In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Christ is Risen!

Just in case you’ve forgotten the reason I offer a few words at this time is not that I think I have anything important to say, but mostly to give you a rest after standing all this time.  We should be a little tired after the usual Lenten season and Holy Week, though wouldn’t you agree that it’s been a beautiful Lenten season and an inspiring Holy Week?

This is a feast of Life and a feast of Light.  In all our gifts from God nothing that we do can earn these gifts.  It’s because of God’s love for us that He gives them to us.  He wants so much for us to receive them, and to become sons and children of God; sons by adoption those who follow the Son of God.

In the world of darkness sometimes it’s hard to imagine how anybody can really come to know the Lord.  As we struggle with our desires, or sins, our uncertainties and doubts, our fallen nature, it truly is a miracle for any man, any woman or any child to be given the Light and to receive the Light, and to recognize Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of our souls, and all that He did for us.

I recall in college, when before I started coming back to the church more regularly, there was a Pascha at St. Elias Antiochian Church, a small little parish in LaCrosse, with about half the people who are here on a good day.  I hadn’t really done much that lent and when I spoke to the priest he simply encouraged me to come to church.  So I came.  And when I came that night, in spite of all my lack of preparation and relative disinterest up to that point something remarkable happened.  I cannot explain it, I guess ultimately it lead me here to this place where I now stand in these beautiful white vestments (by the way, handed down to me by His Grace, Bishop ANTHONY).

Anyway, something happened that day.  That for some reason as the people who couldn’t hold a candle to what you all sing here, so beautifully and wonderfully coordinated as always, they couldn’t hold a candle to this, somehow in the beauty of their sincere hearts and faith the Light of Christ was shown [to me].  And when they sang “Christ is Risen,” on that day, I started to believe.  I may have [believed] before that, I’m not sure, but sure after that I started to believe.  It was remarkable, the clarity after that, the clarity of everything I was hearing, which having grown up in the Greek church I didn’t really understand very much when I was a kid.  I had to follow a book and I never knew where they were so I was guessing all the time.  After I got older I figured it out.  But it all made sense.  And I knew that somehow in my youth, all those years going to church, my parents dragging me, Mom always reminding me even still today that I wasn’t always happy about going to church, they went and they took me.  We hardly ever missed [church,] maybe three times in eighteen years.  Somehow the Word of God came through all of that.  Because when you proclaim the Truth the soul hears it, when you proclaim the Truth the soul knows, whether it’s in English, Greek, Arabic, Russian, Romanian, Spanish, whatever.  Whether you understand it or not when Truth is being proclaimed it enters the heart and it rests there, it resides there until one day hopefully we respond to it with conviction, commitment and trust.

I was not in a particularly pious state of life at that time and I honestly don’t know why God gave that to me.  It was a little tiny thing but it was greater than the expanse of heaven.  For any of you who have experienced this, and I hope that you all have in one way or another, to even have a drop of this Light, a little beam of it just somehow penetrating the darkness of our lives, and we begin to see clearly of what life is for, what life is about, then things begin to make sense.  Our priorities change, the order of our lives become ordered by the will of God as we desire and pursue a life in His Kingdom not just in some distant future but today, for the Kingdom of God is near in the Resurrected Christ.  And for us to live near Christ, well, it is heaven.  Pray God help us to live near Christ and remember Him always.  We pray God give us a little grace, just a little., maybe on this night for all of us, maybe somehow through this Lenten journey and Holy Week, or maybe in the season of Pascha.  Who knows when it will come?  But as Christians here we stand ready to receive, ready to enjoy this great Feast, and to give glory to God Who loves and Who came to this earth in the flesh, Who taught us, Who healed us, Who suffered for us, Who died for us, Who was buried for us and Who rose from the dead so that He might be the first born of the dead, and that we might follow Him in the Resurrection unto Life Eternal!  May we see this clearly in the face of all that we are going through in this life; to trust in God and continue to seek Him with all our hearts, again, to live with Him now and always.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Christ is Risen!

Christ is Risen!  Indeed He is Risen!  Great Lent, 2012, has passed.  Holy Week is come and gone.  Pascha is here and the season of Life, Light and Joy has begun.  It was another wonderful time of preparation and celebration at St. Ignatius and we share here just a few memories of God’s blessings from this year’s Pascha.  This was the first year where inclement weather prevented us from processing outside after lighting our candles.  It is rare to have serious thunder storms so early in April.  We made do, however, and processed indoors and did the reading of the Resurrection Gospel and all the rest from in front of the closed Holy Doors.  The thunder outside could not compete with the thunderous singing of “Christ is Risen” inside!

   “Remembering a sin that we have committed does not mean that the sin has not been forgiven.  This remembrance of our sins is only a warning to us lest we become proud and sin again.  In fact, we – not God – are the ones who cannot forgive ourselves.”

Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

      Many years ago I had the opportunity to become familiar with Orthodox prayers from several different sources.  There was one prayer in particular that made a big impression on me; it included asking God to forgive a long, enumerated list of a wide variety of more and less common sins.  There is one sin from that list that keeps popping up in readings, conversations, and probably most commonly while hearing confessions.  That sin is called, “the remembrance of wrongs.”  I have sought explanation about this sin and believe I have been able to understand its meaning and nuances.  At this holy time of the year it is very appropriate to meditate on the topic of forgiveness.

Are there good remembrances and bad remembrances of sins?  It seems to be so.  Since the Elder has explained somewhat here the good remembrance let us look at the bad remembrance.  It is my experience that the bad remembrance has two components.  First, there can be certain attachments to a sin which continue to arouse one’s interest.  Yes, even one who is sincere in their repentance can still be attracted to the sins from which they are repenting.  Therefore remembering a past sin can be a major source of temptation and provocation, especially if it is remembered with nostalgia and in detail.  Second, there is the distinct possibility that one remembers their sins because they are afraid that God has not forgiven them.  This is something I’m certain every priest hears from time to time as a confessor: spiritual children re-confessing certain sins “just in case” God didn’t hear and forgive them the first time.  When this is the case I am always compassionate, but there are times when I have to be both compassionate and firm.   If the remembrance of our sins is based in doubt over God’s forgiveness then we are adding sin to sin.  One must be reminded in these situations that God’s forgiveness is, like His love, absolute and unconditional.  What are we preparing ourselves for during the holy Lenten season?  It is the entrance into the death and resurrection of our Lord.  While we should be doing this every day of our lives the annual journey of Lent and the celebration of Pascha is time set aside not as a simple commemoration of a distant, dusty past but as a complete and present affirmation of the work of the Cross and the mystery of the empty tomb.

When one uses words like “absolute” and “unconditional” when referring to God’s forgiveness it must be understood that this does not mean “cheap grace.”  First of all, since God’s grace can never be earned (what could a man do to earn/deserve this priceless gift?) it can never be “cheap.”  The point is this: when Jesus died on the Cross He did not did not die for only some sins, He died for ALL sins.  While the covering of this grace is beyond comprehension, we are yet asked to understand – and accept – this grace as the gift of love in which it is intended.  When in Confession or in our daily prayers we ask God to forgive our sins we are essentially asking for a gift that we have already received.  Why do we do this?  We find an answer in the Elder’s words “we – not God – are the ones who cannot forgive ourselves.”  The confession of sin is an act of contrition where we openly admit our mistakes, before God and our confessor, and offer our conscience at the altar of forgiveness.  Each of us must know that a man can deceive himself into thinking there is nothing “wrong” with him and therefore he doe not need confession, but the clear truth is that a man can never deceive his conscience.  The cleansing we receive through sincere confession readies the soul through the conscience to stand before God in judgment; it is the preparation of man’s inner heart and mind to receive the great gift that has already been given.  Our belief in this gift is vital to our growth in virtue which, when lacking, according to St. Peter’s second letter, is a direct result of forgetting that we’ve been “cleansed from [our] old sins” (1:3-9).  Or to put it in a more colloquial way, “The man who forgets his past is bound to repeat it.”

Beloved, if we must, let us remember our past sins, but only in ways that are helpful; beyond this let us more importantly remember the Cross and the empty tomb, now as we once again approach Holy Pascha, and always.  The love of God is seen in the Life that He has given us and desires us to receive.  May we receive it joyfully and each day realize with thankfulness that the Kingdom of God is near!

His Grace Bishop ANTHONY, the newly consecrated auxiliary bishop for the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America assigned to serve the Diocese of the Midwest, made his first Hierarchical visit to Madison and St. Ignatius the weekend of January 28-29, 2012. This Sunday marked a feast of the Patron Saint of our parish, St. Ignatius of Antioch and the translation of his relics (following his martyrdom at Rome in the year +106 his companions collected his remains and returned them for burial in the city of Antioch where St. Ignatius served as bishop for over 40 years).  Saidna’s visit was also in conjunction with the celebration of our parish’s 15th anniversary of our first Divine Liturgy in Madison, December 1, 1996.

The weekend was highlighted by Sunday morning’s Hierarchical Divine Liturgy presided over by His Grace. On Saturday the St. Ignatius Parish Council hosted a brunch in honor of Saidna ANTHONY and met with him to discuss the state of the parish and the scope of our ministry as Orthodox Christians in America. Following the brunch Saidna met with the children of the Church School and then offered a 90 minute seminar to the entire parish, answering many questions regarding his life and his new ministry as bishop of the Midwest. The day was concluded with Great Vespers and preparations for Sunday’s celebrations.

On Sunday following the Divine Liturgy the parish hosted Saidna for a delicious luncheon banquet where the parish presented Saidna with a small monetary gift and the gift of new hard shell luggage for safely transporting his various delicate liturgical items, especially when traveling by air. The afternoon ended with a brief presentation by Saidna and his good friend (and our priest) Fr. Patrick Kinder as they sang a few of their old KERYGMA songs: “Coming Home,” “Best Friends,” and “The Old Black Bible.”

Thank you, Saidna ANTHONY, for your love and concern for our parish! May God grant you many years as you begin this new ministry serving our beloved Archdiocese and Midwest Diocese for many years to come!

On the Sunday following the celebration of the Great Feast of our Lord’s Theophany and Baptism in the river Jordon (January 6) the parish of St. Ignatius gathers at a parishioner’s home on the shore of Lake Kegonsa in Stoughton, WI, to offer the prayers of the Outdoor Blessing of the water.

Why the blessing of the waters? Fr. Thomas Hopko explains, “Since the Son of God has taken human flesh and has appeared in the world, manifesting Himself in His baptism in the Jordan, all flesh and all matter is sanctified. Everything which is corrupted and polluted by the sinful works of men is cleansed and purified by the gracious works of God. All death-dealing powers of the devil which poison the good world of God’s creation are destroyed. All things are again made new. Through the ‘prime element’ of water on the feast of the (Theophany) the entire creation is shown to be sanctified by God’s Word through the same Spirit of God who ‘in the beginning… was moving over the face of the waters.”

Following the prayers we returned to the house for a delicious pot-luck meal and a joyful afternoon of fellowship.