“…you should be living a good Orthodox Christian life, one with a level of asceticism proper to your station as lay persons. Asceticism comes from the Greek (ahs-kee-tees-mos) meaning ‘a whole system of personal discipline for the purpose of combating vice and developing personal virtues.’ In the Orthodox Tradition, such a system includes a personal prayer life, daily spiritual reading—including the scriptures, frequent confession with a spiritual father of your choice, frequent communion, fasting, alms giving, and as much as possible, regular participation in the liturgical life of your parish. When we immerse ourselves in the life of the Church in all its aspects, then and only then do we begin to understand what the Church is teaching us …”

Bishop DEMETRI
Auxiliary Bishop to the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America

One of the tragedies of our modern “throw-away culture” are magazines which come and (most often always thankfully) go; yet occasionally with them go articles that are true gems. Before I file away (not throw away) my copy of the October issue of our Archdiocese’s THE WORD magazine, I desire with much anticipation to revisit and reflect upon the text of the wonderful lecture presented by our own Saidna DEMETRI at the 12th Annual Sacred Music Institute.

This is a lecture that I wish I could’ve heard and though it is directed towards those involved in the Church’s music ministry its application is absolute for all who witness to the name “Orthodox Christian.” The whole text is enriched and yet simply put, clear and challenging. In a recent conversation with Saidna he told me, “Father, we need to speak so that the simplest of our brethren can understand.” If only we could all do as well as Saidna did in this lecture!

Will it ever become easy to understand the essence of this faith which commands us, guides us, disciplines us and loves us? Maybe! Will it ever become easy for us to do what we are told and truly live our faith? Probably not! But we can and certainly must try, again and again and again. When I look at all the tasks which His Grace has laid out before us I, like many of you, say, “It is a lot!” But then the word “immerse” catches my attention. I’ve heard this word used many times; “He is immersed in his work;” “She is immersed in her education;” “That young man sure immerses himself in his athletic training;” “Grandma is totally immersed in her family.” What else can we expect from people who want to “succeed” in the things they desire, pursue and love? But what about our relationship with God and the skills of living our faith? Does not this demand our immersion as well? Many in our society would like to think not and I believe that many in our own faith have determined that the above guidelines are optional (leaving their exercise to those “responsible” for the Faith—the clergy and the monastic). For those who might believe this, they could not be further from the truth. Saidna DEMETRI’s quote ends by saying, “When we immerse ourselves in the life of the Church in all its aspects, then and only then do we begin to understand what the Church is teaching us… ” If it could be said more strongly I would say it right now, but I do not believe it could be said any more strongly or plainly; “then and only then!” If you want to have a relationship with God, this is the only way!

I have been blessed to know people who have indeed immersed themselves in this life and have received the grace and born the fruit of holiness and righteousness. For those who know the joy of life found only in following the loving boundaries of the life of the Church, may God continue to bless your holy journey with encouragement in your struggles and humility in your joy. For those whose conscience is telling you that you have not made the effort and that you are letting the other immersions of your life dominate your time and steal your concentration, you need to know that faith, like love, is action and to receive the benefits of faith you have to act. Orthodox Christian action is simply this, “…a personal prayer life, daily spiritual reading—including the scriptures, frequent confession with a spiritual father of your choice, frequent communion, fasting, alms giving, and as much as possible, regular participation in the liturgical life of your parish.”

I cannot say that I have been given the grace of a holy and righteous life but I can say that I know the joy of the struggle in getting there. Please, let us all join in this blessed struggle, for it is Emmanuel, “God with us,” who commands and follows, offers and receives, lives and dies. “Is the servant greater than the Master?” This is our true immersion, the only one that matters! God will care for those a hundred fold who give up all to serve His Holy Name! Let no sin, no passion, no person stand in our way, as our God-bearer, Saint Ignatius of Antioch said, “Only let me get to Christ!” May God bless and guide us as we walk this road to Him; may He take away our fears and support our weakness; and may He let us know the love that awaits us when we truly immerse our lives in Him!

“[People] are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that [a person] can be induced to make, the more often they will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered.”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

There has been something burdening me for the last couple of years. It has been a sporadic, social subtlety which, like a chronic cold sore, may be hidden for a time but at the slightest irritation reappears with its oozing ugliness and stench. What I am referring to is anger. Maybe one reason I am so sensitive about this issue is because of my work in a mainstreaming Special Education program. Many of my students are placed in lower level classes, exposing me to many regular education students who come from challenging and difficult situations (some of whom are even labeled “at-risk”). If there is a common thread which runs through the characters of many of these challenged young people it is a common thread of anger, which usually seems ready to (and many times does) explode at any moment.

Each time another “crisis” arises I wonder, “What is it this time?” I usually see nothing truly provoking. Most often it is merely a request from the teacher for good behavior. When crisis occur the self-willed student feels imposed upon while the inconvenience of academic expectation drives the undisciplined into sudden rage. I am occasionally able to interact with these kids in less “hostile” environments and, therefore, am able to see their potential goodness and more gentle natures; but my heart is saddened by these relatively frequent episodes of young people violently transformed.

On a larger scale one need only open any current publication or turn on the nightly news to hear about short tempered tragedies often resulting in property damage, physical harm or even the loss of life. What is this emotion which so often results in irreparable damage? What is the cause of an irritation so great that it insipidly motivates one to injure another (and ultimately himself)?

We live in a country which promotes, more than anything, the self-rights of the individual. The ideal which is set before us time and again is an ascent to freedom without accountability. The essential issues of “civil rights” nobly fought for in the earlier decades of this century, lose their moral excellence when people “claim and blame” every time actions are taken or decisions are made which may restrict or interfere with this “ideal” and our perceived “claims on life.”

C.S. Lewis is quite agreeable with the Fathers of the Church. Anger comes not when a person encounters misfortune. We all encounter misfortune from time to time. Rather, anger comes when our misfortune aggravates our possessiveness. Anger is inevitable when someone or something disrupts our ownership of agenda and priority.

Compounding this problem is the growing social perception of entitlement. It seems more and more people, crossing all levels of society, believe they are entitled to something more than they have. What amazes me even further is how a person can be so consumed with their own self-right that they lose sight of the other. Is it any wonder that ours has been labeled an “angry society?”

This is not the first or last meditation ever written on the selfish causes of anger, nor the first admonition to be (especially we as Orthodox Christians) more pure, humble, patient and loving. When the priest prays in the Holy Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy, “Thine own of Thine own. We offer unto Thee…” he acknowledges our belief that all belongs to God while we are only challenged to be faithful stewards. The moment we take ownership of anything, even life itself, we fail and fall into disappointment and conflict.

In a sermon given in honor of our own St. Ignatius, St. John Chrysostom said, “He put off his body as easily as a man takes off his clothes.” And our blessed patron wrote in his letter to the church in Rome just prior to his martyrdom, “I but begin to be a disciple of Christ when I desire nothing, either visible or invisible, but to come to Christ.” May God help us to recognize the signs of our selfishness and acquire the balance of the great monastic father who when served salty soup would quietly add water, or when served bland soup would quietly add some salt. He knew that if he were to give way to anger he would be offering up his heart to the will of those who so hate the Glory of God and the peace that belongs only to men of good will.

“First of all, it is important to remember that prayer is an encounter and a relationship, a relationship which is deep, and this relationship cannot be forced either on us or on God. The fact that God can make himself present or can leave us with the sense of His absence is part of this live and real relationship. If we could mechanically draw him into an encounter, force him to meet us, simply because we have chosen this moment to meet him, there would be no relationship and no encounter. We can do that with an image, with the imagination, or with the various idols we can put in front of us instead of God; we can do nothing of the sort with the living God, any more than we can do it with a living person. A relationship must begin and develop in mutual freedom.”

Metropolitan ANTHONY Bloom, “Beginning to Pray”

Long before ordination the discovery of this most amazing and perplexing reality of the pastoral priesthood was revealed to me. Working in the Church for many years taught me much about mutual freedom. Throughout the years, as much as I have desired for people to acquire an interest and enthusiasm for encountering Christ in the life of His Holy Church, I have understood that it could never be forcibly imposed. The priesthood has become a fulfilled extension of those early lessons and the fringe of my epitrahilion (stole) reflects and reminds me of the souls given to my care through the yolk of ordination.

It is more than difficult to grasp the total and vast amount of freedom which God heaps upon us in His total and abiding love and desire for communion with His creation. Simply put, we are completely free to act or not act, to respond or not respond, to love or not to love. When I look around and experience, directly or indirectly, the choices people make in their lives as they try to “work things out,” more often than not I sense an expectation more than a belief that God is going to somehow make things work for them, in spite of their faith, faithfulness or lack thereof. What I do not sense as much is the understanding of mutuality in one’s relationship with God (or with the other) by extending the kind of reciprocal freedom which He affords us.

God through the Church has given His creation guidelines in the pursuit of the life He would have for us. These guidelines are clear, uncompromising and filled with natural consequences. Could there be any other way than this? Or maybe the question could be better put, “would we have it any other way?” I heard on talk radio the other day a discussion about “liberty” as expressed in the American Constitution. What was interesting was that none of the “experts” could really define liberty; they said only that we would know what it is if it were ever taken away.

In truth, God would never take away His freedom; to say or think so would be to deny this part of God’s energies which we’ve been given to understand. C.S. Lewis’ comment about this in his Screwtape Letters may help explain why; “The ENEMY (God) wants (man), in the end, to be so free… He wants to kill their animal self-love… (and) restore to them a new kind of self-love—a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbors as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbors.”

Maybe if we understood that mutual freedom is all about love and desire only “for the good of the other” we might know the natural consequence of the kind of self-love that is unencumbered by possessive entrapments. This kind of love requires much patience and forbearance and a willingness to partly measure one’s spiritual maturity by the ability to live within the gray areas of life (seeing life in two colors, black and white, is the red flag of a poor understanding of the love required to create the atmosphere of mutual freedom). This is a difficult place to live, a place of little or no definition or direction, and sometimes discipline. The problem of mutual freedom is the lack of control and the possibility of failure, both in ourselves and in our neighbor. But while it is difficult to actually “let go” in pursuit of this higher virtue, just think about how arrogant and prideful it is to think that anyone, especially ourselves, could control himself let alone another person (let alone the living God). The hypocrisy of a controlling nature should be obvious to a true Christian just as the consistency of a nature willing to take the same risks God took in creation, the risk of rejection, should be seen as blessed.

There is much to be learned about freedom and the responsibility of “response” as it necessarily expresses the true reception of this Holy Gift. It begins by our “voluntary surrender” to the life of the Church, i.e. worship, prayer, fasting, study and participation in the social life of the community. St. Paul said it powerfully in his second letter to the Corinthians, “He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly (9.6).” If we wish to receive the fullness of God’s blessings… His healings… His love… then we must move in His direction. This is our first ministry in the priesthood of all believers. If we do not, there will be no one to blame but ourselves.

“In modern Christian writings, though I see much (indeed more than I like) about Mammon, I see few of the old warnings about Worldly Vanities, the Choice of Friends, and the Value of Time. All that, your patient would probably classify as “Puritanism”—and may I remark in passing that the value we have given to that word is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years? By it we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life.”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Author C. S. Lewis took much heat for the writing of his Screwtape Letters, both from without and within. He commented in his introduction, “Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment… Though it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun… The strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp… Every trace of beauty, freshness, and geniality had to be excluded. It almost smothered me before I was done.” A periodical which published The Screwtape Letters lost a country clergyman subscriber on the ground that “much of the advice given in these letters seemed to him not only erroneous but positively diabolical.” This book is both a triumph and a challenge, and like so many of C. S. Lewis’ publications we applaud his effort to reveal to his readers a deeper awareness (in this instance of the devices used by Satan to enslave God’s holy creatures) of the joyous struggle in our life in Christ.

Truly, as Orthodox Christians, we have to ask ourselves, “What has happened to modern Christianity?” If we are now living in the “post-Christian” era it is not the world we have to blame, it is ourselves. If we are a Christian nation it must have taken many Christians to escort in the advent of the revolutions of science, sex and personal success. It is a difficult admission but like our neighbor, our co-worker, and the man on the street we too have fully enjoyed and entertained the personal freedom that our society has provided (some more than others.)

I studied business in college (I know, some of you are asking yourselves, “Why?”). Unfortunately I discovered too late that my temperament is not cut out for the business world (or maybe this was a blessing in disguise). My conscience began to speak to me towards the end of my studies as the ideas of “profit motive” and “human resource management” were pounded into my head, while the ideas of ethics and morality were only to be found in some old book, somewhere on a dusty shelf. I do not bemoan the aspects of business which lead a man to hard work and to the betterment of his family and society, but somewhere in the midst of becoming the wealthiest nation in the history of the world we have become haunted by the abuse of personal freedom. I have never heard it said better than by Mother Theresa of Calcutta: “I have seen no greater poverty than the spiritual poverty of America.”

I do not know much about the Puritans but I do believe it to be a tragedy that their name has become negatively synonymous with some of the best teachings of the Christian Faith. Why? Because it is a name associated with the “outmoded” ideas of faith, sin, moral discipline, self-restraint, chastity, charity, honesty, accountability, modesty, respect, obedience, thrift, responsibility, sobriety, community, enterprise.

One can never really know what the future holds. There is much to be hopeful for, for our lives and for the lives of our children. But decisions have to be made, stands have to be taken, convictions have to be followed and our faith has to be uncompromising. Our struggle will never go away, in fact it will probably intensify. I recently saw an ad on T.V. for a new show airing this fall, staring former Playboy model and very popular sex symbol, Jenny McCarthy. The ad was merely a visual and spoken quote by the philosopher, Socrates, followed by a one word commentary, “‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’… whatever.” Parents beware! This world would trash everything we value and teach our children that there is no right or wrong, only what THEY feel. It is my hope that one day we will recognize the sin and cause of our surrendered authority and reclaim that which has been lost to the plagues of pride-filled freedom and blind indifference.

C.S. Lewis was right, the devil is rescuing thousands of humans every year from “temperance, chastity and sobriety of life.” May we be saved from this rescue and may God grant us the wisdom and courage necessary to face the demonic challenges of our day. We stand assured in the presence of His Kingdom and we stand together as His Body, the Church, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.

“I saw that there was no tragedy in God. Tragedy is to be found solely in the fortunes of the man whose gaze has not gone beyond the confines of this earth.”

Archimandrite Sophrony

The context of the above quote is a recollection of Archimandrite Sophrony from when he was a young man experiencing the devastation of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. I am so moved by his observation, his sensitivity, his ability to see beyond and transcend the moment. Brothers and sisters in Christ, how many will join me in the admission of having played the “blame game?” Possibly even having gone so far as to doubt God because of some social calamity or to blame God for some personal misfortune?

If any of you have read the life of St. Seraphim of Sarov maybe you will remember the episode where this humble man, who was rumoured to be harboring a great treasure in his forest hermitage, was beaten severely by local robbers? Thankfully he was able to crawl his way to his home monastery for help and rehabilitation (though he was permanently left as a hunchback). When the trio of criminals were eventually caught Father Seraphim refused to press charges. Fully repentant, the three men came and threw themselves at the old man’s feet and begged his forgiveness. He, of course, gave it.

Can you imagine this revolutionary faith? This extreme forgiveness in the face of such ignorance and evil? Is it actually possible to follow the radical words of Jesus embodied in the example of Saint Seraphim, “But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also… I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”(Mt. 5:39-44)?

Tragedy in the world can take many forms. It may be the sudden death of a healthy new born infant or the madness of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. It may be the physical and emotional abuse of an alcoholic parent or the coldness of a drive-by shooting. It may be the proliferation of abortion and its grisly means or our nations aged being left to die in nursing homes. It may be the folly of political intrigue or the pollution of our natural resources for the sake of corporate profit. It may be an old person robbed of their financial savings by a fast talking con-man or a homeless mother stealing food to feed her hungry children. It may be young black children killed in a church bombed by racist hunters or a poor, old monk beaten for possessions he is only rumoured to own.

Is it any wonder that we have a Generation X, a generation of young people who are said to be living without hope or purpose? One Orthodox theologian even wrote a book about this called “Nihilism,” from which one could conclude that Archimandrite Sophorony’s quote may no longer be simply a personal tragedy but rather the social reality of our western, materialistic, God-forgotten culture.

The actuality of the above mentioned examples may exist, as well as the cynical and aimless trends of our Generation X; but IN NO WAY have we been left hopeless or helpless. Could there be any greater joy than to call upon Christ in the midst of any and all calamity? Could there be any greater possibility than the piercing rays of God’s Love and Power as we contend against the misfortunes of our day? “God’s scripture gives proof in numerous passages that man must undergo many disturbances in this life and also that many consolations are at hand. With these, a spirit of sufficient vigor and awareness of the right should overcome present discomforts and look to those things that promise everlasting joy. The consolations do indeed outweigh the discomforts, because they impart calm in present difficulties and the hope of things to come…” (St. Ambrose of Milan).

The easy route is to give way to the pangs of self-pity, or to be filled with doubt, blame, or even rage. It can never be forgotten that we are creatures created in the image and likeness of God. Ours is an essentially good nature and with God’s Grace and firm conviction we can rise above the limitations of this blessed, though fallen, life. The Kingdom of God within us is worthy of the invitation expressed through the great Promise of Jesus, “And lo, I am always with you…”(Matthew 28:20). The vision of God’s Kingdom can and will carry us beyond any difficulty, if we allow it. Let us turn our gaze to the Word of God, the words of our Holy Fathers, the lives of the Saints, the life of our Church’s Liturgy, and we will see and hopefully know the place where this life’s tragedy is joyfully crushed beneath the weight of God’s Glory! May the gaze of Heaven be ours as we seek to grow in faith, love and thanksgiving, and in the witness of God’s Kingdom within us!