There’s something very “fruitful” about this idea: Bloom where God plants you. It really illustrates the drastic difference between success that belongs to you and fruit of the Kingdom that is produced when you truly see yourself as God’s plant… His creation… one through whom He can get His work done, if you offer yourself to be used. The simple, not easy, way this is accomplished is by truly recognizing that wherever you are, you are Christ’s ambassador. Whoever you are with… family or strangers… that is your community. Your job, wherever you are, is to see and love the people you are with, responding to their needs that you open yourself up to see… loving them fully without condition. It is by living as a citizen of the Kingdom and seeing your life as an offering that Christ’s healing will be brought to the people that He puts in front of you. And, consequently, your own poverty will be revealed to you and be healed as well.
St. Basil the Great poses these questions: “Did you not come forth naked from the womb and will you not return naked to the earth? Where then did you obtain your belongings? If you say that you acquired them by chance, then you deny God, since you neither recognize your Creator, nor are you grateful to the one who gave these things to you. But if you acknowledge that they were given to you by God, then tell me, for what purpose did you receive them?” If we do acknowledge that the stuff we have is from God, then why do we have what we have? Why would God give unequally to those He values equally? The more I experience community with the poor, the more it becomes clear what the answer is: community with the poor. St. Basil continues to discuss how the poor should benefit from what the rich are given and the rich should benefit from the patient endurance of the poor. The reason we have unequal amounts of stuff is so that we come together! And because we are literally spending time with Him, the one who equates Himself with the hungry and naked, the joy and healing is not able to be expressed in words. It’s not the “feel good” thing that people talk about when they “give back.” It’s the true joy of the Kingdom that comes when His people are gathered together around His table, serving each other and feeding each other in multiple ways.
The wisdom and love of God is so amazing to me. He doesn’t just want you to come together with those you can provide for so that their needs are met. He wants you to be free from yourself as well! He wants you to focus on others so that you are free from your desires and worries. He wants you to see that He plants you where you are at any moment with the people you are with for their sake. You will experience real fulfillment and come to know your true self if you look to satisfy others. If you exist in the delusion that trying to satisfy yourself will comfort you and lead you to who you are, you will likely live in the misery of your own constant desire for what you don’t have. Last month I met Ashley at a gathering of people who serve breakfast to the homeless community every Saturday morning at an outdoor park in Detroit. As Ashley was coming through the food line, she hugged every person and thanked them, sharing with them that God loves them. We later had the pleasure of hearing her story. What she told my friends and I stunned us. She said with a smile, “God made me homeless about a year ago.” After everyone left the park, we saw that Ashley was staying. She told us that she likes to stay and make sure all the trash is picked up. Bloom where God plants you.
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Katrina Bitar (SVOTS ’09) has been doing youth ministry since 2001. She has been the Director of the St. Nicholas Camping Program in LA since 2003, and is currently the Director of the YES Program (Youth Equipped to Serve) of FOCUS North America.
This article was originally published January 17, 2012.
People love to follow rules! Right from the start — from our youth up, we have followed rules. Even as kids, we seemed to thrive on rules. We would even make games out of rule following. Did any of you play follow the leader? The whole point of the game is to follow rules, and kids love it!
As adults, we take rule following to the extreme. We have laws to protect people, customs to protect the status quo, and sometimes we have rules ‘just because.’ One set of customs told us each what to wear today. A slightly broader ordinance told us we had to wear some clothing. Etiquette tells us not to slurp our soup at lunch. And those of us who drive are familiar with a whole book of traffic laws.
These laws and rules and customs support our culture. Like the wooden frame of a house being constructed, law is the framework of our society. The rules outline how we all live together, how we all agree to interact with each other.
God gave the Law to Israel for this very reason. The Law of Moses brings God’s children together as one culture — one people. Authority, purity, sacred places and sacred spaces, tithes and sacrifice — all of these commands, all of these precepts outline how a society lives together in God’s presence. And the Law is the framework of God’s covenant — God’s promise to remember us, and our promise to remember God.
We believe this, but at some point, we forget our place. We focus in on the promise — on God’s blessings as rewards for our obedience. We try to earn these blessings, to earn God’s love and approval through our willingness to follow his commands. But the moment we think we understand how to earn blessings, we become the judges. We become the administrators of the law, and we interpret the law to best serve our purposes. And other people become a threat to our blessings. Suddenly, we’re no longer neighbors, but adversaries. The rules and laws no longer unite us, but divide us. Now we’re not working together. We’re competing against each other.
We play with laws and ordinances, and even with commandments and traditions like a poker game. Constantly trading cards, betting and raising, bluffing and calling each other’s bluff, exploiting the rules to our advantage. Making sure that we get the rewards, even at somebody else’s expense.
Does anybody remember the company Enron? The most hated company of the last decade. They used their authority to hijack the power grid. They blackmailed state governments with rolling blackouts, taking taxpayer money in return. And they spent their employees’ pensions on their personal riches, until the whole company buckled under the greed of just a handful of executives who were drunk with authority.
Ponzi schemes, fraud, mafias and drug lords. With the wave of a pen or the click of a trigger, any of us can take a law we all agree on — a law meant to help us interact — we take that law and use it competitively. We use it to our advantage.
God’s covenant is not a private agreement. The Law of Moses promises eternal life to all humanity. It’s our way to paradise, and it’s available to everybody. We know this. We believe this, and still we figure out ways to abuse and exploit the ordinances of our Lord. Just as Enron used the power grid, we try to use God’s promise of paradise to our advantage, and to our neighbor’s disadvantage. When we imagine ourselves in heaven, we each have somebody who is not in that dream. All too easily, we can imagine paradise without somebody.
What a horrible thing to say, right? That we could imagine paradise without a person?! And yet we do so constantly. Sure, we don’t set out to think these evil thoughts. We set out to help people. We know that God forgives sinners, and that God loves everybody, so we just want people to change, to repent. To be saved.
Because we know that all people will be judged by God. And as students of the word, and students of the law, we know the law by which we are judged. We have heard the commandments — all of God’s “do’s and don’ts.” From Moses and the Prophets and Jesus and Paul. We know that we cannot relax them. Today’s text tells us this. So we have to make people understand — we have to help people, get them to somehow hear the same law we’re hearing. And oh, do we know how to manipulate people with this idea of sin.
Sexuality is one of those enduring examples of church authority. Our way of “helping the lost sheep.” Whether its preference or promiscuity, we comment on the disparity between what we see in the world and what we read in the scriptures. Some of us preach. Some of us write. Some of us pastor, and some of us keep our mouths shut and do the judging in our hearts and in our minds. But every one of us has rendered a judgment against another human being.
Our Lord has come today to knock us off our little thrones of judgment, because we’ve got it all wrong. Christ cannot imagine paradise without us. He can’t imagine paradise without us, so he doesn’t want us imagining paradise without each other. Because we are not the judge.
Our Lord meets us today in the midst of our legal competition, in the midst of our wicked card game of rules and customs and rewards and punishments. Christ takes Moses’ seat on the mountain, takes his place as the law-giver — and he gathers us all around for another familiar game of cards. And this time he’s the dealer.
There is only one round of cards being dealt, and the stakes are very high. Christ tells us all that “not one iota of the law will pass away” (Matt 5:18). We like to judge by the law, so the Author of the law can show us how it’s done. Jesus offers a radically intense reading of the commandments. “You have heard in the law…dot dot dot… but I tell you even more” (Matt 5:21f, 27f, 33f). He teaches us that hating our neighbor is the same as murder (vv 21–6). He tells us that looking lustfully at another person is the same as adultery (vv 27–32). The Law structures and governs and judges not only our actions, but also our emotions and our thoughts.
All of the chips are in now, and we’re starting to see that we have a lousy hand of cards for this final round. As Christ has now explained the law of Moses, it’s impossible to follow! Game over, the house wins. Every one of us — all human beings will fall short under this law. Woe to us, scribes and Pharisees. None of us will be blameless in a judgment. None of us will be righteous by following the letter of the law. In fact, he tells us “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you will not get into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:20).
But suddenly this isn’t the same sleazy backroom poker game we know and love. Something more is going on here. Christ unexpectedly unites himself with — well, with the losers. He blesses those who can’t follow the laws, who struggle with rules, who aren’t the most competitive. The outcasts, the downtrodden, the hurtin’ people. Christ unites himself to these people, because they are his creation. They are his chosen people. Long ago he promised to remember them all, and today he honors this promise. Our Lord remembers those we would just as soon forget. And he blesses them (Matt 5:3–12). He can’t imagine paradise without them.
Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who are persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Christ cares about his children. He can’t imagine paradise without any of us.
And if the people that we would just as soon forget are an image of our Lord…well that’s bad news for our exclusive ideas of heaven. Now, if we imagine paradise without each other, we’re imagining paradise without Christ. And paradise without the messiah — well, there’s another name for that place.
But instead of beating us at our own game of judgment, our Lord does something completely unexpected. He lays down his hand of cards and walks away from the game table. He reveals the law in a new light. This new righteousness our Lord speaks of. He’s not saying try harder, be craftier, or hang in there. He’s telling us to stop playing this silly game.
Today Christ instructs us to love each other, because he loves us. This is the great law of the law-giver; the great lesson given by the teacher. He teaches us on the mountain, and he shows us on the cross. “I can’t imagine paradise without you.” And when we return on Easter Sunday to hear to hear Jesus’ second sermon on the mount — we witness the resurrection — the perfect display of Love. The Father’s love for his Son, and our Lord’s love for his creation.
Love is action and love is a gift freely given. Throughout his ministry, Christ shows us how to give this gift of love to each other. Every time he healed a person or cast out a demon, or fed a group of people, he brought them back into his community. He singlehandedly dissolved all of the exclusion we had mistakenly created. He tears down our walls, he breaks our defenses. He takes our rules and our laws and our customs that divide us, that make us unique, and he unites us once again as his creation.
Christ waits for all of us in paradise — in the resurrection. And as we journey through life in hope of the resurrection, we help each other along the way. And we help each other through God’s blessings.
Because God’s blessings are gifts, not rewards. And we are stewards of these gifts, not recipients. As stewards, we share our blessings with others — with the least of the brethren (cf. Matt 25:31–46). Those hurting people that our Lord has recently blessed, the ones who have nobody else to look after them.
And what better place to start caring for each other, to start helping each other, to start loving each other than through basic needs. One of the great fathers of the church said, “to a hungry person, God is a loaf of bread.” As we give of our possessions, our time and our talents to those who need them, we offer hope. We offer hope in God’s promise. Hope in paradise. Hope in the Resurrection. Hope in our Lord. Every time one of us gives a coat and a cup of soup to a homeless person, both people suddenly understand Christ’s love. The scales fall out of our eyes, and we realize something. We realize that we can no longer imagine paradise without this other person. These loving interactions with each other are glimpses into the kingdom. The fiery red sky before the brilliant sunrise.
Our Lord’s great lesson is that we love each other. We give to those in need. We offer our strengths and our blessings to those who need them. But the least of Christ’s brethren, the weaker brother or sister — they not only live somewhere else, in shelters or slums. In fact, they are not even outside of this room. There is no “they” but only “we.”
So as we pause for a moment from our busyness, from our anxiety, from our theology — as we stop playing poker with all our rules and customs and expectations, we encounter our Lord. We encounter our Lord as we pause to ask the person sitting beside us how they’re doing today. Or maybe even “what’s your name?” We encounter Christ the moment we honestly say to one another “I can’t imagine paradise without you.”
Christ gives us each other to prepare us for the kingdom of heaven, through our love for one another. As we care for each other, little by little, and day by day, we come to understand the depth of Christ’s love. Today he has opened his law to us once again. Today he has renewed the covenant, and today he has invited us to his heavenly kingdom. Today we rejoice, because Christ has said to us all “I can’t imagine paradise without you.” AMEN
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Jason Ketz (SVOTS ’12) is a third year seminarian at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary.
This article was originally published January 13, 2012.
When Jesus’ taught His disciples how to pray, He gave them the “Our Father” (Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:1-4). They were not to mindlessly recite it, saying it with their lips only (Matthew 15:8; Mark 7:6) but rather that the words would be said with the heart and mind and become a vehicle for communion with the Father. This prayer to the Father becomes our own as the Holy Spirit bears witness in our hearts that we are God’s children, crying, “Abba” or “Daddy” (Galatians 4:6), a heartfelt expression of our love for God and devotion to Him. One of the most crucial ways of loving and obeying the Lord (Deuteronomy 6:1-5; Matthew 22:36-38; Mark 12:28-30; Luke 10:25-28) with all of our heart, mind and strength is to pray with attentiveness, i.e. to pray with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. And there are no better words to use than those taught to us by the Son of God Himself.
The prayer begins with “Our Father Who is in Heaven,” telling us immediately whom we are addressing and who we are in relation to Him. Through faith in Christ and the receipt of the Holy Spirit in Baptism and Chrismation, we become, by grace (adoption), the children of God and co-heirs with Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 8:17; Galatians 4:4-7). God has trulybecome our Father (John 1:12-13), our Abba. The One Who Is, and Who made all things has given us the right to call Him not only Father, but Daddy. And if God is our Father then we are all (as many of us who have been baptized into Christ) brothers and sisters. We are all part of God’s household and are all equally co-heirs with Christ.
We say, “hallowed be Your Name,” in other words, “Your Name is holy, may it be praised, and may it be kept as holy.” It is a reminder that God is holy and that we ought to give Him the praise that He is due. Throughout the Scriptures we see that the Name of God, the Presence of God and the Person of God are inseparable. To call on the Name is to invoke the presence of the person who is named. This is why taking the Lord’s Name in vain is a gravely serious sin that we need to repent of and confess.
We pray for the Kingdom (literally the reign or rule) of God to come fully on the earth so that God’s will will be done perfectly in our lives and in all the earth. The Kingdom of God was announced and inaugurated by Christ in His first coming, but we wait and pray for the fullness of that reign that will come only when Jesus returns. Next we pray for the “epiousion” (usually translated “daily”) bread or super substantial bread, or bread “of tomorrow.” In other words we pray for the sustenance needed for true life, the bread, which is the foretaste of the heavenly banquet, Holy Communion.
We pray that the Father will forgive us as we forgive others. Jesus tells us clearly that if we fail to forgive others that our sins will not be forgiven (Matthew 6:14; 7:1-2; 18:21-35). We pray not to be led into temptation but that we be delivered from the Evil One. In Mark 14:38 Jesus warns Peter to “watch and pray” so that he will not fall into temptation. Likewise we are to be diligent and to pray that we might not be tempted; and that we be rescued from the Evil One.
This is the prayer that the Lord Himself gave us. Let us pray it daily, several times a day. And whenever and wherever we pray it, let it be with attentiveness and understanding. In other words, let us pray it with all our heart, mind, soul and strength.
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Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Fr. Maximus Cabey (SVOTS ’11) was raised Roman Catholic. Always sensing a call to be a pastor and teacher, he has been involved in pastoral ministry in one form or another for the past 23 years. Fr. Maximus and his wife, Photini, live in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where Fr. Maximus serves as the priest at St. Matthew Orthodox Church.
This article was originally published January 3, 2012.
Once, when I was in college, I got into a discussion with someone about whether or not God is subject to passions. I was arguing that, as God, He is capable of loving us unconditionally, without any of the restraints or limitations we sinful people experience because of various passions. This person then asked me, “But why does God call Himself ‘jealous’ in the Bible?” I didn’t know how to answer. I think I said something about anthropomorphic language and not taking something like that too literally. But I realized I didn’t actually know what I was talking about, or what it means for God to be “jealous.”
Just the other day – more than a decade after that conversation – something clicked for me. I’m quite sure this is nothing original (God forbid). I probably heard this all explained during one of my seminary classes without it sticking. But in any case, the thought came as tardy news for me that not only can God be jealous, but only He can properly be jealous with absolute, perfect, and passionless jealousy, and that this jealousy is an aspect of divine love.
My reflection was actually prompted by the phrase, “I have been very zealous for the Lord Almighty…” in 3 Kingdoms (1 Kings) 19:10. I find this passage to be incredibly poignant. I feel the agony in Elijah’s words, and competing sympathetic voices of fear, faith, sorrow, and indignation seem to well up within me as I read. I wonder what the sound of the “gentle breeze” would be in my ears if I could be silent for a few minutes. Perhaps it would sound to me like this: “I have been very jealous for you…”.
It occurs to me that zeal in humans – true zeal, which is according to knowledge and coupled with love – is in some sense the faintly mirrored image of jealousy in God, which is always according to perfect knowledge and is in fact an expression of perfect, universal love. God, who alone knows infallibly what is good for us, and who alone loves with love as perfect as death on the Cross, is also alone in being able to say, “You are mine, and only mine.” And He says it to each of us, and He says it with perfect dispassion. Perhaps, then, it is not when we speak of God’s jealousy, but when we speak of human jealousy that we anthropomorphize, having substituted something from fallen human existence for something divine, impossible to experience outside the experience of God’s love.
There is, however, a very human image of this reality in the New Testament. When the Lord is staying with the sisters of Lazarus in Chapter 10 of Luke’s Gospel, we hear an echo and interpretation of the Old Testament expression of God’s jealousy. To Martha, distracted by many cares, our Lord says, “One thing is needful.” Mary kneeling at the feet of Christ shows us what the Lord would have each of us do, for He is a jealous God. He wants our hearts, souls, and minds – undividedly, unconfusedly, unhesitatingly, and unhypocritically.
I see three practical implications flowing from this reflection. First, God certainly has the right to be jealous, but I don’t. Human jealousy is inevitably misguided and destructive. This is because God alone can demand and expect complete and utter devotion. My jealousy would only conflict with His, being an expression not of divine love, but of self-love.
Second, what God’s jealousy does demand of me is zeal. Like Elijah, when I become aware that God is a jealous God – and this because He loves all people and desires all to abide in Him – my response ought to be zeal for the Name and the house of the Lord, and deep sadness concerning apostasy. That includes both the apostasy in the world and that within me. It is the inner kind that I am most in a position to correct, so I had better get to work slaying the priests of Baal that lurk in the “high places” of my heart. On the level of human relationships (my marriage for example), what is required is a zealous pursuit of loving attentiveness to the other, rather than a jealous (or envious, or self-pitying) withdrawal into sulky defensiveness.
Third, and most importantly, neither the cultivation of holy zeal, nor the avoidance of unholy jealousy is possible apart from doing what both Elijah and Mary show us: silencing ourselves that we might hear continually that gentle, life-giving reminder that we are God’s and His alone.
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Fr. Daniel Bethancourt (SVOTS ’07) serves at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church (Antiochian) in Shreveport, LA. After graduating with his MDiv in 2007, he served as Director of Recruitment at SVOTS while his wife, Presvytera Maria (SVOTS ’08), completed the MA program. Following her graduation in 2008, they had a very full summer that included two ordinations, a move to Shreveport, the beginning of pastoral ministry, and the birth of their son, Peter Basil. Fr. Daniel is deeply grateful to God for his family, the people of his parish, the Orthodox Church, and the ability to speak of the summer of 2008 in the past tense.
This article was originally published December 20, 2011.
Genealogies don’t mean the same to us as they did for ancient peoples, so the first part of this morning’s reading may be tedious to modern ears. Most people will remember the list of strange names and forget the ending probably because a majority check out somewhere around “Amminadab” if not before. By the time we get to the story of Christmas at the end people are a little glassy-eyed. I actually look forward to it. I like this reading!
Just a word of explanation about the genealogy part. Both Matthew and Luke include genealogies of Jesus in their Gospels and they differ from one another. No worries. Genealogies were useful for a variety of reasons, so it wasn’t unusual for a person to have more than one made up to cover their bases. Things like inheritance, land ownership, and vocation were at stake. You had to prove your pedigree!
Since the point was to establish an ancestral link rather than to list all the family names exhaustively they were not as interested in getting all the names in there just right the way we would be. Thinking of the size of Middle Eastern families that would be ridiculous anyway.
St. Matthew’s genealogy emphasizes that Jesus is the Son of David. He begins with David and moves then to Abraham, a double whammy for Jewish identification and backward since Abraham came before David! His predominately Jewish audience would be looking for that connection. His aim was to convince the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah and Davidic sonship was essential to do so.
St. Luke emphasizes the Lord’s human nature so he begins his genealogy with Adam to be more universal in his message. For his predominately Greek audience that would be significant. Luke points also to the Lord’s divine origin. He ends with “Jesus the Son of Adam and the Son of God.”
Both genealogies are essential for our understanding of the Incarnation. They compliment one another. Jesus is the Son of God and the Son of David, both human and Divine. As a human being he was specifically Jewish. As God He was perfect God.
The real story here is that the Son of God was born at all. If the Son of God had not been born in the flesh, then he could not have been the Son of David. The genealogy tells us that Jesus was a real, live human being with grandparents, uncles, aunts, and probably hundreds of cousins. Tradition tells us that Jesus had half-brothers and sisters since Joseph was a widower and had children from a previous marriage.
Some of the Lord’s relatives were righteous people, some were scoundrels. At least one of them was a prostitute. Just like our families! White sheep and black sheep. Jesus was a human being with an all-too-typical human family. I’ll bet their Hanukkah dinners were a riot!
This tells us another very important thing. Even scoundrels and sinners are included because this is the human condition. Things down here are far from perfect. The thing is that even sinners and scoundrels have the image of God in them. Whether we are righteous or sinners we all have that in common. Human nature does not become evil because we do evil things. Impossible! What God has called “very good” will always remain “very good.” That “very good” human nature we share in common is what Jesus took upon himself – your nature and my nature, everyone’s nature and yet He still remained perfect God and perfect man! But there is more! Then, he took upon himself our suffering and sins and bore our diseases as well and still remained perfect God and perfect man! This is a very great mystery! He took upon Himself the whole of the human condition from birth to death and beyond and remained fully God and fully man! He took upon Himself all that we are in order to heal all that we are. Why? Because He loves us!
At Vespers on Saturday night we usually chant a prokeimenon that says, “The Lord is King, he has clothed himself with majesty. The Lord has put on His apparel and has girded Himself with strength.” What is this “majesty”? What is “His apparel”? It is human nature. Human nature is majestic. It is beautiful! The crown of God’s creation. It is filled with God as is everything he has made. That we have dirtied this beautiful thing is not God’s fault; it is ours. What we discover as we embark on the interior spiritual journey is that no matter what we do, or think, or feel, underneath it all is human nature which sparkles with the light of God. It is the ground of our being, the truth of who we are. Those who come at long last through meditation and prayer to see their own essential goodness understand the core truth about themselves and their neighbors. The Son of God reveals this to us in the example of His own human/divine life.
Here is another great and strange mystery: we too, even though we are created, share this human/divine connection. In Him divinity is by nature. It is granted to us creatures by grace.
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This sermon, “On the Sunday before Nativity: The Genealogy of Christ” was preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, December 19, 2010, and was originally published here. Fr. Antony Hughes (SVOTS ’87) is the priest at St. Mary Orthodox Church in Cambridge, MA, where he has been serving since 1993.
This article was originally published December 16, 2011
Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann was a priest, theologian, and one of the leading spokesmen for Orthodox Christianity in the 20th century. Fr. Alexander served as the Dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary from 1962 up until his death in 1983.
“The eternal God was born as a little child.” One of the main hymns of Christmas ends with these words, identifying the child born in a Bethlehem cave as “the eternal God.” This hymn was composed in the sixth century by the famous Byzantine hymnographer Roman the Melodist:
Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One,
And the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One!
Angels, with shepherds, glorify him!
The wise men journey with the star!
Since for our sake the eternal God was born as a little child!
(Kontakion of Christmas)
The Child as God, God as Child…Why does joyful excitement build over the Christmas season as people, even those of lukewarm faith and unbelievers, behold that unique, incomparable sight of the young mother holding the child in her arms, and around them the “wise men from the East,” the shepherds fresh from night-watch in their fields, the animals, the open sky, the star? Why are we so certain, and discover again and again, that on this sorrowful planet of ours there is nothing more beautiful and joyful than this sight, which the passage of centuries has proven incapable of uprooting from our memory? We return to this sight whenever we have nowhere else to go, whenever we have been tormented by life and are in search of something that might deliver us…
It is the words “child” and “God” which give us the most striking revelation about the Christmas mystery. In a certain profound way, this is a mystery directed toward the child who continues to secretly live within every adult, to the child who continues to hear what the adult no longer hears, and who responds with a joy which the adult, in his mundane, grown-up, tired and cynical world, is no longer capable of feeling. Yes, Christmas is a feast for children, not just because of the tree that we decorate and light, but in the much deeper sense that children alone are unsurprised that when God comes to us on earth, he comes as a child.
This image of God as child continues to shine on us through icons and through innumerable works of art, revealing that what is most essential and joyful in Christianity is found precisely here, in this eternal childhood of God. Adults, even the most sympathetic to “religious themes,” desire and expect religion to give explanations and analysis; they want it to be intelligent and serious. Its opponents are just as serious, and in the end, just as boring, as they confront religion with a hail of “rational” bullets. In our society, nothing better conveys our contempt than to say “it’s childish.” In other words, it’s not for adults, for the intelligent and serious. So children grow up and become equally serious and boring. Yet Christ said “become like children” (Mt 18:3). What does this mean? What are adults missing, or better, what has been choked, drowned or deafened by a thick layer of adulthood? Above all, is it not that capacity, so characteristic of children, to wonder, to rejoice and, most importantly, to be whole both in joy and sorrow? Adulthood chokes as well the ability to trust, to let go and give one’s self completely to love and to believe with all one’s being. And finally, children take seriously what adults are no longer capable of accepting: dreams, that which breaks through our everyday experience and our cynical mistrust, that deep mystery of the world and everything within it revealed to saints, children, and poets.
Thus, only when we break through to the child living hidden within us, can we inherit as our own the joyful mystery of God coming to us as a child. The child has neither authority nor power, yet the very absence of authority reveals him to be a king; his defenselessness and vulnerability are precisely the source of his profound power. The child in that distant Bethlehem cave has no desire that we fear him; He enters our hearts not by frightening us, by proving his power and authority, but by love alone. He is given to us as a child, and only as children can we in turn love him and give ourselves to him. The world is ruled by authority and power, by fear and domination. The child God liberates us from that. All He desires from us is our love, freely given and joyful; all He desires is that we give him our heart. And we give it to a defenseless, endlessly trusting child.
Through the feast of Christmas, the Church reveals to us a joyful mystery: the mystery of freely given love imposing itself on no one. A love capable of seeing, recognizing and loving God in the Divine Child, and becoming the gift of a new life.
Fasting, praying, Church more than once a week, “take up your cross,” SACRIFICE…Do I have to be a monk?? I have been asked that question on a number of different occasions. With all of the prescriptions given to us to do, it seems sometimes that the Church is asking us all to be monks. After all, monks and nuns are the ones who devote their lives to prayer, who fast all of the time, who don’t have to worry about money or families. Those of us out here in the world have “real” responsibilities and don’t have the time or the energy to focus on all of that. At least that is what we think. Of course, Christ does not ask all of us to be monks or nuns. The life in the monastery is a very unique calling that is blessed and necessary, but not for everyone. Just as all of us are not called to be mathematicians or rocket scientists, not everyone is called to be a monk.
However, that does not mean that everyone isn’t called to some sort of ascesis. That word, most often used exclusively for the monastic life, simply means self-denial, something that Christ tells all of us to do. “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself take up his cross and follow me.” ANY MAN. While not called to be a monk or a nun, those of us who are attempting to follow Christ are called to serve the Lord through ascesis. What does that look like?
One of the greatest monks in history, St. John Climacus, wrote a 30-step treatise called The Ladder of Divine Ascent. This book was written specifically for those who were monks and laid out step by step the way to the Kingdom of God. Though he wrote it in the 7th century, it is still read today during Great Lent in many of the monasteries in the Orthodox world. In this work, St. John doesn’t just address the monks, however. He was presented with this same question over 1500 years ago: “Do I have to be a monk?” He responded by saying:
“Some people living carelessly in the world have asked me: ‘We have wives and are beset with social cares, and how can we lead the solitary life?’ I replied to them: ‘Do all the good you can; do not speak evil of anyone; do not steal from anyone; do not lie to anyone; do not be arrogant towards anyone; do not hate anyone; do not be absent from the divine services; be compassionate to the needy; do not offend anyone; do not wreck another man’s domestic happiness, and be content with what your own wives can give you. If you behave in this way, you will not be far from the Kingdom of Heaven.’”
Notice that St. John doesn’t start off by mentioning what we should avoid and not do, but what we should actually do. “Do all the good you can” is very different from “avoid doing bad.” If the answer was to avoid doing bad, we would be better suited to stay in our homes and be alone as much as we can; or, if we are outside our homes, to focus on the task that we are doing and not pay attention to anyone else that is around us. St. John is encouraging all of us to pay attention to the moment that we are in and look for the good that we can do. How often do we drive down the road talking on the phone or listening to the radio and mindlessly make our way to our destination? In my case, too often. In attempting to “do all the good you can,” try instead to pay attention to where you are going, your surroundings. You might notice an opportunity to do good. That goes for anywhere we find ourselves, in whatever company. St. John does not want us not to lie, or speak evil of anyone, or hate anyone by not being around other people. His encouragement is to live in the world, doing your work, going about your business around all of the people that you see and to do good, be compassionate, and be content in your life. Not avoidance, but acceptance and transforming a situation.
How can we possibly have the strength to fulfill all of that? St. John answers that as well. “Do not be absent from the divine services.” All of that ascetical discipline is not meant to be something that we just do in separation from the life of the Church. Quite the opposite. None of that type of discipline is really possible or helpful without a constant connection to Christ and His Church. In our attempt to do good we will often be pushed away. In our effort to avoid offending anyone and seeking out the good we may be hurt and feel lost. The answer is in Christ. Through the divine services, all of the different ones throughout the year, we are encouraged by the witness of the lives of the saints. We are enriched by the Word of God through the Scriptures. Most importantly, we are filled with the Divine Grace of God through the participation in the Mysteries. All of this helps to fulfill the discipline and ascesisthat St. John was talking about. It might seem impossible, but with Christ all things are possible.
One thousand five hundred years later and I think St. John’s words still hit the nail on the head. Not all of us are called to the discipline of the monastery. All of us, however, are called to the discipline that St. John lays out. So where and when do we start? Right here! Right now!
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Fr. Philip Rogers (SVOTS ’07) has served Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, LA since graduating from SVOTS. Along with parish work, he serves as the camp director for Camp St. Thekla, the summer camp for the Antiochian Archdiocese in the Southeast. His wife Kathryn works in the emergency room at their local hospital and serves as their parish choir director.
This article was originally published December 8, 2011.
The extraordinary thing about the image of Saint Nicholas in the Church is that he is not known for anything extraordinary. He was not a theologian and never wrote a word, yet he is famous in memory of the believers as a zealot for orthodoxy, allegedly accosting the heretic Arius at the first ecumenical council in Nicaea for denying the divinity of God’s Son. He was not an ascetic and did no outstanding feats of fasting and vigils, yet he is praised for his possession of the “fruit of the Holy Spirit…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5: 22-23). He was not a mystic in our present meaning of the term but he lived daily with the Lord and was godly in all of his words and deeds. He was not a prophet in the technical sense, yet he proclaimed the Word of God, exposed the sins of the wicked, defended the rights of the oppressed and afflicted, and battled against every form of injustice with supernatural compassion and mercy. In a word, he was a good pastor, father, and bishop to his flock, known especially for his love and care for the poor. Most simply put, he was a divinely good person.
We use that term “goodness” so lightly in our time. How easily we say of someone, “He is a good man” or “She is a good woman.” How lightly we say, “They are good people.” A teen-age girl takes an overdose of drugs and the neighbors tell the reporters, “But she was always such a good girl, and her parents are such nice people!” A young man commits some terrible crime, and the same rhetoric flows: “But he was always such a good boy, and his family is so nice.” A man dies on the golf course after a life distinguished by many years of profit-taking and martini-drinking, and the reaction is the same: “He was a good man, yeah, a real nice guy.” What do “good” and “nice” really mean in such cases? What do they describe? What do they express?
In Saint Luke’s gospel it tells us that one day a “ruler” came up to Jesus and asked, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus answered him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but God alone” (Lk 18:18; see also Mk 10:18). In Saint Matthew’s version it says that Jesus answered the man by saying, “Why do you ask Me about what is good? One there is who is good” (Mt 19:17). However we choose to interpret Christ’s words, at least one point is clear. Jesus reacts to the facile, perhaps even sarcastic, use of the term “good” by referring to its proper source. There is only One who is good, and that is God Himself. If you want to speak of goodness, then you must realize what–and Whom–you are talking about!
Like God, and like Jesus, Saint Nicholas was genuinely good. Real goodness is possible. For, to quote the Lord again, “with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Mt 19:26). A human being, even a rich human being who believes in God, can be genuinely good with God’s own goodness. “For truly I say to you,” says the Lord, “if you have faith as a grain of mustard see…nothing will be impossible for you” (Mt 17:20-21).
The Messiah has come so that human beings can live lives which are, strictly speaking, humanly impossible. He has come so that people can be really good. One of the greatest and most beloved examples among believers that this is true is the holy bishop of Myra about whom almost nothing else is known, or needs to be known, except that he was good. For this reason alone he remains, even in his secularized form, the very spirit of Christmas.
Excerpt from The Winter Pascha by Fr. Thomas Hopko (SVOTS ’63), St. Vladimir’s Seminary
I was raised in a parish in the Romanian Episcopate (OCA), a child of first generation Americans of Romanian parentage. I sang in the choir from early on (my father was the choir director until he became a deacon), taught music at our Vatra summer camp from the time I was 16 years old, majored in music in college and grad school, pursued a career in opera for a bit, and settled down for 14 years in the Detroit area. I was Music Director at the Romanian OCA Cathedral during that time, and very involved in starting a pan-Orthodox music ministry and mixed choir there. I’ve worked (for pay) in all three of the major archdioceses in America (Antiochian, Greek, OCA). Some of you may know me from my involvement with PSALM and my role in PSALM’s first national conference in Cicero, IL in 2006. I am currently in a full-time position at St. Athanasius Antiochian parish in Santa Barbara/Goleta, CA. This is one of the parishes of former Evangelical Protestants who converted en masse to Orthodoxy and came into the Antiochian Archdiocese in 1987.
My personal mission these days with regards to my role as a church musician — what drives me, keeps me going?
Helping the American Church find the form of musical expression that is going to be most appropriate for our language and culture. The verdict is still out. I think we have a long way to go. I use the best of all of the Orthodox traditions of music, and I use LOTS of music composed by American Orthodox composers, as in: composed FOR English and IN English by someone who speaks English really well! It really does work best, in the same way that opera sings best in the language for which it was written.
Helping facilitate worship that is prayerful, engaging and purposeful, that has the power to enlighten and “convert” all of us over and over again.
How do I do that? Perhaps that’s a topic for another blog entry!
While the canon of the feast of the Nativity begins to be sung on the festival of the entrance of the Virgin Mary into the temple, the first prefeast hymns of Christmas are sung on the feast of “the all-praised and first-called apostle Andrew.”
In the gospel according to St John, Philip calls his friend Nathanael to “come and see” Jesus, but it is Jesus Himself who invites Andrew to “come and see” where He dwells and to spend the day with Him…
Come and see! This is the abiding invitation of the Church in her liturgical services. Come with faith and you will be numbered with those to whom “it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 13:11)…
Come and see! You will witness the mystery of Christ’s birth from the Virgin, His manifestation at the Jordan in His baptism by John, His victory over the devil in the desert, His proclamation of good news to the poor, His announcement of liberty to the oppressed, His declaration of the acceptable year of the Lord’s grace. You will witness His accomplishment of the signs of His messiahship: the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dumb talk. You will see the winds cease and the seas calmed. You will behold the table spread “in the wilderness” in the feeding of the multitudes (Ps 78:19). You will witness the casting out of demons. And, most glorious of all, you will see the dead being raised by the word of His power. You will know indeed that “the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Mt 12:28), and you will testify truly that “something greater than Jonah” and “something greater than Solomon is here” (Mt 12:41-42). You will see what “many prophets and righteous men longed to see…and did not see it, and to hear…and did not hear it” (Mt 13:17). And ultimately you will see the Son of God Himself being lifted upon the Cross in order to give His broken body as food for His people, and His shed blood as their drink, that their hunger and thirst for peace and joy and righteousness, and indeed for life itself, might be forever satisfied.
Excerpt from The Winter Pascha by Fr. Thomas Hopko (SVOTS ’63), St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984.
