All is Given

The law of the Church is to give oneself to what is given, not to seek one’s own. All is already accomplished, all is fulfilled, all is given. The main mandate of the Church in the world is to reveal it and give it to us.

~ Fr. Schmemann, Journals, May 2, 1975

Yep, this is a repeat post. It’s worth repeating, especially now, when all has been given in the coming of Christ into the world.

Words Which Are Real in Themselves

Our service to God; service to our God. How easily, how unnoticeably the first becomes the second, and, while keeping a Christian appearance, becomes idolatry “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). These words, more and more strongly and forcefully, become for me the keys to everything in life.

As one approaches the essence of a thing, fewer and fewer words are needed. In eternity, in the Kingdom, only “Holy, Holy, Holy” will be needed, only words of praise and thanks, only prayer and the brightness of fullness and joy. This is why the only profound and needed words are not the ones which are about reality (discussions), but which are real in themselves, and as such are the very symbol, presence and mystery of reality.

The word of God, prayer, art—there was a time when theology was that “word of God,” not just words about God, but divine words, a revelation.

What is prayer? It is the remembrance of God, the feeling of His presence; it is joy from that presence. Always, everywhere, in all things.

~ Father Alexander Schmemann, from our parish web site, Holy Trinity Orthodox Church

The Kingdom of Heaven

Jim has put up a wonderful excerpt from Fr. Schmemann on heaven. My Dynamis readings are also talking about the narrow-mindedness of materialism. Christian faith teaches that there is more. Jim comments by comparing to Protestant beliefs. Their heaven sounds like a materialistic other world, and they project a sort of dualistic materiality. They are as material as the secularists. Christian belief escapes materialism on both fronts, reducing all to matter and materializing heaven, yet it does not leave the material world -- which is real enough, and part of our good creation -- dead, either. Spirit manifests itself *within* matter, and this is heaven.

Click to read more ...

Running Away from Christ

Simone Weil has said that though a person may run as fast as he can away from Christ, if it is toward what he considers true, he runs in fact straight into the arms of Christ.

~ Fr. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World, p. 19

The Activists

But there are those also, to whom the affirmation “for the life of the world” seems to mean naturally “for the better life of the world.” The “spiritualists” are counterbalanced by the activists. To be sure we are far today from the simple optimism and euphoria of the “Social Gospel.” All the implications of existentialism and its anxieties, of neo-Orthodoxy with its pessimistic and realistic view of history, have been assimilated and given proper consideration. But the fundamental belief in Christianity as being first of all action has remained intact, and in fact has acquired a new strength. From this point of view Christianity has simply lost the world. And the world must be recovered. The Christian mission, therefore, is to catch up with the life that has gone astray. The “eating” and “drinking” man is taken quite seriously, almost too seriously. He constitutes the virtually exclusive object of Christian action, and we are constantly called upon to repent for having spent too much time in contemplation and adoration, in silence and liturgy, for having not dealt sufficiently with the social, political, economic, racial and all the other issues of real life. To books on mysticism and spirituality correspond books on “Religion and Life” (or Society, or Urbanism or Sex…). And yet the basic question remains unanswered: what is this life that we must regain for Christ and make Christian? What is, in other words, the ultimate end of all this doing and action?

Suppose we have reached at least one of these practical goals, have “won” - then what? The question may seem a naive one, but one cannot really act without knowing the meaning not only of action, but of the life itself in the name of which one acts. One eats and drinks, one fights for freedom and justice in order to be alive, to have the fullness of life. But what is it? What is the life of life itself? What is the content of life eternal? At some ultimate point, within some ultimate analysis, we inescapably discover that in and by itself action has no meaning. When all committees have fulfilled their task, all papers have been distributed and all practical goals achieved, there must come a perfect joy. About what? Unless we know, the same dichotomy between religion and life, which we have observed in the spiritual solution, remains. Whether we “spiritualize” our life or “secularize” our religion, whether we invite men to a spiritual banquet or simply join them in the secular one, the real life of the world, for which we are told God gave his only-begotten Son, remains hopelessly beyond our religious grasp.

~ from Fr. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World, p. 12-13

Only Those Who Thank

Jim’s good recent posts from Fr. Schmemann have prompted me to pick back up my copy. So much to ponder. Here’s something short. The last week our house has been filled with teenagers as my best friend and colleague from Colorado came to visit with her crew, and my eldest daughter has struck up a friendship with the boy next door.

Youth does not know death because it does not know life. This knowledge comes after “we have seen the evening light.” “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:5). The young live; they do not thank. And only those who thank truly live.

~ Fr. Schmemann, Journals, August 23, 1975

Thankfulness. I do believe this is the key to it all. How to get there?

The Law of the Church

Fr. Schmemann, Journals, May 2, 1975:

The law of the Church is to give oneself to what is given, not to seek one’s own. All is already accomplished, all is fulfilled, all is given. The main mandate of the Church in the world is to reveal it and give it to us.

The power of this statement is enormous — too huge to grasp.

The danger is to love the Church somehow apart from Christ. There is more of that kind of love than one would think. But the Church is Christ, His life, His gift.

To seek in the Church anything besides Christ (and it means to seek oneself and one’s own) inevitably leads to temptation, to distortion and finally to self-destruction.

Not only are we tempted to seek our own in the world, but also in the Church. And if we do so, we miss what has been given, which is Christ, Who is everything.

Eternal Question

I’m behind in my Schmemann reading and posting. You can find some other great excerpts at Journeyman James.

From March 12, 1975:

My eternal question: How to draw a line between the pleasure given by “success” (pride), and the joy that something I considered important and true is reaching out (for God, not us, not me…)? How unattainable is genuine humility. Always, immediately, jumping to the surface is a small “I,” whom one recognizes as nothingness, as common hope and fear. With what means will God cure this conceit?

Fr. Schmemann is speaking of his writing and the encouragement of a colleague to “Write!” He “passionately wishes to tear himself from the chaotic hassle of his daily life to start working and writing,” but wonders if creativity is simply pride and ambition.

I can relate to this. I am never as happy as when I am reading, thinking, and writing — “working” in other words. I need to be “productive” to feel right, and this is how I define productivity. But what are the underlying motives of this need? Is it truly a need or merely a pleasure, an ambition? Is it service, or is it self-indulgence? Or pride - to think all this reading, thinking, and writing means anything? Does it matter what else in life must be sacrificed to find the time and peace of mind to “work”?

The two alternatives I find to “real work” are 1) busy-ness and 2) down time. If I am not working I am merely being busy, rushing from one thing to the next — usually in order to get all the necessaries done in order that I can make more time for “work”. Down time usually results from being too tired or too discouraged to work — again often the result of having too many cares or too much busy-ness. But perhaps the discouragement also results from placing too much hope on the wrong thing. Is the work, even if I could have as much of it as I liked, truly satisfying? Can a right-feeling in my soul not also be attained through everyday things, even “busy” things like cleaning, cooking, refereeing children, running errands, chatting with people in everyday circumstances? Isn’t the “most important work” whatever it is that I happen to be doing right now? Cannot Christ be brought — if I will let Him — into every moment? Shouldn’t He be?

Sacred History

~ Fr. Schmemann, Journals, Nov. 12, 1974

I keep thinking, again and again, about theological education in general, and about history in particular. Ideally, the study of Church history should liberate people from enslavement to the past… A contemporary student who does not know any history, who knows no history at all, is even less able to find his own synthesis and holistic vision of the world. The Church does not have a sacred history, as does biblical history. Our teaching, which singles out church history, transforms it inescapably into sacred history and distorts the very teaching about the Church, the very perception of its essence. … On one hand, I agree with historians, since without a historical perspective there would be false absolutisms. On the other hand, I agree with those of the pastoral group who tend to limit history for the sake of a real, live, existing Church.

The basic formula is the same: eschatological. The Church is the presence in time, in history, of the saintly and the sacred. Everything in time and in history is related to the Kingdom of God and is evaluated by this relation. The life of the Church is always hidden with Christ in God. The Church lives not by history but by the Kingdom. The historical events of the Church - such as the Ecumenical Councils - are important inasmuch as they are an answer to the world, an affirmation of salvation and transfiguration. As soon as they are absolutized, as soon as they gain a value per se, and not as related to the world; in other words, as soon as we transform them into sacred history, we deprive them of their genuine value and meaning. Therefore, the prerequisite for the study of church history must be to liberate it from being a sacred absolute, and not to be enslaved by it - which is so often a burden on Orthodoxy.

Hmm. We must study history so as not to absolutize the present, i.e. make the present experience the end-all be-all of Church life. On the other hand, neither must we make historical events of the Church, such as the Ecumenical Councils, into absolutes, into “sacred history” (the kind of history found in the Bible), because the historical events of the Church speak OUT of the Kingdom of God, which IS absolute, culminaitng, eschatological, INTO history, into time, to the world. Biblical history is absolutized. The Kingdom is absolute. The history of the Church in the world (the presence of the Church as it affirms salvation, transfiguration, the saintly and the sacred TO the world) is not.

Everything in time and in history, including the Church, is related to the Kingdom of God and is evaluated by this relation.

Religion Fascinates

I see that one can love religion like anything else in life: sports, science, stamp collecting; one can love it for its own sake without relation to God or the world or life. Religion fascinates; it is entertaining. It has everything that is sought after by a certain type of person: esthetics, mystery, the sacred and a feeling of one’s importance and exclusive depth, etc. That kind of religion is not necessarily faith. People expect and thirst after faith - and we offer them religion - a contradiction that can be quite deep and awesome.

~ Fr. Schmemann, Journals, Nov. 1, 1974