Enterprise of Noble Daring

 And I would ask you, if it does not appear to you monstrous, that you men who are God’s handiwork, who have received your souls from Him, and belong wholly to God, should be subject to another master, and, what is more, serve the tyrant instead of the rightful King — the evil one instead of the good? For, in the name of truth, what man in his senses turns his back on good, and attaches himself to evil? What, then, is he who flees from God to consort with demons? Who, that may become a son of God, prefers to be in bondage? Or who is he that pursues his way to Erebus, when it is in his power to be a citizen of heaven, and to cultivate Paradise, and walk about in heaven and partake of the tree of life and immortality, and, cleaving his way through the sky in the track of the luminous cloud, behold, like Elias, the rain of salvation? Some there are, who, like worms wallowing in marshes and  mud in the streams of pleasure, feed on foolish and useless delights — swinish men. For swine, it is said, like mud better than pure water; and, according to Democritus, “doat upon dirt.”

 Let us not then be enslaved or become swinish; but, as true children of the light, let us raise our eyes and look on the light, lest the Lord discover us to be spurious, as the sun does the eagles. Let us therefore repent, and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from foolishness to wisdom, from licentiousness to self-restraint, from unrighteousness to righteousness, from godlessness to God. It is an enterprise of noble daring to take our way to God.

~ St. Clement, Exhortation to the Heathen, ch. 10 

Crucible of Western Tragedy - the Heart of a Convert

Fr. Stephen Freeman writes about the vision of Fr. Georges Florovsky in which Orthodoxy must encounter the religious tragedy of the west, diagnosing it through patristic experience and the “inner memory” of the Church, and engaging in a new sort of “polemic” by reporting “historical findings.” Fr. Stephen takes it one step further. He says this encounter has not happened through some professional theological enterprise, but is rather to be found inside the hearts of converts:

I would contend that converts have become to a great extent individual examples of Florovsky’s original proposal. They are now Orthodox Christians who have personally experienced the “western religious tragedy.” As a result of that tragedy they have come to Orthodoxy, but never as a tabula rasa. Every convert who enters the Church brings with them, in some fashion, the inheritance of centuries - problems not of their own creation but inherent to the West and to the modern Western world. To a large extent the problems of the “West” have now become universal problems for the simple reason that Western culture has become the dominant culture of the world. Others have our problems whether they want them or not. As converts within the West or even just Orthodox living in the West the inner encounter between Orthodoxy and Western experience is unavoidable.

Thus I see Florovsky as a “prophet” of sorts, but with the playing field drastically changed. He did not see the consequences of an Orthodoxy that could speak English (or French, or Spanish, or any number of other “Western” languages). Interestingly, my primary dogmatics professor, when I was an Anglican seminarian, had done his doctoral work under Florovsky at Harvard. His voice and vision echoed in that professor’s classes. How many Anglicans wrote papers on St. Gregory Palamas in earlier decades? I can recall reading Palamas (who was just beginning to be translated into English) and bringing his thought to bear on the problems raised in my theology classes. It was Florovsky’s vision - but in an entirely different setting. It is not surprising that I should have eventually become Orthodox - it is where the answers to my questions had always been.

Today, in ways and in places that many would not think of as “theological” in the formal sense, Florovsky’s vision is being fulfilled. We are the West - all of us who live here and many who do not. And within our own hearts is the crucible of Western tragedy meeting the patristic synthesis of the Orthodox East. At first the encounter can feel almost schizophrenic. It is all too easy to simply be anti-Western. But this is not an answer - just a reaction. God is not anti-Western, else He would have withheld Orthodoxy from us. But He has not withheld it. He has plunged it into the very midst of our culture with the assurance that the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church. And in the hearts of His people this great encounter of patristic theology - the living inheritance of the Christian Church - meets all the various forms that the “Western religious tragedy” has taken. I believe the meeting that takes place in the heart is not to condemn the tragedy (for Christ did not come into the world to condemn the world) but that through such an encounter the tragedy might be raised from its own brokenness into the fullness of the Church.

As always, Fr. Stephen’s insights penetrate deeply into my own spiritual condition. My heart is one of those crucibles, having been deeply affected by the west’s religious path — not so much by having run the gamut of western denominations before finally coming “home” to Orthodoxy, but rejecting “religion” outright (the western type), or at least remaining highly skeptical and unconvinced of it during my tenure as an extremely nominal Sunday Catholic. My skepticism has never gone away. Being nevertheless a Believer — within Orthodoxy — there is definite schizophrenia. And yet, “It is not surprising that I should have eventually become Orthodox - it is where the answers to my questions have always been.”

The whole article is well worth reading — as is Fr. Stephen’s blog in general — including remarks by him in the comments section. 

When the World Screams

Part of it is post-Theophany. Part of it is post-wedding. Part of it is pre-Lenten. I am slowly formulating in my heart to make some changes. Prayer is needed, and quiet. More Scripture. Time to hear the words of the Chuch.

When you make a resolution like that… how the world does scream. 

The Prayer of a Sinner

My goddaughter was married this weekend. May God grant her and her new husband many, many years! The wedding itself was perfect, not only in all the “arrangements,” which were indeed beautiful, but especially in the sacrament itself, the prayers and blessings, the betrothal, crowning, the common cup, and their three-times walk together. God gives so much to us. There are so many emotions. One wants to be a part of His love, how it moves, how it acts, how it accomplishes all things.

God knows, I do not have anything to give Katherine and David in the way of motherly or godmotherly or old-married-woman advice or wisdom. I wanted to pray for them, especially for my goddaughter. I could see her love, her hope, all her trust and expectation. Throughout the festivities of the weekend, it was difficult to find time and attention to pray. At one moment or another, here or there, I did try. Thank God that He can turn small things, unworthy things, into great ones. He does not need anything to shower blessings. But He hears the prayer of a sinner nevertheless. He has brought them together, and He has blessed them!

~*~*~ 

Prayer is always possible for everyone, rich and poor, noble and humble, strong and weak, healthy and sick, righteous and sinful.

“You may judge how great the power of prayer is even in a sinful person, when it is offered whole-heartedly, by the following example from Holy Tradition. When at the request of a desperate mother who had been deprived by death of her only son, a harlot whom she chanced to meet, still unclean, from her last sin, and who was touched by the mother’s deep sorrow, cried to the Lord: ‘Not for the sake of a wretched sinner like me, but for the sake of the tears of a mother sorrowing for her son and firmly trusting in Thy loving kindness and Thy almighty power, Christ God, raise up her son, O Lord!’ And the Lord raised him up.

“You see, your Godliness! Great is the power of prayer, and it brings most of all the Spirit of God, and is most easily practiced by everyone.”

~ St. Seraphim, to his spiritual son, Motovilov 

The Straight Rod

 The canons of the Orthodox Church may be viewed as a subject for an academic discipline… Canonical literature may also be viewed as a set of rules governing the lives of the faithful… Both these views fail to consider the fundamental nature of the canons as the Church’s ministry…

 The word “canon” is derived from a word that originally denotes a means to measaure wood or stone for construction and, when used for the Orthodox Church’s ecclesiastical legislation, implies a standard for behavior. In the words of Matthew Blastares, a late Byzantine scholar, “The Fathers who used this figurative expression, named their own decrees canons, from the metaphor of a stright rod, which was customarily used by those that pursued the arts of craftsmanship for the straightness of woods or stones or whatever else. For when place upon materials that were being finished, it made these straight and even for their accurate joining together.” In contrast to civil law, theh penalties for canonical transgression are medicinal and directed towards the spiritual state of the violator as well as the well-being of the Body of Christ, the Church…

~ Fr. Patrick Viscuso, Orthodox Canon Law, p. 2-3