Archpriest John Erickson, professor emeritus of Church History and former dean of St. Vladimir's Seminary (2002-2007), was presented with the prestigious Johannes Quasten Award by The Catholic University of America's School of Theology and Religious Studies. Fr. John was recognized for excellence in scholarship and leadership in Religious Studies.
Following the presentation of the award on January 30, 2019, Fr John offered a lecture entitled: "Baptism in Eastern Christian Tradition: Ecclesial Context, Faith Content."
Established in 1985 as the only academic award given by The Catholic University of America (CUA)’s School of Theology and Religious Studies, the Quasten Medal is named after the Rev. Johannes Quasten, a professor of religious studies who taught at CUA for more than thirty years until his retirement in 1979. Quasten published more than 100 books and articles and is mostly known for his four-volume “Patrology,” a standard reference in the field of ancient church history and historical theology.
St. Vladimir’s Seminary wishes Fr. John and Matushka Helen Erickson many years!
In the latest edition of Caring for the Human Spirit Magazine, SVOTS Alumna and Board Certified Chaplain Clio Pavlantos writes about her experience as one of the first outpatient chaplains in the long history of New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK).
Pavlantos’s reflection, “The Role of Self-Care in Establishing the First Outpatient Chaplaincy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center,” appears in the Fall/Winter 2018 publication of Caring for the Human Spirit, a magazine dedicated to advancing the integration of spiritual care in health care.
“When I arrived, the outpatient Breast Service had no tradition of chaplaincy. Most of the staff…had never worked beside a chaplain, and many had no idea what chaplains did,” Pavlantos wrote. “I was starting from scratch, facing confusion and outright skepticism from some staff.”
She goes on to relate how her educational presentations and exercises with initially reluctant nurses led to better ministry to the nurses themselves, not just to patients.
“Staff began to see how self-care in turn improves patient care and began to understand that they need to care for themselves as they provide care for patients.”
Clio Pavlantos is currently staff chaplain at the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast and Imaging Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. She received her M.Div. from St. Vladimir's Seminary in 2012 and holds a chaplain endorsement from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.
As a proud Texan, it is more than a little ironic that my daughter has a New York birth certificate. Having spent all of our married life in Texas, my wife and I would have gladly welcomed our daughter before we moved to New York to attend seminary. However, as God would have it and for reasons unknown to us, we had to wait for this particular blessing until we left home. A friend of mine once remarked that the most important things in life are often those things we have little or no control over. That is a hard lesson to learn especially when what we want seems to be good and selfless. Yet, God wanted us to wait, so wait we did. And now, having moved to New York to attend seminary, we have been blessed with a determined and cheerful daughter.
Having a daughter has prompted some reflection regarding my vocation. “Vocation” is a word often associated with seminary. If I remember correctly, in an admissions essay, I wrote that I wanted to attend seminary to “explore the priestly vocation.” I am not sure if I am any more certain of what that phrase means now than I did when I wrote it! Rather, I chose to attend seminary because I’d already made up my mind that if I was extended the grace of ordination, I would not refuse it.
This is the only way it works. A person chooses to be baptized into Christ without really knowing what that will mean in his life, day to day. We accept the responsibility of following Christ (no easy task!) and believe God will provide the grace to ensure it happens. I had accepted the vocation of “father” when I married my wife. All we needed was God to grace our love and marriage with one of the profound blessings of marital union, that of bringing new life into the world. I had no idea how to be a dad seven years ago when I married my wife, but now that I have a daughter the learning curve has been steep! Slowly, at times painfully, I am becoming conformed to this vocation. By God’s grace, hopefully I’ll have it down by the time my daughter is an adult.
My darling baby girl has taught me the “already-not-yet” nature of following Christ. I am already her father, but at times not yet ready to be her father. I fail miserably and hope she is able to forget at least a portion of my shortcomings. Similarly, by virtue of the grace of my baptism, I am a Christian. Yet, I fail miserably and am not worthy to bear the name that is above all names. I am already, and not yet, a true Christian. In this way, God’s blessings meet us where we are and then propel us forward, to a place closer and more intensely connected with His activity in this world—activities such as raising children to know, love, and depend upon Him.
A priest on campus always calls me “dad.” This is a daily reminder that God not only chooses which blessing to give but the timing of the blessing as well. The moniker “dad” reminds me that God has a plan for me, and He will give me the grace that matches the gift and the challenges that come with it. I accept this vocation and the abiding grace that comes with it even though I am still working out the details. Now, if I could just do something about that birth certificate!
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Joshua Trant is in his second year of the Masters of Divinity program at St. Vladimir’s Seminary. Joshua and his wife, Heather, welcomed their daughter, Tabitha, last August. Being a native Texan, Joshua sometimes wonders how New Yorkers have survived so long without decent BBQ brisket. This reflection first appeared on the website of St. Vladimir’s Seminary.
During the final few months of 2018, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church ordained two priests and three deacons in North America—all graduates of St. Vladimir’s Seminary.
On October 23, Subdeacon Kuriakose (Alex) Abraham (M.Div., ’16) was ordained to the Holy Diaconate by the hand of His Grace Metropolitan Youhanon Mar Dioscorus at St. George Orthodox Church of Parampuzha, Kerala, India. Deacon Kuriakose has been active in youth ministry for the Northeast American Diocese, and was recently appointed as spiritual advisor for the annual Winter Summit conference for Malankara Orthodox college students.
Just a few days later, on October 27, His Grace Metropolitan Zachariah Mar Nicholovos ordained Subdeacon Thomas (Shawn) Thomas (M.Div., ’16; Th.M. ‘17) to the Holy Diaconate. The ordination took place at Diocesan Metropolitan’s Residence (Aramana), Muttontown, NY. Deacon Thomas has assisted Metropolitan Nicholovos and served as a speaker at different retreats and conferences in both the Northeast American Diocese and the Diocese of South-West America.
On the same weekend in December, the Malankara Church ordained another deacon and two priests: Priests Givargis (Abu) Koshy George (M.Div. ‘08) and George Ninan Manampuram (M.Div., ’17) and Deacon Geevarghese (Bobby) Varghese (M.Div., ’17). Priest George and Deacon Geevarghese were both ordained on December 21, at St. Mary’s Orthodox Church, Kuttemperoor, Mannar, India at the Metropolitan’s residence, respectively. Priest Givargis was ordained at St. George Orthodox Church of Westchester, Port Chester, NY on December 23. Metropolitan Nicholovos (Northeast Diocese) ordained Priest Givargis and Deacon Geevarghese; His Grace Zacharias Mar Aprem, Assistant Metropolitan of the Diocese of South-West America, ordained Priest George. The three newly-ordained have all been active in youth ministry, and they are currently awaiting their parish assignments.
SVOTS wishes the new priests and deacons many years!
Alumnus Priest Chris Moore (M.Div., ’18) has been spending time in South Korea since he graduated from St. Vladimir’s Seminary, continuing to carry the zeal for evangelism that brought him to SVOTS.
Fr. Chris, Matushka Jen, and their two young sons, Andrew and Gideon, are in the process of finalizing approvals and plans with the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC) and the Korean Orthodox Church to move to Ulsan, South Korea.
“We will begin with a two-year term in South Korea, and our hope is to serve many terms and live in the country for many years, as the Lord wills,” said Fr. Chris, who is originally from Indianapolis, IN.
He traveled to Korea in September and October in preparation for that ministry. Among other places, he visited St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral in Seoul, getting acquainted there with serving in the Orthodox Metropolis of Korea. At the cathedral, Fr. Chris began to learn and use some of the litanies and exclamations in the Korean language.
“Many faithful people work at the cathedral throughout the week: translators, administrative assistants, an iconographer, groundskeepers, clergy, etc., and it was really wonderful to get to know this group and to learn from them. I also had the opportunity to have some good conversation with Metropolitan Ambrosios [of Korea] and Fr. Antonios [Lim] about serving in the Metropolis and ministry in our anticipated city of Ulsan.”
Fr. Chris also visited Ulsan on his most recent trip, where he anticipates serving at St. Dionysios Orthodox parish, which lost their priest, Fr. Paul Kwon, to cancer last year and has been without a full-time priest since.
“Many Koreans and Korean families are part of the parish, along with a sizable expat community of Greeks, Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians, and Copts. It was clear in my short time at the parish that there is a need for a full-time clergy presence there among Koreans, expats, and seekers. We want to be ready and available for those who are members of the church, while also being attentive to how Christ is calling both us as missionaries and the parish itself to be his light, his witnesses, and his servants in the city and its surrounding region.”
Fr. Chris and Matushka Jen have been involved in mission work since before they came to SVOTS. In 2011, they applied to be full-time missionaries with OCMC and moved to Mongolia in October, 2014. Fr. Chris then enrolled at SVOTS in 2015 and moved back to the States to further his preparation to serve as a missionary.
Fr. Chris said his family has been thankful for God’s continued blessings as they transition to ministry abroad after Seminary.
“We value everyone’s regular prayers for our preparation, transition, and efforts, as we've seen even in this past month how God is faithful and truly works through the prayers of his people.”
I am surely not the only male convert to Orthodoxy who was initially surprised to discover how central the balance of the masculine and the feminine is to our faith and spiritual life. To some that may seem counter-intuitive in a church with a male priesthood with lots of facial hair, while to others it may be self-evident; nonetheless, it is true and important. For example, think of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Joachim and Anna, Zacharias and Elizabeth, or Constantine and Helen. We are always asking the female Theotokos to use her boldness as a mother to intercede for us with her male Son. We sing almost every Sunday about those myrrh-bearing women in matins and regularly chant and/or read about women saints of all kinds. We proclaim that Mary Magdalene was the preacher to the male apostles of the Lord’s resurrection and that she, together with various other women and men, are their equals. Since we are male and female in God’s image, this balance fits nicely with the deepest sensibilities of Orthodox Christianity.
Perhaps the strong women of my own family have helped me embrace enthusiastically the prominent role of women in the Orthodox spiritual life. In my hometown of Beaumont, TX, my three great aunts—whom we called by their nicknames, Hennie, Nig, and Gertie—lived just a few minutes from the house where I grew up. My grandmother had died when I was an infant, and these ladies more than fulfilled that role for my brother and me. One was a widow and two never married, but they lived together for decades and had very full lives. For example, Hennie was the first female school principal in Beaumont, an accomplished and enthusiastic fisherman (or fisherwoman ), and visited Alaska when she was around eighty. When my father first met these ladies in the late 1950’s, he said he had never met a group of such independent women. They were all devout and straight-laced Methodists, which is why my first educational experience was in a Methodist preschool. Since I did graduate work at Duke and now teach at Methodist-related McMurry, it is interesting that my academic experiences began and still continue in Methodist circles.
My mother and her late sister Fay have a lot in common with those great aunts. Both, like Hennie, were teachers, and they showed the same abundance of self-confidence that she had. I remember Fay once mentioning that someone at their Baptist church had asked where she and my mom got that quality. Her response was that it was from their father, who never gave them the impression that they should have been sons instead of daughters, and also instilled in them the belief that they could do whatever they set their minds to. I hope that I have sent the same message to my own girls.
My mother, now a widow and the only surviving member of her family of origin, lives independently in the house built by my great aunts. An active member of the Baptist congregation in which I grew up, she still spends lots of time and energy taking care of friends who suffer more than she does from the infirmities associated with a long life. A few years ago, Mom attended classes on Orthodoxy at St. Michael parish in Beaumont in order to learn more about her youngest son’s faith. Once when I was at St Vladimir’s Seminary in New York, our Bishop Basil was on the phone with another priest at the same meeting. When it was my turn to say hello to him, His Grace began, “The parish council in Beaumont loves your mother!” What a joyful confluence of important people in my life. After she slept unharmed through a burglary in her house a while back, Mom said, “Well, I suppose that God has something left for me to do.” I do not doubt that for a minute.
Given the self-confident women in my upbringing, it is probably not surprising that my wife is a physician, that our oldest daughter had the courage to spend last summer interning at an AIDS foundation in Ghana, and that our youngest had the confidence to go by herself to three summer sessions of “nerd camp,” a residential program for gifted and talented students a few hours away. Growing up Orthodox in Abilene rarely leads to social advantages, and neither does attending nerd camp. The virtuous lives our girls lead in college and high school require courage and self-determination.
Like my mother and aunts, Paige and the girls are not timid shrinking violets by a long shot, and neither were the women saints who had the boldness to go to the tomb of Christ in the wee hours of Sunday morning to anoint His body, and thus put themselves in the place to become the first witnesses of His resurrection. Neither were the countless female martyrs who died after enduring the worst tortures their enemies could produce for refusing to abandon their Lord. Above all, the courage of the Theotokos to say “yes” to the message of the Archangel Gabriel stands as the epitome of humanity’s response to God’s calling, and it was given by a teenage girl.
Perhaps part of why venerating and asking for the prayers of female saints comes so easily to me is that my life has been blessed by so many righteous women who pray for me and for whom I pray, regardless of whether they are now among the living or the departed. They are not canonized by the Church (at least not yet!), but the witness of so many holy women has benefited my own journey in ways beyond words. I could say a lot about my father, priests, bishops, and many other male friends who have also played crucial roles in this regard, but that is for another time. For now, I will return to where I started. The masculine and feminine have legitimate and balanced roles in the spiritual path of Orthodoxy. Since we are created male and female in God’s image, and since the incarnate Son of God has a fully human mother, that really should not be surprising. It is simply part of the good news of our salvation, whether we are male or female.
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Fr. Philip LeMasters is an Eastern Orthodox priest, a dean at McMurry University, a commentator on Ancient Faith Radio, and the author of The Forgotten Faith: Ancient Insights for Contemporary Believers from Eastern Christianity (Cascade Books, 2013), The Goodness of God’s Creation (Regina Orthodox Press, 2008), Toward a Eucharistic Vision of Church, Family, Marriage, and Sex (Light & Life, 2004), three other books on Christian ethics, and many published essays and reviews. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of St. Vladimir’s Seminary. This blog post originally appeared on the blog Eastern Christian Insights and is republished here with the permission of the author.
SVOTS Alumnus Dn. George Katrib has been ordained to the Holy Priesthood. The ordination took place at St. George Orthodox Christian Church, Houston, TX on Sunday, November 11, 2018. Priest George was ordained by the hand of His Grace BASIL, bishop of Wichita and Mid-America (Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church of North America), another SVOTS alumnus (’73).
Fr. George graduated from St. Vladimir’s Seminary with a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) degree in 2014. Before seminary, he attended Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, IL, which he graduated from with a bachelor’s degree. Fr. George has most recently been serving as youth director at St. George Church in Houston, his home parish, and will now serve as assistant pastor at St. George.
SVOTS wishes Fr. George and his wife, Khouria Miray, many years!
The musical artistry of Alumnus Priest David Lee Bozeman is the subject of a recent feature interview in The Living Church, a biweekly magazine of the Anglican Communion. The interview with Fr. David, “Of Majesty and Mystery,” is also featured on the cover of the October 21, 2018 edition of the magazine.
In the interview, Fr. David, the lead singer and guitarist of the rock band Luxury—a band which also includes fellow SVOTS alumni Fr. Christopher Foley (’06) and Fr. David’s brother, Fr. James Bozeman (’12)—talks about some of his music as well as what drew him to the Orthodox Church.
Fr. David Lee Bozeman graduated magna cum laude from St. Vladimir’s Seminary the same year as his brother, in 2012, with a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) degree. He currently serves at St. Nektarios Mission (Orthodox Church in America) in Waxahachie, TX.
Alumni Priests Peter Robichau (’10) and Andrew Cannon (’16) have launched efforts to assist parishioners of Saint Basil Orthodox Church in Wilmington, NC who have been left in need in the wake of a direct hit from Hurricane Florence on September 14, 2018.
Fr. Peter and Fr. Andrew were recently assigned as rector and assistant priest, respectively, at Saint Basil. The hurricane did not cause structural damage to the church building, but did topple some trees on the property, damaging fences. Unfortunately, some of Saint Basil’s parishioners suffered far worse.
“Soon after Florence made landfall, we began to receive reports from parishioners of major uninsured losses, lost wages, and tremendous hardship—and the ‘worst’ hasn’t even started, according to disaster response officials,” Fr. Peter explained to OCA.org. “And right now, due to major highway closures with no way in or out of Wilmington, evacuees will be forced to wait a considerable time before returning, relief workers’ arrivals will be delayed, and deliveries of essentials such as food, water, and fuel will be limited for some time. This will be a months-long recovery.”
The parish has established a GoFundMe page to raise money for those parishioners as well as to assist neighbors and others who come to the parish for help. Donations may also be sent directly to Saint Basil Church Hurricane Relief Fund, 4601 Blue Clay Road, Castle Hayne, NC 28429.
Additionally, Saint Basil Church is working with International Orthodox Christian Charities [IOCC], which established emergency response protocols before the hurricane hit. Volunteers interested in helping IOCC’s relief efforts across the region can register online.
A homily delivered in the Three Hierarchs Chapel at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary on the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord in the Temple and Zacchaeus Sunday (Sunday, February 2, 2014).
Today, as we celebrate the meeting of Christ and the righteous Simeon and Anna, in the temple, we come to an end of a series of feasts that have taken us through the darkness of the long and cold winter nights: a series of feasts bringing out different aspects of God’s search or outreach to us: the Word becoming flesh in the small dark cavern, in the depths of the earth, the manifestation of God to us, through the passage through the waters.
And now, in obedience to the Mosaic Law, forty days after his birth, Christ, the first-born son, is brought to the temple so that he might complete the law, and the law might be completed by him.
Being brought to the temple, he is met by the righteous elder Simeon and the prophetess Anna: the old now passes, and the new has come, and the place where they meet, where the old meets the new and the new is revealed, is in the Temple, the place to which Jesus is brought as a sacrifice.
We heard last night in the readings from Isaiah that it was in the temple that Isaiah saw the Lord of glory enthroned and prophesied, that this same Lord would be worshipped by none other than the Egyptians—the biblical symbol of the gentiles hostile to Israel and their God. Now these words are fulfilled: Christ is brought into the temple, and he rests in the arms of the elder as on a throne. Israel’s glory has dawned in Christ, who is the light of revelation to the Gentiles. And now that Israel has accomplished its task of bringing the Messiah into the world, Simeon can depart in peace: the promises made in the beginning to Abraham about the calling of the nations are now fulfilled, so that in Abraham’s seed, all nations of the world are now blessed.
The very age of the righteous elder and the prophetess indicate the passing away of the ancient customs, the rituals and prescriptions, for these were only ever, as the apostle puts it, a shadow of the good things to come whereas the reality belongs to Christ, the one who was received in the arms of the elder, the one who was to cause the fall and rising again of many in Israel, the one who thus bestows upon us the resurrection—the new creation. All this, the righteous elder Simeon sees, and more: he foresees the pain that would wound the one who gave birth painlessly to the Son of God, that he will be a sign spoken against—but a sign that therefore reveals the thoughts of our hearts.
Today then, standing in the temple with Simeon, we do indeed come to the completion of the movement of God towards us, so that we can also say, let us depart in peace: the glory of God is revealed, enlightening those who sat in darkness.
But if the movement of God towards us is completed in this way, our movement now begins. We must begin to set our own sights upon the journey to Jerusalem, something we are reminded about by the second Gospel reading today: that about Zacchaeus—which alerts us to the coming pre-Lenten Sundays. If this movement of God towards us is indeed light coming into the world, enlightening those who sit in darkness, then there are various points of which we should take note.
Firstly, it means that we must recognize that we are indeed the ones who have been sitting in darkness. Only now, in the light of Christ, can we begin to realize how dark indeed has been our supposedly enlightened world and our all-too-human behavior, however decent, civilized, polite, it may seem. And, recognizing that we are the ones sitting in darkness, our response should be as Zacchaeus: not simply waiting around on the off-chance that the Lord will pass by, but, the Gospel says, he eagerly sought the Lord; he demonstrated an intense desire to seek him out, to actively find him.
The second point would be that as we begin to allow his light to shine upon us and in us, we will certainly begin to understand what it means that he is a sign spoken against, revealing the thoughts of our hearts; for as we begin to try to live by this sign, we will assuredly find all our resistances coming to the surface, all the reasons, the thoughts of our hearts which usually remain unconscious, all the reasons why we should do otherwise, or with less enthusiasm or zeal, or perhaps start tomorrow. In other words, the light that we are given enables us to see ourselves as we truly are, a feat that St Isaac says is greater than raising the dead. This is our own path to Golgotha. And, as with Zacchaeus, this requires recognizing how we stand. The Gospel reading places great emphasis on Zacchaeus’ small stature. He was short. Zacchaeus knew that he had to be lifted up, up from this earth, to see the Lord, and he does this by ascending the tree, an image of taking up the cross. Our problem, on the other hand, is that we do not know this: we think that we are something, something great and grand, someone important, with our own sense of self-worth.
We are indeed important and valuable in God’s eyes: out of love for us, he came to dwell among us, to save, redeem, and recreate us. But it is all too easy for our own sense of well-being and self-worth to get in the way, to prevent us from even realizing that we stand in need of what God has to offer; we spend most of our lives in delusion, not knowing that we are, in fact, small, needy, sinful, before him: it is for the sinners that he has come, to call them to repentance, not those who imagine themselves to be basically alright, needing Christ only for an extra religious element to their lives.
And finally, although we have been given so much more to see than was Simeon (we have repeatedly been present at his birth, his baptism, his passion and his resurrection), we have not yet really begun to see the Lord as did Simeon: to know that he is indeed our rest, our eternal rest, to find in him the peace that keeps us in peace throughout the storms of the sea of life, rather than being blown about from one crisis to the next, from one emotional bruise to another, or from one preoccupying thought to yet another habituated action that we will regret. Rather, what is required of us, to find this peace, is the repentance shown by Zacchaeus: a ready repentance, a change of mind, manifest not only in how we feel about things, but how we act: “half my goods I give to the poor; and will restore fourfold what I have defrauded.”
It is in these ways that we move from sitting in darkness to being enlightened by the light of God—the light that is also the peace of God. So let us pray that we may also learn to meet Jesus in the temple, so that we might also find in him the completion of our heart’s desire, and so ourselves come to know his mercy and peace; for this, as we will sing shortly, is the true sacrifice of praise.
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Fr. John Behr (SVOTS ’97) is the Former Dean of St Vladimir’s Seminary and Professor of Patristics. He taught courses in patristics, dogmatics and scriptural exegesis at the seminary.
