Antiochian Orthodox Church Preserves Age-old Faith
0 Comments Published by georgy on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 9:15 AM.
DORR -- In her candy cane-striped dress, Grace Phillips walks up to an icon stand bearing Jesus' image. Still too short to reach on her own, she climbs a stool and gives it a big smooch.
"We didn't have to force her to do that," said her mother, Karen Phillips, of Hamilton. "Even if we've done it already, she wants to do it again.
"She knows who's in that picture -- who it represents."
The kiss-happy 3-year-old fits right in. She wanders freely about the worship space, air thickened with incense from a fresh shake of the censer by Father Gregory Hogg. The aroma, along with the glowing candles, represents the presence and prayers of saints.
Amid this smell and sight, about 50 souls delight, finding one voice and filling Holy Cross Antiochian Orthodox Church, 1928 142nd Ave. in Dorr, with time-tested praise. Music with heart and no hymnals, sung with power but no amplifiers. A bright-eyed band of worshippers working from a 2,000-year-old set list.
This is now. This was then. This is forever.
Holy day
Today is Holy Saturday -- the day before Pascha, the Hebrew-derived name for Easter in Orthodox churches, which celebrates the holy day according to the Julian calendar. Most Western churches follow the newer Gregorian calendar.
On this day, Grace and her parents are to be chrismated. The senses, heart, hands and feet are anointed with oils representing the Holy Spirit. It is the way orthodoxy receives Christians of other traditions into the church.
The journey -- or as Gary Phillips calls it, "the pilgrimage" -- has been a hike for Mom and Dad and a short skip for their adopted daughter. Yet each path has led them to this place, this never-ending song, this unchanging truth.
"I'm done looking," Gary said. "I don't have to look anymore."
Gary Phillips described his Protestant experience as a "jigsaw puzzle," but more befuddling.
All the pieces were in the box, he said, but there was no illustration showing how to put them together.
"I'd always sensed that there was something missing and I haven't found it," said Phillips, 49. "All these little pieces have begun to fall into place for me."
He attended a Presbyterian church with his wife for about four years. She said she grew weary of changes. Familiar songs and traditions taken away. Diminished importance of ordinances -- what orthodoxy calls the mysteries, or sacraments -- such as communion and baptism.
More meaningful
They longed for more permanence, less conflict.
"The biggest part was the frustration doctrinally," she said. "Everybody was right, but everybody was different in their teachings.
"Things were looking more like entertainment and performance rather than worship. I think we came away oftentimes feeling really frustrated and not feeling like we'd worshipped in a meaningful way."
The Phillipses have attended Holy Cross for about a year and a half. Karen's first service gave her a unique feeling, she said. Fulfillment.
"Everything was very different from what I'd ever experienced," she said. "But I think the one thing that hit me more than anything else was I really had a sense that we worshipped God, even though I didn't understand everything."
Hogg, who opened the church in 2005 with six families, said it's a feeling shared by many newcomers.
"A refrain you often hear from new converts is, 'I have come home,'" Hogg said. "People have been in a number of different places, but they all find one in the same home and that's been quite a joy."
Of the parish's 45 members, only one grew up Orthodox, and two have been baptized at the church, he said. The rest are converts, including Hogg.
He was ordained into the Lutheran Missouri Synod in 1983. Soon, he became aware of "very troubling issues."
"Things that I thought were fixed were being called into question," Hogg said. "For me, religious faith has to be an anchor; the anchor is important to keep you grounded
"If you're not grounded, you drift."
About 20 years ago, he visited a small Orthodox mission church on Good Friday and was in awe.
"When I listened to the words of the liturgy, I thought, 'My God, they know the gospel,' and it was in its beauty and its truth. There is a place that has it.
"For the next 18 years, I kind of puzzled out how you sort out all of those things."
Now Karen Phillips, 49, approaches the threshold. She looks toward her chrismation with reverence and fear.
"It's a happy time, yet there's that little bit of fear aspect because it's not something to take lightly.
"This isn't funny stuff."
Meanwhile, Grace isn't missing a beat, and can't wait to receive her first Eucharist, Karen said. She happily sings liturgical prayers as Dad tucks her in at night.
"It's very much a little kids' religion," Hogg said. "The kids get it right away."
Prayers sung in triplicate. Parishioners crossing themselves in triplicate. Baptism, Easter and marriage processions in triplicate.
Brevity is not a trait highly regarded by Eastern Orthodoxy.
Sunday morning gatherings begin with "matins," or morning prayers, followed by another hour and a half of divine liturgy. Holy Cross' matins ran about an hour on Palm Sunday, but there is no prescribed time limit. Worshippers approach and revere icons, and sing a set series of established prayers.
"Have mercy on us, O God, according to thy great goodness, we pray thee: hearken and have mercy," sang Hogg.
"Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy," the congregation responded.
Singing service
The repetition invokes the holy trinity, Hogg said. The chant itself, like so many Orthodox practices, also bears historical significance.
That was the prayer early Roman citizens would chant "when the emperor came to town," he said.
Singing makes up most of a service. When asked why, Hogg answered with another question.
"Why not sing? Music is the language of love."
Peter Marth, 31, of Georgetown Township, chimed in: "All of this is Old Testament heritage. If you entered the temple, you would not hear speaking."
Kids dig the a cappella, the golden censer, and the colorful vestments worn by priests, Marth said. And seating arrangements are perfect for the fidgety: There are none.
Chairs are available for those who need them, and no one is discouraged from sitting, but most stand for roughly three hours.
"Not having pews is a great thing for kids," Marth said. He and his wife, Laura, have three children, age 8 months to 5. "If they have ants in their pants they can move around a little bit without disrupting everyone.
"It's just kind of a natural organism that's moving all the time."
Many rituals are holy as well as pragmatic. The golden fan used throughout the centuries that trails large processions was meant to keep flies away from Eucharistic elements, Hogg said. Also, 12 holes are poked into the consecrated bread. This not only signifies the 12 apostles, but it also "prevents bubbles in the bread," he said.
The faith is the same wherever you go, "from Damascus, to Dorr, to Santa Cruz, California," Hogg said. While Eastern Orthodox churches bear different names -- Greek, Russian, Antiochian and so on -- they denote ethnicity, not sect.
The difference between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Christianity compares to that between a hospital and a courtroom, Hogg said.
"We're here because we're sinners and we're sick, and Christ heals us with his life-giving body and blood," he said.
"We're a family."
Source:
http://blog.mlive.com/grpress/2008/04/antiochian_orthodox_church_pre.htmlFrom Tibetan Buddhism to Orthodox Christianity
0 Comments Published by georgy on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 12:21 AM.
Through The Eastern Gate
Webmasters Note: Nilus' story is one of many similar stories that I have heard in the last few years - it is a particular phenomenon of our times. I knew Nilus back when he was a Buddhist. I was struggling to assimilate the same teachings under the same teacher. I did not get as far as Nilus did, because when the teacher told me that to go further would require ceasing all other spiritual investigations, my conscience awoke and forbade it, also eventually directing me back to Christ and the Orthodox Church. The common denomenator in all of these stories seems to be that if a person has had meaningful contact with the Gospel of Christ, then spiritual progress will be blocked at some level until that person returns to Christ.
I had been a Buddhist for ten years. I was ordained after seven years of study with my teacher in a small family line of the Nyingma Lineage of Vajarayana (Tibetan ) Buddhism. I had a Spiritual Master in that lineage whom I loved and still love. He was, and continues to be an example of kindness in my life. It was through his instruction that I began to see the world with wider eyes and heart. I was ordained as a Ngakpa in the Nyingma Lineage. A Ngakpa is a tantric (priest) ordination that, though there are vows (damsig), those vows are not based on celibacy nor abstention from meat and alcohol. Our sangha were not renunciates but followed basic instruction in tantra and dzogchen; both based on transformation rather than renunciation and sudden moments of insight that flicker in duration and intensity leading to rigpa (a state of mind and perception based on relaxing into the natural state of enlightenment). Those moments were engendered by the energetic intervention of our teacher or our ability to "relax" into the fabric and texture of our experience of being and non being brought about by the practices we were taught. Over the years those moments seem to manifest in seeing the world more and more in kindness, gratitude and compassion. My teacher used to say that Buddhism was ninety nine per cent method and one percent truth. The practices in Buddhism are used to develop a clarity and sense of awareness that enable you to discern a reality not skewed by neurotic mind and habits of response.
We were a non liturgical lineage and had silent sitting and yogic song, mantra, and sets of psycho-spiritual physical exercises as the core of our practice. I made pilgrimages to sacred sites in Nepal and attended retreats with my teacher and vajra sisters and brothers both in the United States and in Wales. Those retreats, both joint and individual, were very meaningful in my life. And, I can definitely say that I had some "openings" of view, widenings of perspective and experience that I attribute to my teacher and the practices I was given.
One afternoon in late January of l999 I went to my altar for my regular daily practice. Usually I began with yogic song and mantra and then did silent sitting. I lit the candles on my altar and after finishing my song and mantras began my silent practice. I cant say exactly how long I had been sitting when I hear my voice say in my own words aloud, "I miss Jesus." I said this aloud. It seemed like it came through me rather than me saying it but there were no external voices. Clearly I was saying it.
When I said "I miss Jesus" I filled with this longing. I don't know what else to call it. I ached. I hurt inside. I felt this absolute longing and I couldn't believe it. I tried to regroup my attention and awareness to continue my meditation. Often in meditation one experiences extra ordinary perceptions, smells, visual illusions, sounds perhaps, psycho-spiritual anomalies that throw one off the track and distract you from the coming and going of thoughts which one is trained to let rise and fall without attachment.
Thoughts come and go but the method I was using tried not to attach to any thought so that one avoid following a thought into an internal narrative or story. . So I tried to see this experience as a nyam (meditational experience) and not put much stock in it. I could not regroup, nor relax and got up. I thought , well that's early childhood stuff I'm projecting onto my mediation. It's mommy-daddy stuff about love I didn't get and wanted and must be about my early childhood Christianity. Though my parents were nominal Christians I had been raised as a Presbyterian mainly because that was the church close to our house. My parents certainly were not Bible Thumpers.
I ended my practice session and went to the kitchen and began doing dishes. I did my household chores and didn't think about it very much except for the continued sense of longing which did not seem to dissipate. I couldn't seem to shake the experience no matter how I tried. There was this terrible longing in me that I couldn't ignore nor explain. I didn't mention it to my wife yet I couldn't stop thinking about it nor find relief from the ache and hurt. We had an ordinary evening, watched television for awhile, chatted and then I went into my studio to paint. I am an artist and my studio is attached to our cottage and I sleep there most nights if painting late. After a few restless attempts at working on a canvas I had started I went to sleep.
That night at three in the morning I was awakened by a "presence" in my room . It was a Longing. I don't know what else to call it. I felt a "presence of Longing" in the room. I was worried that someone had broken into the house. I got out of bed and checked all the rooms.. There was no one (other than my wife) in the house and she was still sound asleep. I decided since I was awake to do some practice and went to my altar in my studio. I mediated for probably thirty to forty five minutes and returned to sleep. The next morning I made sure all the doors were locked and kind of looked around the house uneasily to see if I could find anything that would explain the "presence." We have no pets and I asked Diane if she had gotten up during the night for any reason. She had slept soundly and asked if there was anything wrong. I told her I had gotten up and couldn't sleep for awhile. I hesitated to say anything about a sense of a "presence". I didn't want to scare her and I didn't want her to think I was crazy.
The next night I was again "called" awake. I cant tell you exactly what it felt like other than this "presence" was in the room. No lights, no hallucinations, no sounds, no fanfare, no schizo stuff (as far as I understand it), yet most certainly a feeling that I was being called awake by a presence. I can only say in was a "presence of Longing." I ached inside and hurt and longed for something I couldn't express. . I felt a million miles from home.
You must understand that my life was pretty happy. My wife, of twenty five years, and I loved each other. We are both artists and had a good business in that field. We had a small cottage and garden in a small Northern California coastal town near San Francisco which we loved. I had a wonderful spiritual teacher and I had taken vows and was committed to my Buddhist Lineage and path. And I was pretty healthy for a fifty some year old fat man. Everything was generally ok. No major crisis. Nothing that seemed to speak to the experiences that I was having nor the incredible sense of longing that I was feeling. I felt like I was in love but I didn't know with whom or what. I was like a teenage boy in love. I couldn't stop feeling this ache and longing and confusion. It had all begun when I said "I miss Jesus" yet I couldn't believe that was really the source of this hurting. It had to be something else. But I didn't know what. I had tried to sort it out rationally, making an inventory of possible sources, motives, events, that would engender this longing. I was stuck. Nothing I listed seemed to be a reason for the experience of longing, and not certainly the feeling of a presence in my room at night.
Every night for a week I was called awake at three o'clock. I was beginning to get a bit scared. I had no explanation of what was happening nor any idea how I should deal with it. I realized it was beyond anything I had ever experienced and hoped my teacher could help me both to understand and cope with the experiences. If anyone knew what was happening it was him. I finally contacted my teacher in Wales and explained the entire sequence of experiences.. He gave me the name of a Tibetan "deity" to call upon and a mantra associated with that "Awareness Being" ( our sangha used the term Awareness Being as opposed to the traditional term deity). He said if the experiences continued do the practice and recite the mantra he had given me.
That night I was awakened again by the sense of a "presence"., I went to my altar and lit the candles. I sat in silent mediation for a while before using the mantra and calling on the Buddhist deity that I had been instructed to use. It was a powerful mediation. There was a deep quiet and I felt a calm and stillness that seemed to penetrate the room. I called out the name of the Awareness Being as instructed by Rinpoche (an honorific term for a Vajrayana teacher which literally means Precious Jewel). To my surprise I heard a voice say "I am not that." I can't tell you where the voice came from. It sounded like my voice even though I have no recollection of actually speaking the words. I cannot tell you exactly if the voice was interior or exterior but it was a voice which clearly and distinctively said, "I am not that."
I was completely shaken. I sat dumbfounded and in silence. I got up and went out side. It was probably three thirty in the morning and there was a pale moon just visible over the ocean. I sat on our front steps and began to cry. The longing and ache inside had not lessened but seemed to have increased. I was at my wits end and knew something was happening. I just didn't know what. I cried my heart out. I sobbed . Finally I lifted my head and asked, "Who are you?"
When I said those words something incredible happened. Please understand I have no sense of appropriateness about this. I have no way to even explain how or why it happened. I am the stupidest one. I have no right to even attempt to explain what happened nor to try and say , I, in anyway, comprehend nor deserve what happened. But when I spoke those words, I filled with a soft Light. I know that is hard to understand but I filled with this Light. It wasn't visible in the ordinary sense. It was a luminosity that filled me . I cannot describe the Light nor describe how light could bring a "knowing." But I knew that a Light had come inside me and knew me personally. I know that seems impossible but it happened. The Light not only knew me , Miles, a screw up and quick tempered crumudgen, but loved me, actually loved me. Forgive my presumption but it is what I felt. I have no way to tell you how I knew that but I did. I didn't know what to call it. I felt awkward trying to say God or Christ, yet I felt it had something to do with God and The Christ Logos. I couldn't bring myself to say that ,however. It seemed too impossible and so loaded with everything I had rejected in Christianity (the Protestant Christianity of my childhood). It was impossible to say the words though I felt like a piece of God had broken off in me and that it was Love. I felt Love. I felt a Divine Love. I felt a Love that came to me personally, like it had called my name as it came inside me. Yet it seemed to be always inside me but I had not known it. It came inside and burst forth at the same time. I know that is hard to even imagine and I have no other words that I can use to try and explain that. If there were any way for me to tell you this in a clearer way I would.
I got on my knees and prostrated myself on the ground. I can't tell how long I was there but I eventually sat back up on the stairs and again cried. I have no way to explain what I felt. It may be wrong to say but I felt words fall away as the Light entered and I felt a "knowing" in me that seemed to be born with Love. I knew that God loved me yet I couldn't say the word God. I knew that Christ called me though I couldn't say the word Christ.
I had come to some realizations in my Buddhism, some small flickers of understanding the Big Picture, through my teacher and my practice but nothing like this.. I was glowing inside with Love and a knowing of Light. It wasn't a real glow, visible, nor tangible yet I felt like I was shinning inside. I couldn't tell if God was longing for me or I was longing for God. It seemed almost like we met in the longing. For the first time the Longing seemed to be the experience of the presence of God and my relation to Him. In Buddhism we often talked about finding the presence of our awareness in a life circumstance. In tantra all that is experienced presents the possibility of experiencing enlightenment in that moment. Our practices were often based on finding the presence of awareness in the emotion or life situations we were experiencing. I seem to have found the presence of my awareness in the longing of and by God as Light and Love.
For the first time in my life there was Divine Love, a Love that knew my name. I don't know how long I sat on the steps. The sky seemed to lighten but I cant say when I went inside. I'm sure I eventually went to sleep but I don't remember exactly when that was even though I woke up in bed with my clothes on.
The next morning when I told my wife what had happened I said that A Light That Is Not Light That Knows My Name had come inside me. I didn't know what else to call it. I described the experience but I still couldn't bring myself to say the word God nor could I use the name Christ.
I called it a Light That Is Not Light That Knows My Name.
Of course my wife, being a good Californian , asked if I was stoned. We both laughed. It had been a long time since that had been a possibility (no smoking of anything allowed in our sangha) but she listened and I told her the details. I knew at that point that everything was different. Somehow Love had entered the picture and life as I knew it had come crashing down. My teacher was an atheist and the Buddhism that I had learned certainly did not present the idea of a creator God nor a divinity that was a source of Love. We spoke of compassion and wisdom, kindness and awareness but rarely was the word love ever mentioned, and certainly not within the context of a Divine Love. My wife was scared I could tell. No matter how much we joked about it she felt that everything was up for grabs. She didn't know where it would lead me. I didn't know either. Everything had become pretty stable in our lives. That night everything was shaken to the core and my wife sensed it.
When The Light That Is Not Light That Knows My Name infused me with itself I knew things I could not explain. I experienced a personal Love from a Source that was beyond anything I had experienced before. It was wonderful and terrible at the same time.
Why couldn't I use the word God nor Christ? What held me back.? It seemed too chilling to even think that this was either, yet for the first time it seemed possible. It was possible that his was God's Love. It was possible that this was an experience of The Christ. I guess in some ways that was too uncool to say. I certainly didn't want to be a Christian. I had castigated Christians as hypocrites and idiots for years. As a Buddhist I was a bit kinder in that regard but I still had no intention of being a Christian nor any desire to explore that path. I never really could get rid of a concept of a God even though Rinpoche said I had to deal with my idea of God in relationship to blame. I blamed God for a lot of stuff in my life and he said to grow spiritually I had to let go of the concept of blame. He was right.
One world was opening and another was falling away. The vows I had made in becoming a Ngakpa were taken as lifelong vows. The commitment I had made were seen as "lives long" commitments both to my teacher and my lineage. Now I faced the fact that there was a Creator of Love, a Source of Love and a Spirit of Love that was unexplainable in my Buddhism, and from my experience, a reality that could not be denied. I struggled with what to do. I had no context to help sort out the experience. My teacher's atheism seemed to preclude the possibility of him understanding the reality that had just come alive in my life. I had had an experience that seemed to turn my Buddhism inside out. The structure of our practice and the instruction of my teacher seemed limited and I must admit incomplete. I knew my teacher was wrong about God. What was I going to do?
Pantelemon David Walker is my acupuncturist and a member of the Orthodox Church in America . We had discussed Buddhism and Christianity for months as he treated me. The next week I had an appointment with him. After we greeted each other he said, " I have a book for you I think you will enjoy." It was Christ The Eternal Tao by Hieromonk Damascene. That night I poured through the book. I have no idea when I went to sleep but I read for days and it gave me a base for sorting out the experiences that I had been having in relation to The Light That Is Not Light That Knows My Name.
I knew there was a Source of Love and an Energy of Love yet I hesitated to call it The Holy Spirit. I had left my childhood Christianity far behind. The words still stuck in my throat.
David suggested I try and attend an Orthodox church and mentioned an OCA Church in San Francisco. Yet that seemed too weird, too much of a commitment to a religion I had left. I wanted something that wasn't based on an institutional setting. The last thing I wanted to do was get involved in a church. After all I was a Buddhist. Why was I being drawn into another religion, especially Christianity.? I had made a commitment to my teacher and lineage. I shouldn't be exploring at this late date any other form of worship. But my Buddhism didn't address or acknowledge the experiences I had just had in relation to the Divine. I knew as certainly as I knew anything else that the experiences I had of A Light That Is Not Light That Knows My Name were real and true. My teacher said there was no God and I knew that I had experienced Divine Love personally.
I resisted the idea of a church yet Orthodoxy had an ancient contemplative tradition and a way of working in deepening and widening a personal sense of transformation of self in relation to the Divine. Fr. Damascene's book opened me to the possibility of at least exploring (without) commitment a tradition in Christianity that was far beyond any Christian tradition I had ever heard of. I called the Holy Trinity Cathedral (an OCA church in San Francisco.) A man answered the phone and I asked if the services were in English. He said in a thick Russian accent "broken." I cracked up laughing. I already liked his deadpan sense of humor. I got times for Liturgy and thanked him,
On Sunday February the seventh I woke and dressed and told my wife I was going to find a church. She was shocked. What? she shouted.
"I know, don't ask. I'll be back in awhile."
It was pouring down rain and the streets were pretty empty. I drove into San Francisco and had a vague notion of a Russian church with blue domes downtown. The listing for Holy Trinity Cathedral was on Green street and I thought I was headed in that direction. I finally saw the dome and cross. There is never any parking around that area so as I approached I said to myself. "If there's parking I'll stop, if not I'll go to Burger King." The minute I said it a person pulls out of a space across from the church. "Ok, ok I'll go." I walked into the church on February the seventh, l999. I didn't know it at that time but it was Prodigal Son Sunday.
In Tantra all the sense fields are used in one's practice. The senses are not denied but used to both open and relax into the natural state of one's own enlightenment. When I walked into the church I felt this vast display of light and fragrance. I was met at the door and welcomed. When asked if I was Orthodoxy I responded quickly ( and probably brusquely) I wasn't a Christian I was Buddhist. I stood in the rear and watched . As the Liturgy began the music and cant and readings seemed to fill the room as much as the light and fragrances. The whole service seemed to become this elaborate ritual of the senses. It was wonderful and it scared me to death. There was something that felt right. If only it didn't have to be so Christian. After services I was asked to join folks for lunch. I did. There was good conversation and even an interest in my Buddhism. I left feeling like I had found a new kind of Christianity. Definitely not the Christianity of my childhood. I returned the following Sunday.
I began to listen to the words in the Liturgy. Soon I began to come to some of the evening services and was amazed at what was being recited. I had never heard of a theology that was sung and canted along with the readings. More and more I began to realize that there was a Christianity in Orthodoxy that was vaster and deeper then I knew. And I began to hear references to the Light , a Light which seemed to have a lot in common with my experience of A Light That Is Not Light That Knows My Name. There was even a theology that acknowledged the Light and used that Light as a description of how God, Logos, and The Holy Spirit call and love.. I began to feel more comfortable with the words God and Christ. Of course my wife and friends felt very uncomfortable hearing me begin to use those dreaded words. Most folks became silent when they heard I was attending a Christian church, much less an Orthodox Christian church. I still was attending my Buddhist group and knew that when my teacher arrived in March that we had to talk. I felt like I was sneaking around in away going to a Christian church and I didn't want to do that. But I had to try and sort out my experiences and felt like the church offered some possibility for answers that neither my teacher nor my Buddhist lineage seemed to be able to explain..
Fr. Damascene's book had been the catalyst for that exploration and the unfolding of the church in my life seems an almost natural progression from that initial reading of his book. The more I attended the services the more I felt like this was a place I could be comfortable as a Christian. Though you must realize I never used that word. I still resisted. I still hung back. I lurked on the edges of Christianity, in the shadows of the candles as much as in the light. I resisted and resisted prostrating and crossing myself. That was just going too far. I was still a Buddhist. I was just visiting Christianity. That way I could still attend and explore but not make a commitment.. One night Matushka Barbara came over and asked if I wanted to learn how to cross myself. When I said yes, I surprised myself.
I know it seems odd but crossing myself made a difference in how I saw myself and how I begin to worship. It was the first sign I would make publicly that acknowledged that I trusted Christianity and had begun to see myself within the Christian frame. It's hard to explain. It's such a simple act but in many ways it became my first act of Christian acknowledgement. It became the first sign that I was "putting on Christ.". I had been raised to hate Papist. My father was raised German Luthern and he hated the Catholic church. I still had that in me. But I crossed myself that night and other nights as I began to more and more attend services and look to Orthodoxy for answers and a new form of devotion.
In Vajrayana Buddhism you view your teacher as an enlightened being who represents fully your path toward that goal. One prostrates to their teacher as a sign of complete respect and as a sign of dependence upon them for your spiritual advancement and realization. I would prostrate to my teacher without any reservation (except for my fat and my knees). In the Orthodox church one prostrates before God, before, Christ, before the Holy Spirit. One Prostrates before images of saints as an act of devotion and respect. I still would not do the prostrations. There was something in my stubbornness that didn't even make sense to me. I knew it was weird to be able to prostrate before a teacher and still not do it toward God. Somehow it seemed easier to trust a man rather than the Divine. I would cross myself but I wouldn't prostrate. Here I was literally pulled from bed, called in a away that even I seemed to hear, and have this incredible experience of Light and Love in a personal way, and yet my pride and stubbornness still resisted a richer and fuller expression of devotion. I would not bend. I wouldn't bow down before God. Something was still strongly resisting the call Christ and the Orthodoxy church. Though I knew I couldn't turn back.
. Great Lent is a time of intense spiritual evaluation. The whole church collectively begins a journey toward Jerusalem with Christ. The entire forty days becomes a cosmic drama suspended in a time I had rarely experienced in Buddhism. Time seems to drop away almost in relation to how the services lengthen. Somehow time was being used to destroy time.
I had attended long rituals in Buddhism. I had on occasion felt that they had going quicker than I had expected. But I had never experienced time in an "eternal" way. I know again how difficult that is to understand but the increased length of the services and Liturgies actually seemed to collapse into a timelessness that I had never felt so intently. Every word of the hymn or service seemed to be directed at me. Every verse about being lost and confused and put upon by life's circumstances was read for me. I was found by Love but still lost. I left every evening feeling that everything that had been sung, or canted was what I would have said, if I could have said anything as beautiful and true. I let the choir sing my praises and the reader cant my love. More and more as Lent deepened and became vaster and wider and, I must say, more sorrowful. I began to experience time in the church like no other time.
Even though spending hours in mediation and weeks in solitary retreat, time had never become so still. The services of Great Lent began to change me. One night during the Great Compline (I think). My knees bent. I felt myself kneeling before God and I felt so terrible about holding back. I felt like such a fool and prideful idiot. Everything in me had told me of Christ's Great Good Heart and I had refused His embrace. When my head touched the floor, God broke my heart. I sobbed. As Fr. Victor came cense the Icon near me I knew he heard me crying. I couldn't stop. I was so embarrassed. I felt so exposed. There were folks I had been with on a regular bases for weeks who stood near me in the church. They had seem me arrogant in My Buddhism, They had seem stand back. They had seem me cross myself and still hold back. And now they saw my knees bend and my head touch the wooden floor and me cry when God broke my heart.
He broke my heart right there. I can point to the spot. He had called me in the night. He had entered me as Light. He now broke my heart. I can't explain it any clearer. God broke my heart and my arrogance and my aloneness and had made loneliness impossible. He held me suspended in time and Love and I was not worthy of one iota of it.
Now I was broken with Love. I was a beggar. I am a beggar.
The evening services became more frequent and intense. My wife was angry that I was away so much and we disagreed often. I wasn't getting a lot of personal support for continuing this move toward the Christian Path. My friends thought I was crazy. My Buddhist sangha members didn't even know of my parallel church attendance. The more I was drawn toward the church the greater the forces seemed to be pulling me back. The contradictions and hypocrisy of my own participation as a Buddhist in a Christian church was obvious even to me.
It wasn't until that night that I realized there was no turning back. I was in Love and I had to get as close as I could to that Source of Love. I think I went a little bit crazy for awhile . The longing didn't stop. It seemed to get deeper as Great Lent progressed. I cried at the drop of a hat. I'd walk down the street and see an old couple holding hands and I'd brim over with tears. I was lost at services and Liturgy. I'd hear the bells ring with the beginning of the recitation of the Creed and I have to turn away with tears. My nose running was bad enough. . I tried to tell Diane that I could bring a thousand editions of great books to back up each sentence of the Creed and they would collapse before a handful of tears. I begin standing in the corner because I was so embarrassed. I missed being up front hearing the choir more fully but I stood in my corner and felt like this beggar getting warmed by a hobo fire.
I wrote to both Fr. Damascene, who was in Alaska, and to the rector of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Fr. Victor Sokolov, to tell them of what was happening to me and my growing need to address the possibility of exploring Orthodoxy more seriously. Fr. Damascene responded with a wonderful letter and encouragement. I was very moved by his kindness. I asked to meet with Fr. Victor.
I knew that my teacher was soon to arrive and I called and asked to schedule some time together. I had broken my vows to him not because I was beginning to embrace Christianity but because I didn't trust him enough to understand the experience of the light that is not light that knows my name. I felt since he took an atheist position he would not understand a priori the essence of the experience of the Light. That was actually when I broke my vows. I violated that teacher student trust. then not by asking to leave my vows. It was in that breach that I was actually able to open to the fuller expression of the Holy Spirit/ I had committed part of myself to not open because of my vows. Those Buddhist Vows were at one time the center of my identity and life. I tried to take the vows seriouslu. I loved Rinpoche . I still do. I felt this incredible responsibility to mystically continue a train of thought and method that helped people see the patterns which hold them back from relaxing into the natural goodness of being and non-being. I had made a commitment to that and I still hope there is a part of that commitment toward goodness and liberation in me.
I met with Rinpoche and we began to talk. I asked if we could move from the living room into his private room for some privacy. I know he sensed an uneasiness. I told him what had happened, tried to explain The Light That Is Not Light experience fully . I think he saw in me that the experience was real. Maybe it was reflected in the tears. Again I was lost in these tears of joy and terror. I was afraid I had cut a cord that nourished me spiritually. I had asked to be taken out of the line of energy that moves through the cosmos like a rive. I had been taken out of the stream. I was this former Buddhist. All my gods had been taken away; my images of consciousness, the way the world was becoming reflected. The Yidams and Protectors that I shared a world with were no longer there for me. It was a strange loss. but it was a powerful one.
Rather suddenly I asked to be released from my vows. It kind of exploded out of my mouth,. I felt terrible. I heard my own words ask to be released from my vows and I felt I had betrayed a man that I loved and who loved me dearly. He was my Spiritual Father for almost eight years. I knew I was hurting him . I was hurting him because he loved me and I knew it and I had made a commitment to add to this stream of lineage until all beings had been liberated. It was more than a personal vow to him alone. I knew that. Those methods of viewing and identifying in the vast scope of beings and worlds and energies was the central reference points of my life. There are streams of liberation in Buddhism that have specific cosmologies and ways of seeing the world. They are all refer to the base of their religion on compassion and awareness. I was asking not to be apart of more than a sangha.
Everything was etched in sadness. Rinpoche said he would release me from my .vows. He said for me to explore the Christian Path for a year and within that year if I wished to return to my vows He saw that I had gone through some transformation but I have no idea what he saw. He as always opted for kindness and created the possibility of a spaciousness in a terrible moment. He always could turn a moment of flux in beingness upside down. That's why he was such a good teacher for me. He turned my patterns of reaction to the world inside out. But it was through the experience of God's Light that everything seemed to be over ridden I told him I wasn't going to hold back that I was going to go into this as deeply as I could.
He said my only responsibility to him was to be a good Christian.
I think we cried together. That's the way I remember it . But it could have been just me. I left kind of in shock. I felt like someone had died. I felt this terrible feeling like there has been an accident and everything changes in a second. That terrible moment where the fifteen year old kid is holding a gun and touches the trigger. There is that tearing moment of certainty and dread where something is born and something fades into the last moment. Rinpoche had always tried to show us how to transform those moments into points of awareness.
I was driving over the Bay Bridge and it suddenly struck me that beyond the sorrow was a sense of certainty the decision was right. It was a strange bitter sweet memory of The Light That Is Not Light That Knows My Name. Even in all the distress there it was. I begin to remember and recall everything from the call in the night and looking for burglars. I forget God all the time. That's my problem. I forgot God for twenty years.
I had been called awake literally and taken to the gate and asked in. I tried to remember the first time I crossed myself and the place where God broke my heart.
Sometimes God has to hit us idiots over the head with a 2 X 4 before we get it. My stomach was in knots yet there was some sense of a point that was ok. There was this small point of calm. There was an eye in the storm. Doubt and sorrow were an atmosphere surrounding this small bead of the certainty of God's Love. It was a matter of remembering and remembering throughout the day, somehow, that it was there.
One time in the television show X Files Files, Scully ends the show by saying something like, "suppose He's calling all the time and no one is listening." Years ago I would have said it was a matter of frequency. Now I think it's a matter of Grace. Finally there was a destination in this strange confluence of time, circumstance and Mysterion. There seems to be in this great drama and economy of the being an emptiness a center Source of Love that become The Word (Logos) and Spirit to sweep through all that is and is not calling everyone and thing back to Divine Love.That's as close as I can get to it. But there seems to be a possibility that I am absolutely right. I e-mailed Fr. Victor that I had been released from my Buddhist vows. I asked to meet so I could find out how one continues from here. I continued to attend services during Great Lent. By the time Pascha arrived I was tired. In fact I was worn out. I was drained and empty accept for this little Light that stood somewhere in the back. Everything had been turned upside down. At least I think this is the chronology. Yet the whole flow and confluence of circumstance seemed to ebb and flow a tad faster than I could follow. It all was turned inside out in a few months. "Busted in the Blinding Light," I think the song goes. .
I met with Fr. Victor and we talked. He suggested a few books and encouraged me to continue to attend services . He reminded me that there was a study group every few weeks after Vespers. It was a very congenial meeting He didn't know when he said it But it was probably one of the most important pieces of advice anyone could give to a Buddhist who was looking toward Christ. He said it quickly and in kind of an off hand way. He stopped and turned and said. "Even if you have nothing , you offer nothing. It was at that moment God made the world seem abundant and Fr. Victor helped. I realized that I could offer God anything. I could give him my sadness and depression, my anger and distrust. In fact on a good day he could get some joy and a cluster of happiness. It was a very important thing for me to hear. Whether it is a paraphrase of someone else or not I don't care. At that moment those words were Fr. Victor's . and they have been with me ever since. Never has there been one moment since then that I didn't have something to offer to God.
The closer I moved to the church the more tense it became at home. Diane missed me and wasn't real subtle about letting me know it. Of course after twenty three years (at that time) she knew subtle didn't work with me. I'm too stupid. . The most difficult personal breaks were with dear friends in my Buddhist group. I asked my teacher's permission to tell my vajra sister and brother (my closest relations in the group) the entire tale so they would know exactly what happened. I'm afraid we didn't seem to share a base of experience nor language. No matter what I said had happened they saw that I had broken my vows. It was very hurtful and difficult for folks to hear. As I said more was at stake than just a small group of people. We were talking about the continuation of a Lineage and those vows were part of that commitment. Their anger was actually a sign of their devotion to Rinpoche. They felt betrayed and hurt and angry. I was breaking a spiritual bond between us . They were right. But I still had a very hard time trying to understand what seemed to me a lack of love. There has been a long silence.
On May twenty third of l999 I was Baptized into the Orthodox Church in America. The following copy of a letter I sent my priest may convey some of what the Sacrament meant to me.
Dear Father Victor- Tonight please let me talk about Mystery... Today was magic and somehow consummated four months of trying to accept the MYSTERY of God's Being and deep Longing for each of us. I know this is just the beginning. I know I am so new and young in this that there is a danger that the power of this joy will make me think I know things I do not. But today was wonderful- wonder filled- full of wonder.
The incredible gratitude I felt yesterday was incomplete, faint, stupid. I was not complete in gratitude-empty in gratitude. I am not now, nor ever will be able to fill myself with God's gratitude in the way that could be of any use to Him. I am a poor example of devotion but for me this day is a measure of brimming over-spilling on the floor-ruining the carpets with gratitude- filling the basement with gratitude-How can I possibly give back to God? What could I even conceive of that could be an offering? I can't imagine ever being able to express this springtime in me- these flowers in my veins- this garden that has worms and slugs and bird shit on the roses. But If I could it would be today. I would go to God and offer him this day as what I could give. I would empty my pockets with this day. I would turn myself inside out with this day and say, "Please, Lord it is the best I have. Please take this from me- This Day."
I am like a song leaping into the cold sea-salt tears and Grace run down my cheeks- My wife stands watching just a heartbeat away. I hear the choir. I catch her eye . I watch you move toward me. It's in slow motion- some film shot out of time. There is breath. There is your breath- there is God's breath -there is my breath -the church breathes with this light. I know it sounds like I'm talking magic here. Yes! God's magic- God's moment gift to me this day and mine to Him. Please cut my hair take what you think He'll like-I don't care what Fr. Schmemann might say about magic. Its not your magic, though you are part of it. Its not my magic, though I am part of it. But this wonderful day is God's ordinary magic. Each leaf-each day- each ten thousand ants that crawl in this day shimmer in magic. Because we are blind and turn away we don't see it in God's magical way. But when you begin to see- it seems like Grace is everywhere. God's ordinary magic breaking through my blindness and shallowness and myopia.
I watch your cross in front of me-the gold and the diffuse sun-the white material of your vestment-the words calling me to ring like bells. I am only standing there. I am only this still person standing in this beautiful place. There is a fullness I have never known-a sense of being known by God deep inside me. I am sure in this. His music sends shivers through me- coral blue violins and cello, oboe and flute-good dark beer that tastes like wheat- Liturgy and sweat and inside me laughter mixing with reunion dance at an airport. My heart's deep crevices, those dark hidden sad places-those places that I have closed to Love for all my life seem touched by a Great Kindness. The snow is melting. I feel it inside me. The glaciers are turning into lakes. The bears move south and the birds fly inside me to the warm forest just over the last ridge. The doors are open and the wind is blowing the curtains. There is a patch of warm sunlight on the floor and specks of dust shine in the air, swirling as the patterns of a dancer's skirt brush the floor.
Dear Father Victor this is not a second chance it's a first chance. I am new to life. I really am. I am new to this world. I have never felt like this newness. I feel clean. I really do-I feel clean inside. I feel like menthol everywhere. I feel like I've never seen sunlight before. I am amazed by people's eyes. The small wrinkles around their mouths when they smile. The way the morning shines through them and not just on them. They look so wonderful- they still look wonderful.
The water washed me. Please believe me. I never thought I could understand this nor even say this.
The oil blessed me. Sealed me in the Body of a timeless Church. That is true.- It is timeless and has always existed in God (before words).
Please understand that this is real. This isn't some archetype-nor symbol- nor ritual trapped in a small church in San Francisco. It is real and it is Wonderous and it is from God to us all. Everything in me says that that is true. I remember Johann's hand on my arm helping me as I stepped into the Jordan River. I remember the sun and Christ through the Royal Doors. I remember Diane crying on the banks. I remember your voice and I remember how God spread the constellations through the night sky and held me under the water and took me up and washed me and lifted me up to show the world that a new child had been born.
As a friend of mine used to say "pulled kicking and screaming into Glory."
You lead me from the river, my clothes sticking to me, gripping your hand wrapped in vestments-the desert sand burning my feet-joy mesmerized in my heart-watching each step and the smiles and eyes of the church living in the morning. On the banks the people waited. My wife watched and those wonderful folks who have encouraged me since Prodigal Son Sunday to come back- always come back. That formula for repentance- to come back- to always come back-that course of freedom to return-that freeway that FREE WAY of return and repentance- when God broke my heart. I can show you the place where God broke my heart in your church- in our church. I can show you where I wiped the floor with my sleeve after prostrating finally to Him and called out to Him and answered Him. How could I go anywhere else? What place could be more home? I want to be in the place where God broke my heart.
When I approached the chalice I returned home. I am home.
I grew up taking communion but I have never really taken part in the Eucharist. Today I was given through Grace the opportunity to eat of The Body and drink of the Blood of Christ. I never had experienced that before though I have often taken communion. There are no real words for that- That is a Mystery I can not even begin to speak of. I am dumb before this. I am only grateful beyond measure and blessed into silence.
And I am finally home. Can you believe these words? I am finally home. God loves me. Me! I think this is true. I know this is true. God, for some unknown reason- loves me. He loves me as me- with a name, my name. God knows my name! And He loves me! God knows my heart and brain and fat and muscle and He loves me. God knows my every thought and fear and pain and He still accepts me. That is the most incredible reality possible. Oh Father, Today was God's great gift to me and mine to Him. I am empty before this. I am poor and empty before this.
Yet in that emptiness of mine I am full of Him. Do you see that? My words are so limited. But today I was emptied and today I was filled. You held the cup for God. That is what He has given you to do. You breathed on me as a representative of the Body of Christ and washed and anointed me with His oil. That is what He has given you to do. You gave me drink and you gave me eat. That is what He has given you to do. But +He+ emptied me today and +He+ filled me today with His Grace.
That is the Mystery we shared today. You and I and the great goodhearts that make up The Body of The Church. It was my journey-mine- with a name ( in the emptiness and fullness of Grace) and ours as a Church.
I have been shaken awake by water and Grace and God's Love. I have been anointed with oil in this time and forever in God's Being. I have been renewed, found and called forth, forgiven and forgiven and forgiven. I have been infused with an understanding of a Mystery that is beyond my understanding. I am an idiot in Love. A beggar and fool and sinner. I have been embraced in Holy Spirit and named before a Church that has existed forever. Today was wonderous and beyond measure. I am dumb before this-numb with gratitude and thanksgiving-tired and happy- and ready to rest in God's comfortable night.
Please know I offer today to God. You're part of that. Barbara and Johann and Ann and Anna and Elaine and everyone are part of That. My Beloved wife Diane is part of that . And me. I am part of that too. No words remain tonight, Father. Just Thank-fullness and prayer and silence and sleep.- Goodnight, Love in Christ (that is also true isn't it? Isn't that absolutely incredible!)- Nilus
(Reprinted with permission from Nilus Stryker and The Orthodox Word)
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Roman Catholic Journey to the Holy Orthodox Church (Story One)
0 Comments Published by georgy on at 12:10 AM.
In earliest childhood my Roman Catholic parents and teachers imparted to me the conviction that life on earth is transient, that death is inevitable, and that we must prepare for God's judgment. I always believed that there was one true Church, and that belonging to Her was not a light or superficial question, but a matter of spiritual life or death. Childhood impressions-the somber black vestments and the smell of incense at a funeral witnessed during lunch break at parochial school, a wonderful stained glass window depicting the Saviour's Mystical Supper with His disciples, a vivid picture in a catechism coloring book of Archangel Michael casting the fallen angels out of heaven-inflicted a wound incurable by earthly science: a nostalgia for Paradise, a desire for a return to the Father, a longing for heaven.
But how to get there. Where was the path to Paradise, the true way known by the apostles and martyrs, whose Lives filled my childish imagination, who were so real to me yet seemed so far away from my own life? As I grew into adolescence, well-meaning but wrong-thinking teachers filled my head with anti-religious and humanistic ideas in the name of the Church, ideas which I halfway accepted in youthful arrogance and intellectual pride, and which I tried to reconcile with being a Christian. But this did not satisfy me. Deep down I knew that Christ was the only truth, and that to properly understand and live out this truth was the only way to eternal life. But to whom could I turn to teach me this truth?
In high school I read the apologetic works of C.S. Lewis, which providentially saved me at this critical time from straying into relativism and unbelief. These writings gave me a philosophical defense for what Lewis calls "mere Christianity," and that was a start. But I knew it was not enough.
At the same time, I read the fantasy works of J.R.R. Tolkein. They played the important role of inspiring idealistic youth by examples of heroism, self-sacrifice, and violent struggle for the sake of good. But I knew that this was just fantasy. Where were the real heroes, the real fight which they fought? How could I enter their arena and win their prize? Finally, in the Roman Catholic seminary college I attended, a kind professor, a Benedictine monk, directed me to read the writings of the Holy Fathers of the early centuries of the Church. Like a forlorn prospector with the last ounce of his strength, who finds the long-sought-for lode of precious stone, I could not believe my eyes when I actually opened the pages of the Apostolic Fathers, the Apologists, the great Fathers of the fourth century, and the Lives of the early martyrs and monastic fathers. This was it! This was the way I had been searching for! But who possessed this life in our own time? This same professor, in successive classes on liturgy, sacred art and dogmatics, convinced me intellectually, beyond any reasonable doubt, that early Christianity had been radically different from the Roman Catholicism I knew, and that this tragic difference arose specifically at the time of the schism between Rome and the East. When I asked him who was right, Rome or the Orthodox, he said that the Orthodox were right. But when I asked him why he did not become Orthodox, he said ironically, "I am quite satisfied with the religious organization to which I belong." In other words, for all his accurate intellectual perceptions, he had given up on faith as life; he was satisfied with a dry, academic truth which did not change his life and could not save his soul. At this point, though I continued as his student for two more years, we parted ways in spirit, for I always had possessed a strong, unyielding urge to make my life conform to what I knew to be the truth. An intellectual acquaintance with Orthodoxy only whetted my thirst; it was not water for my thirsting soul.
So, from the age of twenty, I knew that the Orthodox Church was the one, true Church of Jesus Christ, but my fears and emotional insecurity held me back from converting. I flirted with Uniatism, as a way of pretending to be Orthodox while remaining under the Pope. I read books by Orthodox intellectuals which reassured me that it was somehow all right to be a Roman Catholic. I got involved in Roman Catholic social and political "good works," in order to distract myself somehow and ignore the pain of my soul. But this pain would not go away; I knew that, as long as I was not Orthodox, I was living a lie. Finally, as I lay awake one night in my bed at a Uniate seminary, it struck me with complete clarity that if I did not become Orthodox, I was disobeying God and risking losing my soul for all eternity. This was the simple, unvarnished truth, and no clever arguments could stand up against it. On October 22, 1983, I formally embraced the Orthodox Faith. Later, when I joined the Russian Church Abroad, I discovered that the day of my baptism was the feast of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, the day on which She delivered Moscow from the Roman Catholic Poles.
Now, by the inscrutable workings of God's grace, I am an Orthodox priest. When I meet Roman Catholics and other Western denomination Christians, I do not tell them first that I became Orthodox because of its correct teaching, though, of course, the Orthodox teaching is the correct one; I tell them that all my young life I sought the complete and saving way of life as lived by the Apostles and the Early Church, and that only in the bosom of the Orthodox Church can this LIFE be found. THIS is why I became Orthodox, and so should they. And so should you, dear reader, if you are not yet in this green pasture, this fount of living water, this saving Ark of the Church. Peace be to you. Amen.
But how to get there. Where was the path to Paradise, the true way known by the apostles and martyrs, whose Lives filled my childish imagination, who were so real to me yet seemed so far away from my own life? As I grew into adolescence, well-meaning but wrong-thinking teachers filled my head with anti-religious and humanistic ideas in the name of the Church, ideas which I halfway accepted in youthful arrogance and intellectual pride, and which I tried to reconcile with being a Christian. But this did not satisfy me. Deep down I knew that Christ was the only truth, and that to properly understand and live out this truth was the only way to eternal life. But to whom could I turn to teach me this truth?
In high school I read the apologetic works of C.S. Lewis, which providentially saved me at this critical time from straying into relativism and unbelief. These writings gave me a philosophical defense for what Lewis calls "mere Christianity," and that was a start. But I knew it was not enough.
At the same time, I read the fantasy works of J.R.R. Tolkein. They played the important role of inspiring idealistic youth by examples of heroism, self-sacrifice, and violent struggle for the sake of good. But I knew that this was just fantasy. Where were the real heroes, the real fight which they fought? How could I enter their arena and win their prize? Finally, in the Roman Catholic seminary college I attended, a kind professor, a Benedictine monk, directed me to read the writings of the Holy Fathers of the early centuries of the Church. Like a forlorn prospector with the last ounce of his strength, who finds the long-sought-for lode of precious stone, I could not believe my eyes when I actually opened the pages of the Apostolic Fathers, the Apologists, the great Fathers of the fourth century, and the Lives of the early martyrs and monastic fathers. This was it! This was the way I had been searching for! But who possessed this life in our own time? This same professor, in successive classes on liturgy, sacred art and dogmatics, convinced me intellectually, beyond any reasonable doubt, that early Christianity had been radically different from the Roman Catholicism I knew, and that this tragic difference arose specifically at the time of the schism between Rome and the East. When I asked him who was right, Rome or the Orthodox, he said that the Orthodox were right. But when I asked him why he did not become Orthodox, he said ironically, "I am quite satisfied with the religious organization to which I belong." In other words, for all his accurate intellectual perceptions, he had given up on faith as life; he was satisfied with a dry, academic truth which did not change his life and could not save his soul. At this point, though I continued as his student for two more years, we parted ways in spirit, for I always had possessed a strong, unyielding urge to make my life conform to what I knew to be the truth. An intellectual acquaintance with Orthodoxy only whetted my thirst; it was not water for my thirsting soul.
So, from the age of twenty, I knew that the Orthodox Church was the one, true Church of Jesus Christ, but my fears and emotional insecurity held me back from converting. I flirted with Uniatism, as a way of pretending to be Orthodox while remaining under the Pope. I read books by Orthodox intellectuals which reassured me that it was somehow all right to be a Roman Catholic. I got involved in Roman Catholic social and political "good works," in order to distract myself somehow and ignore the pain of my soul. But this pain would not go away; I knew that, as long as I was not Orthodox, I was living a lie. Finally, as I lay awake one night in my bed at a Uniate seminary, it struck me with complete clarity that if I did not become Orthodox, I was disobeying God and risking losing my soul for all eternity. This was the simple, unvarnished truth, and no clever arguments could stand up against it. On October 22, 1983, I formally embraced the Orthodox Faith. Later, when I joined the Russian Church Abroad, I discovered that the day of my baptism was the feast of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, the day on which She delivered Moscow from the Roman Catholic Poles.
Now, by the inscrutable workings of God's grace, I am an Orthodox priest. When I meet Roman Catholics and other Western denomination Christians, I do not tell them first that I became Orthodox because of its correct teaching, though, of course, the Orthodox teaching is the correct one; I tell them that all my young life I sought the complete and saving way of life as lived by the Apostles and the Early Church, and that only in the bosom of the Orthodox Church can this LIFE be found. THIS is why I became Orthodox, and so should they. And so should you, dear reader, if you are not yet in this green pasture, this fount of living water, this saving Ark of the Church. Peace be to you. Amen.
Priest Steven Allen
St. Michael's Orthodox Church, Denver
St. Michael's Orthodox Church, Denver
Source:
The Most-Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary
0 Comments Published by georgy on Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 2:49 AM.
In the theology and piety of the Orthodox Church, a special place of honor is given to the Mother of God the Most-Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, who is reverenced by the Orthodox as being more honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious, beyond compare, than the Seraphim. As Orthodox we style her as the most exalted among God's creatures; but we do not regard her as some sort of goddess, the 4th Person of the Trinity, as some accuse us; nor do we render her the worship due God alone. Just as with the Holy Icons, the veneration due Mary is expressed in quite different words in the Greek writings of the Fathers than that due God.At many of the Divine Services, the Deacon exclaims: Commemorating our Most-Holy, Most-Pure, Most-Blessed and Glorious Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary with all the Saints.... And here we can see three basic truths expressed concerning her.
The Virgin Mary is honored because she is Theotokos the Mother of God not of His divinity, but of His humanity, yet of God in that Jesus Christ was, in the theology of the Church, both God and Man, at one and the same time, in the Incarnation. Therefore, the honor given Mary is due to her relationship to Christ. And this honor, rather than taking away from that due God, makes us more aware of God's majesty; for it is precisely on account of the Son (Himself God) that she is venerated. Of times, when men refuse to honor Mary, it is because they do not believe in the cause of her veneration the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity.
We also speak of the Theotokos as being Ever-Virgin, which was officially proclaimed at the 5th Ecumenical Council (Constantinople 553; the dogma concerning Mary as being Theotokos was proclaimed in 431 at the 3rd Ecumenical Council in Ephesus). This notion does not actually contradict Holy Scripture, as some would think. And His mother and His brothers came; and standing outside they sent to Him and called Him (Mark 3:31). Here the use of the word brothers in the original Greek can mean half-brother, cousin, or near relative, in addition to brothers in the strict sense. The Orthodox Church has always seen brothers here as referring to His half-brothers.
If Mary is honored as Theotokos, so too, she is honored because she is Panagia All-Holy. She is the supreme example of the cooperation between God and Man; for God, Who always respects human freedom, did not become incarnate without her free consent which, as Holy Scripture tells us, was freely given: Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word (Luke 1:38). Thus Mary is seen by the Church as the New Eve (as Christ is the New Adam) whose perfect obedience contrasted the disobedience of the First Mother, Eve, in Paradise. As St. Irenaeus says, the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed through the obedience of Mary; for what Eve, a virgin, bound by her unbelief, that Mary, a virgin, unloosed by her faith [Against the Heresies, III, xxii, 4],
As All-Holy and Most-Pure, Mary was free from actual sin, but, in the opinion of most Orthodox theologians, although not dogmatized by the Church, she did fall under the curse of Original Sin as does all mankind. For this reason by virtue of her solidarity with all humanity the Theotokos died a bodily death. Yet, in her case, the resurrection of the body had been anticipated; and she was assumed body and soul into Heaven; and her tomb was found empty an event celebrated in the Feast of the Falling-Asleep (or Dormition) of the Most-Holy Theotokos (Aug. 15). Thus, as the hymns of that Feast proclaim, she has passed from earth to heaven, beyond death and judgment, living already in the age to come. She enjoys now the same bodily glory all of us hope to share one day.
Whereas the Church has officially proclaimed as dogmas the doctrines concerning the Trinity and the Incarnation, the glorification of the Mother of God belongs to the Inner Tradition of the Church. As the noted Orthodox theologian, Vladimir Lossky writes: It is hard to speak and not less hard to think about the mysteries which the Church keeps in the hidden depths of her inner consciousness.... The Mother of God was never a theme of the public preaching of the Apostles; while Christ was preached on the housetops, and proclaimed for all to know in an initiatory teaching addressed to the whole world, the mystery of His Mother was revealed only to those who were within the Church.... It is not so much an object of faith as a foundation of our hope, a fruit of faith, ripened in Tradition. Let us therefore keep silence, and let us not try to dogmatize about the supreme glory of the Mother of God [Panagia, in The Mother of God, ed. E.L. Mascall, p.35].
Appellations of the Theotokos.
Ark.
The Theotokos is often called an Ark, for the Glory of God settled on her, just as the Glory of God descended on the Mercy Seat of the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant (Ex. 25:10-22).
Aaron's Rod.
Just as Aaron's Rod sprouted miraculously in the Old Testament, so too, the Theotokos has budded forth the Flower of Immortality, Christ our God (Num. 17:1-11).
Burning Bush.
On Mt. Sinai, Moses saw the Bush that was burning, but was not consumed. So too, the Theotokos bore the fire of Divinity, but was not consumed (Ex. 3:1-6).
(Golden) Candlestick.
In the Old Testament Tabernacle, there were found in the Sanctuary golden candlesticks. The Theotokos is the Candlestick which held that Light that illumines the world (Ex. 25:31-40).
(Golden) Censer.
Just as the censer holds a burning coal, so too, the Theotokos held the Living Coal. In the Apocalypse, there stands an Angel before the Throne of God, swinging a censer, representing the prayers of the Saints rising up to God. This is also seen as a symbol of the Theotokos, for it is her prayers that find special favor before her Son.
Cloud.
In the Exodus, the Israelites were led out of Egypt by a Cloud of Light, symbolizing the presence of God in their midst. So too, the Theotokos is a Cloud, bearing God within.
Fleece.
In the book of Judges we read the account of the dew which appeared miraculously on Gideon's fleece (Judges 6:36-40). So too, the Dew Christ, appeared miraculously on the Living Fleece the Theotokos.
Holy of Holies.
Into the Holy of Holies only the High Priest could enter. So too, the Theotokos is the Holy of Holies into which only the Eternal High Priest Christ entered (Heb. 9:1-7).
Ladder.
In a dream Jacob saw a ladder ascending to Heaven, with Angels ascending and descending on it. The Theotokos is a Ladder, stretching from earth to Heaven, for on It God descended to man, having become incarnate.
Mountain (from which a Stone was cut not by hand of man).
The Prophet Daniel saw a mountain, from which was cut a stone, not by the hand of man (Dan. 2:34, 45). This is a reference to the miraculous Virgin Birth which was accomplished without the hand of man.
Palace.
The Theotokos was the Palace within which the King Christ our God dwelt.
Pot.
[See Urn]
Stem of Jesse.
In the Nativity Service, the Lord is referred to as the Rod from the Stem of Jesse (Is. 11:1), indicating His lineage from David, which was fulfilled through the Theotokos, who was a scion (or stem) of the line of David, the son of Jesse.
Tabernacle.
The Tabernacle was the place where the Glory of God dwelt. So too, the Glory of God dwelt in the Theotokos the Living Tabernacle (Ex. 40:34).
(Holy) Table.
This refers to the Holy Table (Altar Table) on which, at the Divine Liturgy, the Divine Food is offered. So too, the Theotokos is the Holy Table which bore the Bread of Life.
Temple.
The Prophet Ezekiel speaks of the Temple whose East gate remains sealed, through which only the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered. This clearly prophesies the Virgin Birth of the Theotokos (Ez. 44:1-2).
Throne.
The Theotokos is the Throne upon which Christ, the King of All, rested.
(Golden) Urn.
In the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant contained within itself a golden urn filled with the heavenly manna. The Theotokos is the Urn which contained Christ, the Divine Manna (Heb. 9:1-7).
Vine.
The Theotokos is the Vine which bore the Ripe Cluster (of Grapes), Christ our Lord.
Excerpt taken from "These Truths We Hold - The Holy Orthodox Church: Her Life and Teachings". Compiled and Edited by A Monk of St. Tikhon's Monastery. Copyright 1986 by the St. Tikhon's Seminary Press, South Canaan, Pennsylvania 18459.
Source:
The words like ‘please’, ‘no worries, ‘sorry, thank you, ‘excuse me’ of the signs of superlative affection are the most commonly used words of apology or salutations among the humans which exhibit that man is living in a super or bionic culture of aristocratic order that has no parallel in the annals of human history, yet not the less frequently used words of vulgar swearing or its equivalents in different global vernacular languages, unearth a dastardly kind of a second or third tier of lifestyle that augment the vexation of morally turpitude symptoms of a dying culture of a vanishing species. The cosmetic appearance and lifestyle of a high- tech man is meritoriously successful in laminating the instinctive impulses and frailties and vicissitudes of this ephemeral life. The more he goes to the super- tech hibernations, the vast is his resources to harden his heart that tune to the deprivations of finer human relationships, the imperative symptoms of maturity and give and take culture of sharing and mutual understanding. “The higher the monkey climbs, the more it shows its tail” is the proverb that explicitly portrays the cultural deviations of a materialistic society that is the product of a fossil wealth of petroleum and minerals of various kinds. From monolithic to monolithic is the cycle of our progress that circumvent into an unbridgeable gulf of lisping into an unfamiliar and bleak aeon of uncertainties and helplessness. Civilizations of various kinds flourished in course of time, yet evaporated sooner or later because of cultural diversities due to the mundane and superficial lifestyle that associated with them.
Commandments and Sins
Sins become rampant and poignant when commandments are violated, so also rules are made for infringement. Less rules, better for implementing them. God’s own hands wrote the 10 commandments that embraces every aspect of our life in general terms; seeing that those commandments were not practiced in our day to day life due to its vastness and vividness, God renewed and elaborated them meticulously in special categories and gave them to Moses for people to adhere to, for example, Deuteronomy chapters 21 to 28. The first commandment of making the Altar sacrifice given to Adam was renewed for making it as a bloodless one in the post-sacrificial era of the Lamb’s self-denial. There wouldn’t have been any sins, if there hadn’t been commandments and creeds that were given to Moses, so also the constraints of eating the forbidden fruit by the first parents. Sin is the process of walking over the commandments that are the foods prescribed by God. The reason for Jesus to instruct to follow the commandments to the lawyer for getting salvation was on this ground, Mt.19: 17. Thus sins become a transgression against the authority of God. The desire of the flesh to gratify itself is the father of sin that brings death of the soul. ‘Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin; and when sin it is full-grown brings forth death”, Jas.1: 15. Sin is a raging battle between the two enemies: the body and soul that, to an extent, rests in the Spirit of God. There is a multitude of sins that are the weapons of Satan which breed them and supply for its seven legions. Sins that are not mortal ones are forgiven by repentance and willful recompense and by the prayers of others.
Mortal Sins
“If anyone sees his brother committing what is not a mortal sin, he will ask, and God will give him life for those whose sin is not mortal. There is a sin which is mortal; I do not say that one is to pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal”, 1.Jn.5: 16-17. Just as the society survives by the help and continuing work of every individual of the global community lately, every soul that doesn’t commit mortal sins makes the spiritual progress by the prayers of other people and self-penitence. Pray and live for others is the religion that preaches love and concord among the communities. The mortal sins that are prone to kill our soul may be absolved by contrition and tearful repentance by the person himself; the prayers of other persons cannot blot out the stains of such sins. The sin against the Holy Spirit may not always get a chance for repentance as in the case of Judas. The church has listed homosexuality and secondly, depriving the privileges of hired people who toil and moil under the scorching sun and under the dark hours of day and night as mortal sins.
Hired Employees
Those who sit under the air-conditioned multi-storied building can be categorized as the slaves who work under the darkness, because the light of the sun is an indispensable food for the good health of every individual. The people who are scared to go to the daylight sun due to the -UV-ultra-violet rays- are prone to suffer from vitamin D deficiency. The one who doesn’t give the wage that one deserves for those who kill themselves for earning bread and butter is a cruel act of treachery. Despite the Trade unions fight against the employers for better salaries and working conditions, the employers in certain cases have proven to be the blood-sucking money-makers of the Shylocks brands, particularly in the developing and third world countries, so also some of the employees as hard line Goliaths due to the insincerity and unethical slanders. The latest conditions of signing the contract work are an inhuman policy that violates the freedom of individuals who will have to sacrifice their free thinking by pressure tactics. They deny the human rights of employees who work under consternation and intimidation. One who withholds the rights and better salary conditions of the workers come under the category of the one who commit mortal sins. The apocalyptic times have manufactured a multitude of people making mortal sins because of imposing of hard line conditions; despite they are illegal under the Labour Act Policies. Unless each individual strives to get out of one’s mortal sins, nobody else can give a helping hand to exonerate their inexcusable infirmities.
Same-sex relationship
This is the second lethal sin that eats away our soul and body, unless the person lives a penitent life and discontinues the brutal sin. Complementing family life that is blessed by the religious imperatives between a man and a woman is the only sexual relationship allowed by God for the propagation of the human race; all other sexual relationship is illegitimate and unproductive, as the result of eating the forbidden fruit was the carnage of ‘nakedness’, Gen.2: 25. Same-sex relationship is biologically barren and perniciously a health hazard; spiritually it is a bomb that explodes and shatters the personality of the individual. Even a lustful look that gratifies one’s flesh comes under the banner of sexual abomination, Mt.5, although there are minor and major sins. It doesn’t mean all other forgivable iniquities become stain free by the prayers of others; transgressions that come under the momentary impulses are forgiven by our prayers; long continuing and willful sins also may come under the label of mortal sins. However, these explanations cannot question the righteousness and jurisprudence of God; these all depend on the genetic conditions and mental, physical and circumstantial set-up of an individual. If Mary Magdalene can get the immunity from the visitation of the 7 legions of the devil by the touch of the Saviour, we are mere pigmies in the territory of spiritual vastness that has no horizon or boundary while engaged in the process of judging others.
Judgement
The multifarious vividness and complexities of earthly life make us as only mere nomads in the stretching wilderness of human life. There again we are deprived of knowing the head or tail of the mirage of this passing sojourn. We have no knowledge or ability and the authority of judging others. As the sexual aberrations are the mother of all other evils that germinated by the openness of nakedness, let us have an observation over the ocean of sins that rule over the humanity from the first day after the Eden tragedy. Sexual sins that breed within the body of every cell of individuals, 1.Cor.6: 18-20, they become congenital aberrations of genetic disorder that make imprint upon the cells of the coming generations. This is the reason for Jesus to spell out that a lustful look, the cradle of vices that becomes the nursery of amorous love.
The money culture that made it conducive for dating and sleeping with different people is a blatant sin of fornication that become the storehouse of genetic maladies which bud into chronic disorders of multiple tragedies. The transactions of various enzymes, hormones and chemical nutrients and wastes, due to cohabiting with different people, that make a heterogeneous body cripple the soul due to the stain that burden for the future running of the body and spirit. Fornication is a sin that corrupt the soul and body before the marriage; the extra-marital relationship or adultery after the marriage is a serious crime than fornication because marriage is a socially and legally-arranged and accepted relationship that only the death can separate. Taking into account of the congenital and genetic dysfunctions, no secular system has the authority to condone their legal duties that enshrine their moral responsibilities in upholding the moral, spiritual and religious values that is a part of our intrinsic human make-up. We should have entrusted the duties of governance only upon such people who are conversant with the moral, social and religious knowledge which work as the social network of a web that constrain the animal magnetism which torpedo the personality of an individual and others.
Same-sex relationship is also is an aberration that supplements the chemical imbalance of our body system that links and controls the autonomous set-up of a complementing body apparatus. As there is an intrinsic and complex method of fuelling the body by the soul and vice-versa, any perpetration of the natural ethos is detrimental to the body that corrupts the soul is a dynamite of the inner personality of an individual. The unforgivable part is that while the fornicators jeer and laugh at the adulterers, who might have also been fornicators before their marriage, the self-conceited morality of a materialistic society is an open advertisement that it looks like a spit that falls on their own face while they are lying flat. The most perpetrated saga is that the fornicators and the adulterers condemn the traffic of same-sex relationship; despite it is a more serious sin that brought fire from heavens on Sodom and Gomorrah. Just like Sodom was destroyed by fire, the whole world of Noah’s generation was exterminated for their sins by a great deluge, Gen.6: 1-8, mainly of sexual profligacy of misadventures. Surrogate motherhood and in-vitro fertilization are matters of condemnation for many who are indulged in all sorts of sex traffic and sexual deviations. Criminals criticizing criminals is a sign of white sepulchre panacea, especially in this doomsday culture of suicidal traits. One who makes error or mistake in one thing is prone to make faults in everything.
Virgins
All are expected to be sex virgins before the marriage, but that clan is dying out from everywhere from the face of the globe. The high-tech trend of high-flying life has wiped out the monastic lifestyle that once stood out as a monument of spiritual life of unearthly pinnacle. Even that sphere is corroded with sex corruptions and banalities that lead a life of exoteric culture which invites high places in public life. Man has no time or taste in living a frugal and religious life in the land of material abundance and religious apostasy that lead into the territory of bohemianism, which is synonymous to spiritual poverty. The instincts of the senses rule where the spiritual instincts are rooted out, while the religious hypocrisy has a social role that is still craving for man’s spirit. Instead of the Spirit of God run our body system and our religious venues, if we allow the spirit of this world to take over the control of man and his trademark, we can produce only the Pharisees and Sadducees and moral hunchbacks. When we lose the middle ground, only the extremes become the centre of our attraction. Religious extremism and fanaticism that galvanize the secular set-up or vise versa only end up in the mass production of atheists, agnostics and religious and social mafias. Christ came at a time when such puritanical forces of cosmetic religious pluralism harnessed the rein of the society. The reason for Him to drive out the laminating religious leaders from the holy place was because they made it as a den of robbers.
Outcasts
Jesus took the whip to bring the downtrodden ones to His fold because they were a shepperdless flock. The light that magnified from Him could convert a woman who was haunted by 7 types of demons. He loved all the marginalized ones, as they were helpless in leading a life of the soul and body. The people sitting at the helm of affairs misled them with a political religiosity that was neither good for their soul nor their body. The womanizing ruling class swallowed the houses of the widows and the social vulnerable. “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you”, Mt.21: 31-32. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte, and make he become a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves”, Mt.23: 15. Sex crimes, sex trade and slavery are all abominable sins, but the sin of spiritual pride that hides all forms of sexual demeanors which walk over the religious commands bring everything to nothing. “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, ‘do not commit adultery’, said also, ‘do not kill’. I f you do not commit adultery but to kill, you have become a transgressor of the law”, Jas.2: 10-11.
Arrogance
Jesus talked about this type of hypocrisy in very lucid language to the inhabitants of His father’s native place, Capernaum. “And you Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty work done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained in this day. But I tell you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgement for the land of Sodom than for you”, Mt.11: 20-24. Jesus failed to do many miracles in his father’s place because they knew that He was the son of Joseph, a poor carpenter. The poor has no place in this world of affluence that is amassed by looting and shooting. The religious faith has no value, just like the natives rejected the Son of Man in His own father’s native land. The money culture of the nations and religions has helped only building a monument of human pride that goes before a fall. This pride that elevates us to the level of Godhead to rule in Heavenly Zion which man inherited from Lucifer is the real test of humanity.
A poor man’s wisdom is trampled over by a multitude of worldly zealots. The sleeping pride of man till the boom of the fossil money is at its zenith now, raging a battle that he may be evicted from his seemingly comfortable sojourn. One has to be welded with the fire of wisdom that whether it comes from a white or black man or from a slave. In order to make the wise fool Jesus took His birth as the son of a carpenter in a manger that give refuge to a mute animal, making the donkey as his vehicle on Palms Sunday. He had many things to say but kept quiet that spoke violently and vehemently after taking His seen mission from this world. The people who seduced to sexual slavery brought Mary Magdalene to Jesus to sentence her to stone to death, so that they could hide their immoral traffic with a paranoid person, before it comes to sight.
Hypocrisy, self -betrayal and self-conceit that rule a society accuse one another for sexual immorality-such as dating that end up in fornication and abortion, same-sex relationship and many other illegal sexual traffic, rape, corner stone of all other vices, hiding one’s own head under the Himalayan sand dunes. Some sort of witch hunt is made against some sexual perverts by people of other kinds of sexual maniacs. Every kind of sin will have judgement on the day when this earth vanishes; a sinner shouldn’t accuse another sinner. “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her”Jn.8. Jesus didn’t specifically say a sexual sinner stone her first, but a person with any sin. Sexual immorality is the infringement of the sixth commandment, there are 9 other commandments that one has to follow stringently, to doctrines, statutes and covenants we are bound to give heed to. The god mammon has manufactured only a sea of faith bashers and morality bashers who lead a life of religious and non-religious mafias.
Pride
Pride is a product of ignorance and personality break-up that conceals all sort of pandemonium. It is the pride of Capernaum that paid no heed to the Son of Man. Sexual profligacy is only second to self-deceit and blatant hypocrisy. The darkness of this planet that caused by Lucifer’s to rebel against the law of God is a classic example. His fall is due to his head weight that forced him not to worship the Most Holy One. As we don’t worship God in truth and Spirit, all the wickedness that the devil manufacture becomes our menu, eventuating not only blaspheming God, but also slandering and despising one’s own brethren. Read St.Matthew 18 and read the parable given there. This is about you and me. Fear God who only can instill the beauty of this evanescent life. The pride of Capernaum is haunting us and forces us to abandon God and follow a life of licentiousness.
Don’t kick a dead body. Help the sick and the poor. The people of Capernaum had a responsibility of caring a helpless man in his own home town; instead they turned a blind eye to Him and ignored Him. Our modern wars and atrocities have made this world as uninhabitable. Millions and millions of uprooted nomads are wandering around the world; stop this weapons of mass destruction and lethal wars that pull out the innocent and the helpless from their habitats. We have a moral duty of caring the sick and feeding the hungry. Nations and States are squandering billions and billions of money and their resources for whetting the lust for their own satisfactions. Leave alone the war, how much national wealth is wasted for spying and espionage their own innocent and helpless citizens. The law makers intend some good things, but the implementers use the law for their own end by torturing the helpless, uprooting the defenseless and vulnerable. Colour, ethnicity, geography and many other things come to the forefront glare while hunting the apparent culprits. Taunting words and actions that have multiple meanings are not jokes, but only can make a pandemonium in the midst of a happy setting. Jokes are empty words and gestures that a fool enjoys in the company of ruffians hurt the wise and sincere. Those who stand for values and wisdom have no value in this world that predating the chain reality of ‘diamond cut down diamond itself’. It is not easy for everyone to look and pretend like good people and act as cool villains.
Charming and pleasing expressions of manners come usually from the carnivorous nature of an inner Goliath of solid iron. “Look like the innocent flower and let there be serpent under it’, Shakespeare, is the philosophy behind the charming generations of modernity. Blind Legal binding, not the moral one, is the fibre that runs the society, institutions and families. The super-tech Pharaohs can’t have any human relationship because the mechanical intelligence that encompasses the moral machines is controlling our day to day affairs now. The man who supposedly harnesses the mechanical system has become a blind machine in the jungles of machineries; he is in no way different from one of the machines that he bridles with. The brain culture of today that transact the human affairs has no character of finer sentiments. Brain culture has no purity of character unless aligned with the vibrations of feeling that emanates from the heart. Feelings come from the heart, not from the brain. Saluting with superlative adjectives become shallow if we don't associate them with sublime affection and care.
The intellectual culture that was not a symptom of a natural lifestyle of the bygone age is an offshoot of materialistic culture of legal-minded technological aristocracy that is aligned with the super lifestyle of self-worship and egoism, whereas we used to correct people by saying straight to their face before. That age is no more because the mob thinks that correcting by moral lesson is hurting and unethical. “Woe unto you hypocrites! for you are like white-washed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead man’s bones and all uncleanness, mt.23: 27-28. Polished behaviour that hides the corrupt, sophisticated man is a threat to the society that destroys the quality of this transitory life.
By
Prof: ES John, Australia (Contributing Editor, theorthodoxchurch.info)
Commandments and Sins
Sins become rampant and poignant when commandments are violated, so also rules are made for infringement. Less rules, better for implementing them. God’s own hands wrote the 10 commandments that embraces every aspect of our life in general terms; seeing that those commandments were not practiced in our day to day life due to its vastness and vividness, God renewed and elaborated them meticulously in special categories and gave them to Moses for people to adhere to, for example, Deuteronomy chapters 21 to 28. The first commandment of making the Altar sacrifice given to Adam was renewed for making it as a bloodless one in the post-sacrificial era of the Lamb’s self-denial. There wouldn’t have been any sins, if there hadn’t been commandments and creeds that were given to Moses, so also the constraints of eating the forbidden fruit by the first parents. Sin is the process of walking over the commandments that are the foods prescribed by God. The reason for Jesus to instruct to follow the commandments to the lawyer for getting salvation was on this ground, Mt.19: 17. Thus sins become a transgression against the authority of God. The desire of the flesh to gratify itself is the father of sin that brings death of the soul. ‘Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin; and when sin it is full-grown brings forth death”, Jas.1: 15. Sin is a raging battle between the two enemies: the body and soul that, to an extent, rests in the Spirit of God. There is a multitude of sins that are the weapons of Satan which breed them and supply for its seven legions. Sins that are not mortal ones are forgiven by repentance and willful recompense and by the prayers of others.
Mortal Sins
“If anyone sees his brother committing what is not a mortal sin, he will ask, and God will give him life for those whose sin is not mortal. There is a sin which is mortal; I do not say that one is to pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal”, 1.Jn.5: 16-17. Just as the society survives by the help and continuing work of every individual of the global community lately, every soul that doesn’t commit mortal sins makes the spiritual progress by the prayers of other people and self-penitence. Pray and live for others is the religion that preaches love and concord among the communities. The mortal sins that are prone to kill our soul may be absolved by contrition and tearful repentance by the person himself; the prayers of other persons cannot blot out the stains of such sins. The sin against the Holy Spirit may not always get a chance for repentance as in the case of Judas. The church has listed homosexuality and secondly, depriving the privileges of hired people who toil and moil under the scorching sun and under the dark hours of day and night as mortal sins.
Hired Employees
Those who sit under the air-conditioned multi-storied building can be categorized as the slaves who work under the darkness, because the light of the sun is an indispensable food for the good health of every individual. The people who are scared to go to the daylight sun due to the -UV-ultra-violet rays- are prone to suffer from vitamin D deficiency. The one who doesn’t give the wage that one deserves for those who kill themselves for earning bread and butter is a cruel act of treachery. Despite the Trade unions fight against the employers for better salaries and working conditions, the employers in certain cases have proven to be the blood-sucking money-makers of the Shylocks brands, particularly in the developing and third world countries, so also some of the employees as hard line Goliaths due to the insincerity and unethical slanders. The latest conditions of signing the contract work are an inhuman policy that violates the freedom of individuals who will have to sacrifice their free thinking by pressure tactics. They deny the human rights of employees who work under consternation and intimidation. One who withholds the rights and better salary conditions of the workers come under the category of the one who commit mortal sins. The apocalyptic times have manufactured a multitude of people making mortal sins because of imposing of hard line conditions; despite they are illegal under the Labour Act Policies. Unless each individual strives to get out of one’s mortal sins, nobody else can give a helping hand to exonerate their inexcusable infirmities.
Same-sex relationship
This is the second lethal sin that eats away our soul and body, unless the person lives a penitent life and discontinues the brutal sin. Complementing family life that is blessed by the religious imperatives between a man and a woman is the only sexual relationship allowed by God for the propagation of the human race; all other sexual relationship is illegitimate and unproductive, as the result of eating the forbidden fruit was the carnage of ‘nakedness’, Gen.2: 25. Same-sex relationship is biologically barren and perniciously a health hazard; spiritually it is a bomb that explodes and shatters the personality of the individual. Even a lustful look that gratifies one’s flesh comes under the banner of sexual abomination, Mt.5, although there are minor and major sins. It doesn’t mean all other forgivable iniquities become stain free by the prayers of others; transgressions that come under the momentary impulses are forgiven by our prayers; long continuing and willful sins also may come under the label of mortal sins. However, these explanations cannot question the righteousness and jurisprudence of God; these all depend on the genetic conditions and mental, physical and circumstantial set-up of an individual. If Mary Magdalene can get the immunity from the visitation of the 7 legions of the devil by the touch of the Saviour, we are mere pigmies in the territory of spiritual vastness that has no horizon or boundary while engaged in the process of judging others.
Judgement
The multifarious vividness and complexities of earthly life make us as only mere nomads in the stretching wilderness of human life. There again we are deprived of knowing the head or tail of the mirage of this passing sojourn. We have no knowledge or ability and the authority of judging others. As the sexual aberrations are the mother of all other evils that germinated by the openness of nakedness, let us have an observation over the ocean of sins that rule over the humanity from the first day after the Eden tragedy. Sexual sins that breed within the body of every cell of individuals, 1.Cor.6: 18-20, they become congenital aberrations of genetic disorder that make imprint upon the cells of the coming generations. This is the reason for Jesus to spell out that a lustful look, the cradle of vices that becomes the nursery of amorous love.
The money culture that made it conducive for dating and sleeping with different people is a blatant sin of fornication that become the storehouse of genetic maladies which bud into chronic disorders of multiple tragedies. The transactions of various enzymes, hormones and chemical nutrients and wastes, due to cohabiting with different people, that make a heterogeneous body cripple the soul due to the stain that burden for the future running of the body and spirit. Fornication is a sin that corrupt the soul and body before the marriage; the extra-marital relationship or adultery after the marriage is a serious crime than fornication because marriage is a socially and legally-arranged and accepted relationship that only the death can separate. Taking into account of the congenital and genetic dysfunctions, no secular system has the authority to condone their legal duties that enshrine their moral responsibilities in upholding the moral, spiritual and religious values that is a part of our intrinsic human make-up. We should have entrusted the duties of governance only upon such people who are conversant with the moral, social and religious knowledge which work as the social network of a web that constrain the animal magnetism which torpedo the personality of an individual and others.
Same-sex relationship is also is an aberration that supplements the chemical imbalance of our body system that links and controls the autonomous set-up of a complementing body apparatus. As there is an intrinsic and complex method of fuelling the body by the soul and vice-versa, any perpetration of the natural ethos is detrimental to the body that corrupts the soul is a dynamite of the inner personality of an individual. The unforgivable part is that while the fornicators jeer and laugh at the adulterers, who might have also been fornicators before their marriage, the self-conceited morality of a materialistic society is an open advertisement that it looks like a spit that falls on their own face while they are lying flat. The most perpetrated saga is that the fornicators and the adulterers condemn the traffic of same-sex relationship; despite it is a more serious sin that brought fire from heavens on Sodom and Gomorrah. Just like Sodom was destroyed by fire, the whole world of Noah’s generation was exterminated for their sins by a great deluge, Gen.6: 1-8, mainly of sexual profligacy of misadventures. Surrogate motherhood and in-vitro fertilization are matters of condemnation for many who are indulged in all sorts of sex traffic and sexual deviations. Criminals criticizing criminals is a sign of white sepulchre panacea, especially in this doomsday culture of suicidal traits. One who makes error or mistake in one thing is prone to make faults in everything.
Virgins
All are expected to be sex virgins before the marriage, but that clan is dying out from everywhere from the face of the globe. The high-tech trend of high-flying life has wiped out the monastic lifestyle that once stood out as a monument of spiritual life of unearthly pinnacle. Even that sphere is corroded with sex corruptions and banalities that lead a life of exoteric culture which invites high places in public life. Man has no time or taste in living a frugal and religious life in the land of material abundance and religious apostasy that lead into the territory of bohemianism, which is synonymous to spiritual poverty. The instincts of the senses rule where the spiritual instincts are rooted out, while the religious hypocrisy has a social role that is still craving for man’s spirit. Instead of the Spirit of God run our body system and our religious venues, if we allow the spirit of this world to take over the control of man and his trademark, we can produce only the Pharisees and Sadducees and moral hunchbacks. When we lose the middle ground, only the extremes become the centre of our attraction. Religious extremism and fanaticism that galvanize the secular set-up or vise versa only end up in the mass production of atheists, agnostics and religious and social mafias. Christ came at a time when such puritanical forces of cosmetic religious pluralism harnessed the rein of the society. The reason for Him to drive out the laminating religious leaders from the holy place was because they made it as a den of robbers.
Outcasts
Jesus took the whip to bring the downtrodden ones to His fold because they were a shepperdless flock. The light that magnified from Him could convert a woman who was haunted by 7 types of demons. He loved all the marginalized ones, as they were helpless in leading a life of the soul and body. The people sitting at the helm of affairs misled them with a political religiosity that was neither good for their soul nor their body. The womanizing ruling class swallowed the houses of the widows and the social vulnerable. “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you”, Mt.21: 31-32. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte, and make he become a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves”, Mt.23: 15. Sex crimes, sex trade and slavery are all abominable sins, but the sin of spiritual pride that hides all forms of sexual demeanors which walk over the religious commands bring everything to nothing. “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, ‘do not commit adultery’, said also, ‘do not kill’. I f you do not commit adultery but to kill, you have become a transgressor of the law”, Jas.2: 10-11.
Arrogance
Jesus talked about this type of hypocrisy in very lucid language to the inhabitants of His father’s native place, Capernaum. “And you Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty work done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained in this day. But I tell you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgement for the land of Sodom than for you”, Mt.11: 20-24. Jesus failed to do many miracles in his father’s place because they knew that He was the son of Joseph, a poor carpenter. The poor has no place in this world of affluence that is amassed by looting and shooting. The religious faith has no value, just like the natives rejected the Son of Man in His own father’s native land. The money culture of the nations and religions has helped only building a monument of human pride that goes before a fall. This pride that elevates us to the level of Godhead to rule in Heavenly Zion which man inherited from Lucifer is the real test of humanity.
A poor man’s wisdom is trampled over by a multitude of worldly zealots. The sleeping pride of man till the boom of the fossil money is at its zenith now, raging a battle that he may be evicted from his seemingly comfortable sojourn. One has to be welded with the fire of wisdom that whether it comes from a white or black man or from a slave. In order to make the wise fool Jesus took His birth as the son of a carpenter in a manger that give refuge to a mute animal, making the donkey as his vehicle on Palms Sunday. He had many things to say but kept quiet that spoke violently and vehemently after taking His seen mission from this world. The people who seduced to sexual slavery brought Mary Magdalene to Jesus to sentence her to stone to death, so that they could hide their immoral traffic with a paranoid person, before it comes to sight.
Hypocrisy, self -betrayal and self-conceit that rule a society accuse one another for sexual immorality-such as dating that end up in fornication and abortion, same-sex relationship and many other illegal sexual traffic, rape, corner stone of all other vices, hiding one’s own head under the Himalayan sand dunes. Some sort of witch hunt is made against some sexual perverts by people of other kinds of sexual maniacs. Every kind of sin will have judgement on the day when this earth vanishes; a sinner shouldn’t accuse another sinner. “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her”Jn.8. Jesus didn’t specifically say a sexual sinner stone her first, but a person with any sin. Sexual immorality is the infringement of the sixth commandment, there are 9 other commandments that one has to follow stringently, to doctrines, statutes and covenants we are bound to give heed to. The god mammon has manufactured only a sea of faith bashers and morality bashers who lead a life of religious and non-religious mafias.
Pride
Pride is a product of ignorance and personality break-up that conceals all sort of pandemonium. It is the pride of Capernaum that paid no heed to the Son of Man. Sexual profligacy is only second to self-deceit and blatant hypocrisy. The darkness of this planet that caused by Lucifer’s to rebel against the law of God is a classic example. His fall is due to his head weight that forced him not to worship the Most Holy One. As we don’t worship God in truth and Spirit, all the wickedness that the devil manufacture becomes our menu, eventuating not only blaspheming God, but also slandering and despising one’s own brethren. Read St.Matthew 18 and read the parable given there. This is about you and me. Fear God who only can instill the beauty of this evanescent life. The pride of Capernaum is haunting us and forces us to abandon God and follow a life of licentiousness.
Don’t kick a dead body. Help the sick and the poor. The people of Capernaum had a responsibility of caring a helpless man in his own home town; instead they turned a blind eye to Him and ignored Him. Our modern wars and atrocities have made this world as uninhabitable. Millions and millions of uprooted nomads are wandering around the world; stop this weapons of mass destruction and lethal wars that pull out the innocent and the helpless from their habitats. We have a moral duty of caring the sick and feeding the hungry. Nations and States are squandering billions and billions of money and their resources for whetting the lust for their own satisfactions. Leave alone the war, how much national wealth is wasted for spying and espionage their own innocent and helpless citizens. The law makers intend some good things, but the implementers use the law for their own end by torturing the helpless, uprooting the defenseless and vulnerable. Colour, ethnicity, geography and many other things come to the forefront glare while hunting the apparent culprits. Taunting words and actions that have multiple meanings are not jokes, but only can make a pandemonium in the midst of a happy setting. Jokes are empty words and gestures that a fool enjoys in the company of ruffians hurt the wise and sincere. Those who stand for values and wisdom have no value in this world that predating the chain reality of ‘diamond cut down diamond itself’. It is not easy for everyone to look and pretend like good people and act as cool villains.
Charming and pleasing expressions of manners come usually from the carnivorous nature of an inner Goliath of solid iron. “Look like the innocent flower and let there be serpent under it’, Shakespeare, is the philosophy behind the charming generations of modernity. Blind Legal binding, not the moral one, is the fibre that runs the society, institutions and families. The super-tech Pharaohs can’t have any human relationship because the mechanical intelligence that encompasses the moral machines is controlling our day to day affairs now. The man who supposedly harnesses the mechanical system has become a blind machine in the jungles of machineries; he is in no way different from one of the machines that he bridles with. The brain culture of today that transact the human affairs has no character of finer sentiments. Brain culture has no purity of character unless aligned with the vibrations of feeling that emanates from the heart. Feelings come from the heart, not from the brain. Saluting with superlative adjectives become shallow if we don't associate them with sublime affection and care.
The intellectual culture that was not a symptom of a natural lifestyle of the bygone age is an offshoot of materialistic culture of legal-minded technological aristocracy that is aligned with the super lifestyle of self-worship and egoism, whereas we used to correct people by saying straight to their face before. That age is no more because the mob thinks that correcting by moral lesson is hurting and unethical. “Woe unto you hypocrites! for you are like white-washed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead man’s bones and all uncleanness, mt.23: 27-28. Polished behaviour that hides the corrupt, sophisticated man is a threat to the society that destroys the quality of this transitory life.
By
Prof: ES John, Australia (Contributing Editor, theorthodoxchurch.info)
Why I converted to Orthodox Christianity
0 Comments Published by georgy on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 9:45 AM.
Converting to Orthodox Christianity was a drastic change for someone such as myself who was raised Southern Baptist and Assembly of God. Some of my beliefs would be adamantly opposed by my family, friends, and most other Protestants, yet I had to make a choice. Was I going to stay with the Christianity of fads, conspiracies, and televangelists, or was I going to choose the Christianity of Justin Martyr, Polycarp, and Ignatius of Antioch?
This list below and the related writings were put together to communicate our decision with distant friends and family. As time passes, I notice that old Keith Green songs have begun to surface from the recesses of my cerebrum. Those songs spoke of aspiring to a deeper relationship with God and the words still move me to tears just as they did years ago. That deeper relationship with God that Keith Green sang about I am finding in Orthodox Christianity.
Here then is the reasoning behind the conversion:
1. Doctrinal Stability
Evangelicals' desire to return to authentic Christianity will never be fulfilled due to the chaos and extreme individualism. Without a paradosis, or "the faithful handing down" of belief as hermeneutic precedent, doctrinal fads abound. There are no spiritual fads in Orthodoxy, yet the Holy Spirit is alive and well in the Orthodox Church.
2. Historical Legacy
Eastern Orthodoxy is the representative of the most ancient of Christian traditions, and linked by unbroken continuity with the thought and doctrine of the apostolic age. In contrast, modern American/Evangelical Christianity seemingly refuses to value or acknowledge the Church Fathers.
3. Unbroken Apostolic Succession
An unbroken lineage of bishops that dates back to the leadership of the Apostles.
4. Historical Revisionism
Evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic movements teach that they are a return to a lost "pure Christianity" when in fact they are something entirely new altogether. I would probably still be Baptist or Assembly of God today if those in leadership had been straight with me about Church history in the first place.
5. Orthodox worship has remained virtually unchanged
Since it was first instituted by the apostles themselves. While Protestant worship is centered around one person talking, or modelled after secular entertainment. In Charismatic worship, the 'move of the Spirit' can depend greatly on how secure the music minister is in his job.
6. Sola Scriptura
The early Christians were not Sola Scripura. Each Christian community had a different combination of books until 398 AD when an official New Testament was finally canonized. If early Christians were not Sola Scripura, then they must have been in error, right?
7. World View
While Evangelical Christianity is preoccupied with conspiracies, sinister agendas, etc., the Orthodox Church has a sober, more realistic outlook.
8. Political Ideology
In modern Evengelical churches, there is an increasing trend to determine spiritual/social status by one's loyalty to political conservatism- a popular and recent philosophy, not a spirituality. There is no such pressure in Orthodoxy. The church has firm views on certain issues, which in turn have strong political implications, but one's loyalty is expected to be to the community of believers (the ekklesia), not a carnal political group.
9. The Ultimate Endorsement
The conversion of Campus Crusade for Christ leaders and their entire congregations en masse (1987) and the conversion of Frank Schaeffer. Frank's books, as well as those of his father were major influences in my life. The Schaeffers were proof that you didn't have to "dumb down" to be a Christian. Frank's conversion speaks volumes.
10. Church Stability
I have witnessed the self-destruction of several churches since I was a young. I want to raise my child in a congregation that will be there in fifty years and be teaching the exact same thing.
by: Dave Schneider
Source:
This list below and the related writings were put together to communicate our decision with distant friends and family. As time passes, I notice that old Keith Green songs have begun to surface from the recesses of my cerebrum. Those songs spoke of aspiring to a deeper relationship with God and the words still move me to tears just as they did years ago. That deeper relationship with God that Keith Green sang about I am finding in Orthodox Christianity.
Here then is the reasoning behind the conversion:
1. Doctrinal Stability
Evangelicals' desire to return to authentic Christianity will never be fulfilled due to the chaos and extreme individualism. Without a paradosis, or "the faithful handing down" of belief as hermeneutic precedent, doctrinal fads abound. There are no spiritual fads in Orthodoxy, yet the Holy Spirit is alive and well in the Orthodox Church.
2. Historical Legacy
Eastern Orthodoxy is the representative of the most ancient of Christian traditions, and linked by unbroken continuity with the thought and doctrine of the apostolic age. In contrast, modern American/Evangelical Christianity seemingly refuses to value or acknowledge the Church Fathers.
3. Unbroken Apostolic Succession
An unbroken lineage of bishops that dates back to the leadership of the Apostles.
4. Historical Revisionism
Evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic movements teach that they are a return to a lost "pure Christianity" when in fact they are something entirely new altogether. I would probably still be Baptist or Assembly of God today if those in leadership had been straight with me about Church history in the first place.
5. Orthodox worship has remained virtually unchanged
Since it was first instituted by the apostles themselves. While Protestant worship is centered around one person talking, or modelled after secular entertainment. In Charismatic worship, the 'move of the Spirit' can depend greatly on how secure the music minister is in his job.
6. Sola Scriptura
The early Christians were not Sola Scripura. Each Christian community had a different combination of books until 398 AD when an official New Testament was finally canonized. If early Christians were not Sola Scripura, then they must have been in error, right?
7. World View
While Evangelical Christianity is preoccupied with conspiracies, sinister agendas, etc., the Orthodox Church has a sober, more realistic outlook.
8. Political Ideology
In modern Evengelical churches, there is an increasing trend to determine spiritual/social status by one's loyalty to political conservatism- a popular and recent philosophy, not a spirituality. There is no such pressure in Orthodoxy. The church has firm views on certain issues, which in turn have strong political implications, but one's loyalty is expected to be to the community of believers (the ekklesia), not a carnal political group.
9. The Ultimate Endorsement
The conversion of Campus Crusade for Christ leaders and their entire congregations en masse (1987) and the conversion of Frank Schaeffer. Frank's books, as well as those of his father were major influences in my life. The Schaeffers were proof that you didn't have to "dumb down" to be a Christian. Frank's conversion speaks volumes.
10. Church Stability
I have witnessed the self-destruction of several churches since I was a young. I want to raise my child in a congregation that will be there in fifty years and be teaching the exact same thing.
by: Dave Schneider
Source:
