however, this crisis has become chronic. That schizophrenia that poisons the life of the Church and undermines its very foundations has come to be seen as a normal state.

Taken from the preface of Fr. Alexander Schmamann's "The Eucharist".

There is clearly a close relationship between the dynamism and the faithfulness of the Spirit and the action of the Word operative in the processes that lead both to the Eucharist and to the resurrection. It is by receiving the Eucharist, as the wheat and the vine receive the fecundity of the Spirit, that we are prepared, as we also make the fruits into the bread and wine, for the resurrection effected by the Word, at which point, just as the bread win receive the Word and so become the Body and Blood of Christ, the Eucharist, so also our bodies will receive immortality and incorruptibility from the Father. As such, death, within the overall economy of God seen in the light of the Passion of Christ, takes on a Eucharistic dimension, alongside its educative and limiting function, and the economy as a whole can be described as the Eucharist of God.

Fr. John Behr, The Mystery of Christ, page 106.  

Worship and Life

This icon shows St. Bishoy washing the feet of Christ. St. Bishoy is known for his humility and never saying no to any individual. One time him and the monks were on there way up to the mountain to meet Christ (it was foretold to them that Christ would appear on the top of the mountain). There was a beggar on the side asking for help to be carried up. All the monks ignored him except for St. Bishoy. He carried him on his back and the closer he got to the top the lighter the person got to the point where the person disappeared and it turned out this person was Christ whom all the monks walked passed. This is an excellent example of how we must all see Christ in every human being. 

Continuing from our last post on Father Alexander Schmemann let us reflect on the meaning of liturgical worship. Father Alexander always spoke about the the relationship of worship in relation for the life of the world. But what does this mean? How can one understand worship in relation to our own lives?

Liturgical worship should not be understood as another addition to the Christian faith but rather, it forms the foundation of Christian identity-expressing our highest purpose. Worship reveals to all what we believe and based on this belief, how we see ourselves in relationship to God, with one another, and the world into which we are called to carry the redemptive mission of Christ (cf. Mt 28-The Great Commission). The way in which the church worships is a witness to the truth of what she professes. Worship becomes a dynamic means of bringing in the entire human community into life everlasting with Christ. This is given through the expression of beauty! Liturgical worship transforms not just the individual but the entire community which participates in it. This is the dynamic relationship between worship and life. What is practiced is lived out, expressed, and becomes a witness for the life of the world.

The centrality of worship describing the life, identity and mission of the church, Fr. Alexander would use a Latin term to describe-"Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi". The phrase means the law of worship (prayer) is the law of faith (belief). Sometimes the term was expanded to include at the end "Lex vivendi" (Law of life), deepening the implications of this truth. How we worship reflects what we believe and this belief and worship shapes how we live. How we worship guides how we live the Christian faith and fulfill the Christian mission in the world by manifesting the joy in declaring the risen Christ.

Sadly though as society progresses forward and the rise of materialism and secularism, taking on passionate forms, becomes the paradigm to many. Liturgical worship then ceases to be at the center of life. Liturgical worship ceases to be lived out but instead becomes a form of rituals being performed by a few people. What then develops is a separation of the "sacred" (liturgy) and "profane" (the rest of the world). This point Fr. Alexander wrote greatly on stressing the fact that there is no separation of the "sacred" and "profane" because through God's creation all has been sanctified and blessed and this blessing is realized at the heart of the worship. By allowing worship to be our starting point in life then we will appreciate all of creation as it was meant to be from the beginning-God created it and it was good.

What has developed is an effort to simplify, by trying to make the worship more "attractive" to people from the outside has actually resulted into liturgical minimalism. This minimalism can take on many forms but one example of this can be when you enter into the "church" on a Sunday morning and is filled with people conversing with each other about how there week was or cell phones ringing throughout the service. This point goes back to the separation of the "sacred" and "profane". People have forgotten that Christ incarnate, the crucified and risen Lord is not only present in the "church space" but is present in the world as well. Our actions within the church determine our actions in the world. We must prepare our hearts and mind when we receive Christ and this is no different when we present ourselves in the world. This is why Fr. Alexander is stressing the point that there is no difference between the "sacred" and "profane". Every action, thought and step is done by choosing to put on Christ. Hence there is no such thing as "sacred" or "profane".          

Another liturgical minimalism that has developed is in the thought and ethos that people have began to develop that symbols of our worship, faith and our life is a problem. These long "liturgies" and "prayers" need to be reduced in order to accommodate the needs of the people. By stripping down the prayers and making the liturgical experience lose its richness, they think they have somehow made the faith more "relevant" and "contemporary". These individuals fail to grasp and understand human nature being symbolic. Anthropos (human beings) is created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1.26-27) making the human being a divine icon of God. With the initial creation being symbolic in nature, symbols touch us at a deeper level more than words or effective (emotional) participation can. When we seek the one who created us good in his image and likeness, this is where we hunger most for God and we turn to Christ through worship to understand this great mystery.

Back in 2010, Pope Benedict addressed bishops in Rome speaking to them about the meaning of the Eucharist. He said, "the center and permanent source of the Petrine ministry, the heart of the Christian life, source and summit of the church's mission of evangelization. You can thus understand the concern of the successor of Peter for all that can obfuscate this more essential point of the Catholic faith: that today, Jesus Christ continues alive and truly present in the consecrated host and the chalice". Pope Benedict continues on by warning the bishops that, "Paying less attention at times to the rite of the Most Holy Sacrament constitutes a sign and a cause of the darkening of the Christian sense of mystery, such as when Jesus is not the center of the Mass, but rather a community preoccupied with other things instead of being taken up and drawn to the only one necessary: their Lord. If the figure of Christ does not emerge from the liturgy, it is not a Christian liturgy. As venerable John Paul II wrote, "the mystery of the Eucharist is 'to great a gift' to admit of ambiguities or reductions, above all when, 'stripped of its sacrificial meaning, it is celebrated as if it were simply a fraternal banquet;". By the end of his talk Pope Benedict summarized everything when he said, "Worship cannot come from our imagination: that would be a cry in the darkness or mere self-affirmation. True liturgy supposes that God responds and shows us how we can adore him. The church lives in his presence-and its reason for being and existing is to expand his presence in the world".

The relationship between worship and life is important in order to experience the beauty and to show it to others. As the old saying goes the truth will set you free. In this instance the truth becomes our unity in the body of Christ which becomes a life to all. When we come to encounter the joy of the risen Lord in the liturgy we live out his life in the world. The same life in which he was crucified we learn to be crucified to the passions and become free in order to sanctify our bodies and be made worthy. This joy then is experienced and share with everyone. By transforming our lives into the live giving bread we become a source of life to all. How? Our actions and interactions become this source of life. If you are at work, in school, studying, going out, helping with social services, helping at a church, going to a food drive, talking with the homeless, spending time with people at hospitals and the list goes on and on. All of this becomes sanctified and once people see the good in you then Christ becomes the paradigm to all. As Father Alexander Schmemann said, "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi", as we worship, we believe and so we will live!          

St. Francis of Assisi was always known to help the poor as he dedicated his life to the work of helping others unconditionally. Let us learn from St. Francis that we should never ignore or pass by any human being in time of need. 

The Sacrament- For the Life of the World

Many approach the sacraments as some sort of magical trick performed by a priest. Actually it is quite the opposite. The sacrament, the mystery, is our participation in the body of Christ. The same Christ, who as the priest recites during the liturgy, "For being determined to give Himself up to death for the life of the world". Christ is the one who gave his life for the life of the world. This is the mystery in which we are called to participate in the sacraments. Our own "death", in participating in the sacraments is the same participation Christ gave us through his own life culminating in his death and resurrection. There is no separation in the life we are called to live within the body of Christ and the life we live for the world. There seems to be this preconceived notion that the sacrament is set out against, or existing outside the rest of life. There is a distinction between the sacred (sacraments) and profane (the world). This notion stands at odds with what Christ established as giving up our lives for the life of the world. The world has been sanctified by his death and resurrection. The idea of profane and sacred has been broken. All that we do and participate in has become sacramental. This explains why we must bring the conclusion of the liturgy (the Eucharist) to the rest of the world. This Christ who died and rose, in which we participate in through our own life, must be brought within the life of the world. The Eucharist represents our own death in the body of Christ, and if we accept this notion of death (which we do by participating in the Eucharist), then as we constantly are called to die we must live out this death in the world we are in constant motion with. Our lives then has, in a sense, become sacramental. We then become an offering made by our own death in the body of Christ that is constantly lived out.

The following quote that was e-mailed to me sums up these thoughts a lot more coherently. I would recommend Fr. Alexander Schmemann's book "For the Life of the World" as a good read on this very topic of the sacramental life.        
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It must once again be emphasized that the sacrament is not something set over against, or existing outside, the rest of life, so that it is sacred while the rest of life and all other things are non-sacred or profane or non-sacramental; it is not something extrinsic and fixed in its extrinsically, as if by some sort of magical operation of Deus ex machina the sacramental object is suddenly turned into something other than itself and different from all other created objects. On the contrary, what is indicated or revealed in the sacrament is something universal, the intrinsic sanctity and spirituality of all things, what one might call their real nature. A recognition of the sacramental principle requires the recognition that nothing in life, in the created order, is, or can be, entirely profane or non-sacred; it requires the recognition of an essential “likeness”, a congeneracy or “identity in difference”, between the sanctifying power and what is sanctified, between the uncreated and created; it requires, finally, the recognition that the sacramental has a cosmic significance and is intimately related to every single aspect of created existence, and that therefore, while the way of looking at, or using, things may well be profane and non-sacred, the things themselves can never be.    

Last words of Fr. Alexander Schmemann-Let us give thanks!

Today, the feast of Thanksgiving is celebrated across the United States (mid-October for our Canadian readers). On this feast day Father Alexander Schmemann gave his final words in the church before his passing away a few weeks later (Dec 13 1983). It is quite fascinating how the Eucharist translates into thanksgiving. These final words were written down by Father Alexander, even though all his sermons were never written down. The beauty about this feast is that the church is always thankful because it is through our thanksgiving that we come together in love in the body of Christ.

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Everyone capable of thanksgiving is capable of salvation and eternal joy.
Thank You, O Lord, for having accepted this Eucharist, which we offered to the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and which filled our hearts with the joy, peace and righteousness of the Holy Spirit.
Thank You, O Lord, for having revealed Yourself unto us and given us the foretaste of Your Kingdom.
Thank You, O Lord, for having united us to one another in serving You and Your Holy Church.
Thank You, O Lord, for having helped us to overcome all difficulties, tensions, passions, temptations and restored peace, mutual love and joy in sharing the communion of the Holy Spirit.
Thank You, O Lord, for the sufferings You bestowed upon us, for they are purifying us from selfishness and reminding us of the "one thing needed;" Your eternal Kingdom.
Thank You, O Lord, for having given us this country where we are free to Worship You.
Thank You, O Lord, for this school, where the name of God is proclaimed.
Thank You, O Lord, for our families: husbands, wives and, especially, children who teach us how to celebrate Your holy Name in joy, movement and holy noise.
Thank You, O Lord, for everyone and everything.
Great are You, O Lord, and marvelous are Your deeds, and no word is sufficient to celebrate Your miracles.
Lord, it is good to be here! Amen.

Elder Sophrony on Liturgy

Liturgy is the essence of the Christian life. Liturgy is the starting point in which we Christians begin to live our life for the world. When we tell others to "come and see" that usually entails bringing that individual to a liturgical service. Whether it is vespers or the liturgy the point being made is that the liturgy is our starting point. What it means to be united in the body of Christ begins with the chalice which was offered to us on the cross and glorified through the resurrection. Our joy and hope rests in the resurrection of our Lord. This is why the last offering given by Christ was received through the last supper meal Christ shared with his disciples. The last supper has become a form of unity build on love between human beings. Christ offered himself for the sake of humanity and in doing so bestowed his unconditional love for us through the last supper meal as his last act before the cross. This is how we today share in the body of Christ. The highest point of the liturgy is the Eucharist, the meal of love which binds us in the body of Christ. Elder Sophrony has spoken beautiful words on the liturgy and in doing so let us see how the liturgy penetrates the life of a Christian.
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We Christians live Christ within the Divine Liturgy, or rather Christ lives within us during the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy is a work of God. We say: "Time is a creation of the Lord". Among other things it means now is the time for God to act. Christ liturgizes, we live with Christ. The Divine Liturgy is the way we know God and the way God becomes known to us. Christ celebrated the Divine Liturgy once and this passed into eternity.

His divinized human nature came to the Divine Liturgy. We know Christ specifically in the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy we celebrate is the same Divine Liturgy which was done by Christ on Great Thursday in the Mystical Supper. The 14th through 16th chapters of the Gospel according to John is one Divine Liturgy. So in the Divine Liturgy we understand Holy Scripture. The early Church lived without a New Testament, but not without the Divine Liturgy. The first records, the written hymns, exist in the Divine Liturgy. In the Divine Liturgy we live Christ and understand His word.

As Christ cleansed His disciples with his world and said to them: "You are already clean because of the world which I have spoken to you" (John 15.3) and He washed the feet of His disciples with water, during the Sacred Washing, so also in the first section of the Divine Liturgy He cleanses us that we might attend later His table of love. The purpose of the Divine Liturgy is to convey Christ to us. The Divine Liturgy teaches us an ethos, the ethos of humility. As Christ sacrificed Himself, so also should we sacrifice ourselves. The type of the Divine Liturgy is the type of impoverishment for us.

In the Divine Liturgy we try to be humbled, because we have the sense that there is the humble God. Every Divine Liturgy is a Theophany. The Body of Christ appears. Every member of the Church i an icon of the Kingdom of God. After the Divine Liturgy we must continue to iconify the Kingdom of God, keeping His commandments. The glory of Christ is to bear fruit in every member His fruit. This explains His word: "Herein is my father glorified that ye bear much fruit" (John 15.8)."

Elder Sophrony of Essex 

Faith, Charity and Other Thoughts

About two weeks ago I received an e-mail from a dear friend (Vanda) titled Faith and Charity. The e-mail exchange was sparked by a passage I read on community. What we often forget is the concept of community and faith within the life of the church. The church is the gathered community in the body of Christ. This gathering can only take place because of our faith in Christ. This shared faith and shared Eucharist is lived in the life of the world. We see many countless examples with Christ. One example that should be familiar with us with the story of the Samaritan woman. Christ, being a Jew, was not supposed to speak with her however, after a conversation not only did she receive the everlasting water but the bread of life was given to her by freeing herself from slavery which was bestowed upon her by the fear that clouded her mind. What was her reaction? She did not keep Christ to herself rather she went to everyone in her community and proclaimed the word of Christ. The community we are apart is not meant to be sheltered only for "us" but shared for the life of the world. Our faith speaks of this when Christ told his disciples to go to all nations and baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (cf. Matt 28). Faith and community lived out for others is a community made alive in the body of Christ. The following are a few passages I received in the e-mail exchange that reflect on this message. Thank you Vanda for sharing this with me!         

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Taken from Pope Benedict 16th Porta Fidei (Door of Faith):

…faith without charity bears no fruit, while charity without faith would be a sentiment constantly at the mercy of doubt. Faith and charity each require the other, in such a way that each allows the other to set out along its respective path. Indeed, many Christians dedicate their lives with love to those who are lonely, marginalized or excluded, as to those who are the first with a claim on our attention and the most important for us to support, because it is in them that the reflection of Christ’s own face is seen. Through faith, we can recognize the face of the risen Lord in those who ask for our love. “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25.40). These words are a warning that must not be forgotten and a perennial invitation to return the love by which he takes care of us. It is faith that enables us to recognize Christ and it is his love that impels us to assist him whenever he becomes our neighbour along the journey of life. Supported by faith, let us look with hope at our commitment in the world, as we await “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet 3.13; cf. Rev 21.1)…  

…the “door of faith” (Acts 14.27) is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church. It is possible to cross that threshold when the word of God is proclaimed and the heart allows itself to be shaped by transforming grace. To enter through that door is to set out on a journey that lasts a lifetime. It begins with baptism (cf. Rom 6.4), through which we can address God as Father, and it ends with the passage through death to eternal life, fruit of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, whose will it was, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, to draw those who believe in him into his own glory (cf. Jn 17.22). To profess faith in the Trinity-Father, Son and Holy Spirit-is to believe in one God who is Love (cf. 1 Jn 4.8): the Father, who in the fullness of time sent his Son for our salvation; Jesus Christ, who in the mystery of his death and resurrection redeemed the world; the Holy Spirit, who leads the Church across the centuries as we await the Lord’s glorious return…

…we cannot accept that salt should become tasteless or the light be kept hidden (cf. Mt 5.13-16). The people of today can still experience the need to go to the well, like the Samaritan woman, in order to hear Jesus, who invited us to believe in him and to draw upon the source of living water welling up within him (cf. Jn4.14). We must rediscover a taste for feeding ourselves on the word of God, faithfully handed down by the Church, and on the bread of life, offered as sustenance for his disciples (cf. Jn 6.51). Indeed, the teaching of Jesus still resounds in our day with the same power: “Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life” (Jn 6.28). We know Jesus’ reply: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (Jn 6.29). Belief in Jesus Christ, then, is the way to arrive definitively at salvation...

…we must not forget that in our cultural context, very many people, while not claiming to have the gift of faith, are nevertheless sincerely searching for the ultimate meaning and definitive truth of their lives and of the world. This search is an authentic “preamble” to the faith, because it guides people onto the path that leads to the mystery of God. Human reason, in fact, bears within itself a demand for “what is perennially valid and lasting”. This demand constitutes a permanent summons, indelibly written into the human heart, to set out to find the One whom we would not be seeking had he not already set out to meet us. To this encounter, faith invited us and it open us in fullness…