Mission Monthly – March 1998
“Outer stillness, with discerning asceticism (discipline), very quickly brings also interior stillness (the peace of the soul), which is an essential preparation for delicate spiritual activity. For as much as one distances oneself from the world so much more is the world distanced from within you and worldly thoughts leave and the mind of a person is purified and he becomes a man of God.”
Elder Paisios (+1994)
It is not for me to “officially” declare this and yet I humbly believe that now, three to four generations after the this century’s great immigration, Orthodoxy in this country has finally grown out of her infancy and maybe even her adolescence. The sleeping giant is awake.
Maybe it is a good thing we cradle Orthodox have been so busy establishing our families and preserving our ethnic traditions; it may have helped us buffer the growing pains and dynamic responsibilities of Orthodoxy’s rebirth.
Now our families are established and our churches are built; right and clear thinking theologians have produced hundreds of books in English and have trained most all of our priests; several of our hierarchs are American born while every bishop is serious about the direction the church is taking in this country, in this rebirth. Over the last decade more and more national attention has been given to our Orthodoxy and our churches are receiving large numbers of converts and inquirers. And one of the most clear signs of this awakening is the growing interest in monasticism and the building of monastic communities on American soil.
I have to believe this rebirth to be directly related to the widening “discovery” of the empty facades of materialism and freedom without responsibility. Only now do we seem to be discovering words and concepts like “the outer life vs. the inner life,” “the old man vs. the new man,” “the flesh and the spirit,” and “asceticism and discipline,” and I can only hope that people are discovering the many selfish idols presented to our society in the “American Dream.”
I write these thoughts as we approach the coming Great Lent, the time that the Church annually give us more than any other time to directly address and confront the idols and obstacles which interfere and maybe even prevent our own processes of purification and growth in Christian love and holiness. This is the time of the year (especially) that we dedicate our time and effort to participating in the Church’s increased liturgical cycle, to disciplined prayer and fasting, to pulling the plugs (literally) of our televisions, CD players, video games and entertainment centers, to the practice of silence, to reducing (if not eliminating) our social calendar. In other words, to establish a pattern of outer stillness, self-control and self-denial so that interior stillness might grow within us, helping us to live in the world while not being of the world. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever” (1 Tim. 2:15-17).
May the Lord’s blessing be upon us as we enter these days of effort and repentance. May we stand with courage and hope knowing that only when we trustingly enter into the Church’s discipline in the Name of our Lord, by God’s Grace, we may know the Truth and Joy of the Resurrection; and that at the end of this road, whether the temporary struggles of this life or at the end of it, there will be a great, heavenly celebration. This is the Fruit of the Spirit; this is distance from the world; and this is becoming the Godly person that each of us are intended to become.