No Surprises Here!

So, how do you turn out?

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

On Simplicity

The Orthodox Church here in America faces a number of fairly pressing, and for better or worse, public problems. Reciting them at the moment serves no helpful purpose since the problems we are distressed with are in fact not the problem we face; what has got our attention are only the symptoms of a deeper problem.

Let me explain.

Often in our spiritual life God allows the enemy of souls to tempt us. Not infrequently, God will allow us to fall in the face of those temptations. But God never does this from malice. Rather our failure in spiritual warfare is meant for our salvation–typically to humble us.

How might God being humbling us? What might we be missing or overlooking in our shared life in Christ?

Thinking about the overall health of the Church here in America I realize by how little regard we have for simplicity. Looking back over the history of monasticism–both in the East and the West–I am struck by how often monastic leaders and reformers–Anthony, Benedict, Basil, Bernard, Francis, Dominic, Theodore, Sergius of Radonezh, Herman of Alaska, to name only a few in no particular order–have all stressed the centrality of poverty and humility in monastic life.

In a word, these great leaders in the spiritual life valued simplicity.

If monastic witness is essential to the health of the Church we might do well to listen to the witness that is offered to us down through the history of the Church. Here in America Church life–East and West, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical–is rarely characterized by economic, social or personal simplicity of life.

Instead Christians in America, of whatever tradition, are all too often rightly perceived as arrogant, triumphalistic and (and this is the real charge), WEALTHY. Our different Christian communities are divided theologically, but it seems we are united in our desire for more and more wealth and the many things (material and social) that wealth can purchase for us.

Lost in all of this is the mission of the Church: The salvation not simply of souls, but of the world. It is our great privilege and responsibility as Christians to return to God the world He has created and which, by our sin, we have defaced. Above all else, to be a Christian is to have accepted Christ call to be missionaries, to preach each in our own unique way “the Gospel to all creation” (compare, Mark 16.15). Our unparalleled material wealth, our politic freedoms, all of these are given to us by the Father through the Holy Spirit so that we can fulfill Christ’s command to us.

But we have failed to use wholeheartedly, generously, really sacrificially, what we have been give. This is why I think we in the Orthodox Church have to suffer scandals born of the rather petty desires of men. God is humbling us and calling us to repentance.

To say we are called to repentance is to say something that at least those who are professionally committed to Christ all already know. It is also to say anything we all can easily dismiss due to its lack of specific content. So let me play the fool and say that in the current situation our repentance must take the form of a simplification of Church’s life in both its personal and communal forms.

When I served in the Pacific Northwest I was often taken aback by the success of so-called non-canonical Orthodox groups. Reflecting on their success I have come to realize that–whatever else might have been the case–there was an integrity to their witness because of their relative poverty. Yes, there were a great number of other problems with all of these groups–but they embraced the very simplicity of life that I think is essential to the health of the Orthodox Church here in America.

This view, by the way, is not mine alone. It was first voiced by the late Fr Alexander Schmemann in series of essays published in the mid-1960’s (for an overview see Fr. Robert Arida’s”Problems of Orthodoxy in America: A Retrospective of Father Alexander Schmemann’s Analysis of Orthodox Spirituality In America“). In the third and final of these articles sub-titled “The Spiritual Problem,” Schmemann offers his solution to the problem I outlined above. He writes:

Finally the third essential dimension of the religious restoration in the parish is the recovery of its missionary character. And by this I mean primarily a shift from the selfish self-centeredness of the modern parish to the concept of the parish as servant. We use today an extremely ambiguous phraseology: we praise men because they “serve their parish”, for example. “Parish” is an end in itself justifying all sacrifices, all efforts, all activities. “For the benefit of the parish” . . . But it is ambiguous because the parish is not an end in itself and once it has become one—it is, in fact, an idol condemned as all other idols in the Gospel. The parish is the means for men of serving God and it itself must serve God and His work and only then is it justified and becomes “Church”. And again it is the sacred duty and the real function of the priest not to “serve the parish”, but to make the parish serve God—and there is a tremendous difference between these two functions. And for the parish to serve God means, first of all, to help God’s work wherever it is to be helped. I am convinced, and it is enough to read the Gospel just once to be convinced, that as long as our seminaries are obliged, year after year, literally to beg for money, as long as we cannot afford a few chaplains to take care of our students on college campuses, as long as so many obvious, urgent, self-evident spiritual needs of the Church remain unfulfilled because each parish must first “take care of itself”—the beautiful mosaics, golden vestments and jeweled crosses do not please God and that which does not please God is not Christian whatever the appearances. If a man says “I won’t help the poor because I must first take care of myself” we call it selfishness and term it a sin. If a parish says it and acts accordingly we consider it Christian—but as long as this “double standard” is accepted as a self-evident norm, as long as all this is praised and glorified as good and Christian at innumerable parish banquets and “affairs”, the parish betrays rather than serves God.

This is hardly new information is it? But it is Good News!

We need to commit our lives to Christ and in the current circumstances that means we must simplify our lives. God is humbling His Church and we would do well not only to understand that, but bring our lives into obedience with the simplicity of life that God has called us to live.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

More Thoughts On Ministering to Baptized Seekers

At right: Icon of the Bodiless Powers of Heaven.

Over on Intentional Disciple, Sherry W offers some thought provoking observations by Christopher Ruddy:

I acknowledged then and acknowledge now that church-world tension, but I think it is wrong to conflate that unavoidable tension with a Donatist desire for a purer church. A church that is not in some sort of substantial tension with the world is either corrupt or deluded.

Hard words, but I think words that, as an Orthodox Christian, I need to give serious consideration.

Several months ago I was at a meeting with a number of priests when one of the brothers asked why it is that the Church (which in context meant the bishops and the administrative powers that be) never seemed to quite respond in a proper or timely fashion to sexual or financial misconduct in the Church. At the time I did not offer an answer. But as I’ve thought about his question (which is also one that other’s ask and which I ask myself) I’ve come to realize that when people act in a manner that I perceive as irrational, I have that perception because I don’t understand their rational, I don’t understand the why of their behavior.

Let me make this clear: When I say your behavior is irrational, I mean that I don’t understand your reason(s) for acting as you do.

This isn’t to take a stance on the validity of the other person’s motivation. It is only to point out that the judgment that someone’s behavior is irrational or incomprehensible at a minimum reflects my lack of empathy for their situation.

This empathy it seems to me is the key to understand why it is that for many Orthodox Christians the tensions between the Church and the world simply does not exist. Why is it that, in large numbers, we prefer to structure the Church around the needs and desires of the complacent rather than, as I pointed out earlier, around the seekers in our midst?

Again, Ruddy’s observation are helpful:

[A] concern for identity and orthodoxy cannot be reflexively reduced to a fear-driven desire for purity and security. One can be confident and open, as I believe [Pope] Benedict [XVI] is, in the face of a difficult, even hostile situation. His words and actions as pope give little evidence of a fearful, cramped man. On an impressionistic level, he looks relaxed and happy; he wears the yoke of his office lightly and does not seem burdened as Paul VI was.

At the core, our acceptance of complacency as the practical norm around which we structure the life of the Church in America, reflects our habitual fearfulness. Both individually and as communally, we lack the confident openness that Ruddy sees in Pope Benedict XVI.

In its place Ruddy identifies two different, but equally unhelpful responses that I think embody and foster in us a fearful disposition of heart: “sectarianism” and “cooptation.”

It is easy to say that complacency in the Orthodox Church largely follows along with an emphasis on maintaining a given ethnicity as normative for the community’s life. Yes, I think it is true that in these communities, the Church has in large part been co-opted by, and put at the service of, the agenda of a particular ethnic identity. But even among converts it is rather easy to assume that the agenda of the world is identical with the Gospel.

There are many people who come to us from a cultural or theological or liturgical conservative background. There interest in becoming Orthodox is often less from a sense of vocation and more in the hope of finding a refuge and even an ally from liberalism and an ally in their own conservative agenda.

There is a similar parallelism to be seen in the sectarian temptation. “Old hippies,” so the joke goes in my old northern California stomping grounds, “never die. They just become Russian Orthodox.” American spirituality has always had strong utopian, and hence sectarian, tendencies. It is very easy to see in the Orthodox Church the vehicle for those utopian desires. Especially when it is mixed with an emphasis on ethnicity, one finds a ready made way to opt out of the larger culture.

What I’m saying is this: At least for the Orthodox Church in the United States, sectarianism and co-option can, and often do, exist hand in hand. When we succumb to one, we also give credibility to the other. And again, but grow out of and foster in us a fearful disposition of heart.

Compare this to what Ruddy says ought to be the case:

God’s people are elected, called out (literally, an ek-klesia) through no merit of their own, precisely in order to exist for others, to reveal to the world God’s will for all peoples. Election and openness go hand in hand, they call for each other. Donatists and their heirs get election, but forget openness. Some Catholics [and Orthodox Christians] today get openness, but forget election. Thinking of the church as a contrast society–and living as such–helps one to see how brilliant intensity and broad openness can coexist.

It is worth noting that just as sectarianism and co-option exist hand in hand so do election and openness. Let me go further, election/openness are the cure for the sectarianism/co-option dynamic that afflicts not only the Church, but is the common lot of fallen humanity.

The call to repentance is call to participate evermore fully in the life of the Most Holy Trinity and thereby transform sectarianism/co-option into a communion that embraces the whole of the cosmos. Again, as Ruddy express it:

We are all mediocre, God-beloved people called to conversion and to divine life in community. No one is perfect, and one of the strengths of Catholicism [We are all mediocre, God-beloved people called to conversion and to divine life in community. No one is perfect, and one of the strengths of Catholicism [and Orthodoxy] is precisely its mediocrity, its anti-elitism, its willingness to welcome all who are willing to come.

Ironically, even the sectarian, for all his zeal, is also mediocre and will also always and “repeatedly fall short of that standard, doesn’t take away from the intensity of that call, which ‘costs not less than everything,’ as T.S. Eliot put it.”

Overcoming the fear that breeds sectarianism and co-option is the work of conversion and as such of the whole Church. This is why the Church–East and West–grounds the Christian life in the grace of the sacraments. We cannot lift ourselves out of the fear we are in–it requires God bring us into the light of His Life. Christian live an eschatological life, a life that both participates in, and bears witness to, the New Heaven AND the New Earth:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”(Rev 21.1-5)

The sacraments are the means by which we come to participate in this New Heaven and this New Earth. While it is easy to say that we should minister to the seekers in our midst and not cater to the complacent, we can’t forget that the goal of our ministry is the Kingdom of God and not the seekers as such.

Yes, t is not only easy to say that we should minister to the seekers in our midst, it is the right thing to do. But, and this is key, just as we ought not to allow the complacent Christian to set a limit on the ministry of the Church, so too we cannot allow the seeker to circumscribe the Church’s ministry.

What God offers us in Jesus Christ and through the sacraments in not new things, but old things made new by grace. Whether we are complacent or a seeker, God desires to renew us–to make us new. And whether I am a complacent Christian or a seeker, it is this newness that I fear above all else.

The great tragedy of being a sinner is that I am not terrified that God will NOT give me my heart’s true desire, but that He will. What I most deeply desire is God, but when I am offered Him, I am like the prophet Isaiah:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: ” Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!” And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said: ” Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The LORD of hosts” (Is 6.1-5).

Like Isaiah, I need to have my lips cleansed by the burning coal of the Eucharist and, only then, offer myself to be sent in His Name to say what He would have me say to whom He would have me speak:

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:
” Behold, this has touched your lips;
Your iniquity is taken away,
And your sin purged.”

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying:
” Whom shall I send,
And who will go for Us?”

Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
And He said, “Go, and tell this people:
‘ Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
” Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed” (Is 6.6-10)

Yes, we must focus our ministry on the baptized seekers in our midsts. While we never could, it is becoming increasingly clear that we can no longer cater to the complacent Christians among us.

But in this we can never forget that our ministry to the baptized seekers in our midst does not exempt them, or us, to being undone. Nor does such a ministry excuse us from remembering that those who don’t hear the Gospel, or who hear and don’t understand, are in that situation for reasons that are not at all clear to us.

All I have to offer is the Living God and I cannot offer God unless I first encounter Him and am myself undone.

As I hope I showed above sectarianism and co-option are our constant temptations and we cannot allow ourselves the facile assumption that, however essential, structuring the ministry of the Church around the baptized seekers in our midst exhaust what it means to be obedient to the will of the Living and Thrice-Holy God in Whose Presence even the angels hid their eyes.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

http://tinyurl.com/2ox7ez

A Last Lecture

This last lecture by Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch. Dr Pausch a computer science prof at Carnegie Mellon, gave his last lecture on September 18. He was upbeat, funny, fit - even doing push-ups on the stage. But he knew, as did his audience, the his recently diagnosed pancreatic cancer will end his life in a matter of months.

The lecture is uplifting and I am not a little ashamed of myself for my own whining.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Hat tip to Monastic Musing.

From Google Video:

Almost all of us have childhood dreams: for example, being an astronaut, or making movies or video games for a living. Sadly, most people don’t achieve theirs, and I think that’s a shame. I had several specific childhood dreams, and I’ve actually achieved most of them. More importantly, I have found ways, in particular the creation (with Don Marinelli), of CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center (etc.cmu.edu), of helping many young people actually *achieve* their childhood dreams. This talk will discuss how I achieved my childhood dreams (being in zero gravity, designing theme park rides for Disney, and a few others), and will contain realistic advice on how *you* can live your life so that you can make your childhood dreams come true, too.

Ever Wonder What I Sound Like?

The OCA parish where, together with Fr Peter Pawlack, I am currently serving as interim pastor has a great website: Holy Assumption Church. In addition to a many great links and information about the Orthodox Church, they also have my rather iffy attempts at preaching. You can hear Fr Peter and me by clicking on the Homilies link.

Please pray for Fr Peter, the good people at Holy Assumption and me as we work together to enter into the next phase of the community’s life in Christ.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

So What Are You Going To Do?

An interesting post this morning by on the First Things’ blog On the Square Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., the Roman Catholic archbishop of Denver . The part I quote is from a talk given in September at an Indianapolis men’s conference for Legatus, a Catholic men’s group. Their mission is one that Orthodox Christians would do well to emulate. From their web page:

Our threefold purpose is to:

Study: Ongoing education is at the heart of Legatus. We are matching members, who have a thirst for knowledge, with the most profound and convincing body of religious knowledge in the history of human thought.

Live: Translating the teachings of Christ and the social teaching of the Church into practical applications helps our members become eminently pragmatic about their faith.

Spread: Legatus is the Latin word for “ambassador”. Our members don’t typically wear their faith on their shirtsleeves. They spread the faith through good example, good deeds and high ethical standards.

With that, let me now direct your attention to Archbishop Chaput’s concluding remarks.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

So what are you going to do? How are we going to convert this world? I want to suggest an answer from history.

Did you ever wonder how the early Church did it? I mean, how did a handful of very ordinary men, disciples of an obscure man executed as a criminal, wind up changing the world—conquering an empire and founding a whole new civilization on the cornerstone of that executed man’s life and teachings? And they did it in just a few centuries, without armies, and usually in face of discrimination and persecution.

Never before had a religion taught that God loved people personally and that God’s love began before the person was even born. Abortion and birth control were rampant in the Roman Empire. Christians rejected both of them from the beginning. Athenagoras, a Christian layman, explained why in an open letter he addressed to Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He said: “For we regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care.”

Before Christianity came on the scene, no religion had ever taught that God could be found in our neighbor. The world largely ignored the poor, the hungry, the stranger, and the imprisoned. And it still does. And yet Jesus said that we find God in our love for these least brethren of ours.

Christian love is not weak or anesthetic. It’s an act of the will. It takes guts. It’s a deliberate submission of our selfishness to the needs of others. There’s nothing “unmanly” about it, and there’s nothing—and I mean nothing—more demanding and rewarding in the world. The heart of medieval knighthood and chivalry was the choice of a fighting man to put himself at the service of others—honoring his lord, respecting the dignity of women, protecting the weak, and defending the faith even at the cost of his own life.

That’s your vocation. That’s what being a Christian man means. We still have those qualities in our hearts. We are not powerless in the face of today’s unbelieving civilization. We can turn this world upside down if only we’re willing to love—the kind of Christian love that is vastly more powerful than just a sugary feeling; the kind of love that converts men into something entirely new; the kind of love that bears fruit in a man’s zeal, courage, justice, mercy, and apostolic action.

So I leave you with this: Be men who love well. Be the Catholic men God intended you to be. Be men of courage and fidelity to your God, your wives, your families, and your Church. Put your belief into practice. Do everything for the glory of God, even the little things you have to do each day. Love those who don’t love you. Love—expecting nothing in return. Love—and those you love will find Jesus, too. Love—and through your actions, God will change this world.

Second Sunday of Luke (6:31-36)

Second Sunday of Luke
6:31-36

And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise. But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.

The older I get the more I love St Augustine and find amazing comfort and insight in his words.

What I find most attractive in Augustine’s work is his incomparable genius and skill in understanding and articulating the Christian life in all its glorious and paradoxically specificity. Reflecting on Christ’s command to us, the bishop of Hippo says that Christians “are . . . prohibited both from loving the world and, if we understand rightly, are commanded to love it” as well because, as Jesus tells us in this Sunday’s Gospel, we are to “love [our] enemies.”

And who are are enemies he asks but “the world, which hates us”?

How are we to find our way through these two, seemingly, contradictory commandments? We are called by Christ to not love “what the world itself loves,” that is to say we are not to love the faults that the world love. Rather,we are to love what “the world hates, namely, the handiwork of God and the various comforts of His goodness.” The great sorrow of the world is that the “world loves the fault . . . and hates its nature. . . . [Perversely the world] loves and hates itself.”

We overlook I think how easily our own self-hatred obscures from our vision God’s love and mercy for us. Let me rephrase that please: In my self-hatred, I have blind myself to God’s mercy and love for me, and for my neighbor. The content of this self-hatred is less wickedness, and more (as Augustine suggests throughout his writings and sermons) my disordered love of self–I love the very faults in myself that obscure my nature. I have, perversely, fallen in love with the pale imitation of myself that I have cobbled together out of the bits and pieces of my own experience and the half-truths I have heard throughout my life from society and other people. And it is this false image of myself that I have grown to prefer to the person I am in God’s eyes.

St Ambrose says that the “law commands . . . revenge . . . . [But the] Gospel bestows love for hostility, benevolence for hatred, prayer for curses, help for the persecuted, patience for the hungry and [the] grace of reward” for those who, having stumbled, repent, rise from their sins and strive again to be faithful. So, if this is what the Gospel offers me, why do I not run towards it? Why don’t I believe the Gospel that Christ proved through His death on the Cross?

This morning I read in the letters of Elder Joseph the Hesychast that in ancient times

[If] you reviled the idols, they would stone you or put you to a miserable death. Now in our times, every passion has taken the place of an idol. And if you reprove or criticize the passion that you see overcoming each person that all shour, “Stone him, because he has reviled our gods.”

I do not believe because I have replace the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with the rather little god I have made out of my passions.

Even though these little gods disappoint me, even though I know they will disappointment me and leave me humiliated, I worship them out of fear. There is something comfortable of worshiping a god of my own creation, that I can place right there on the shelf above my desk. To worship a god of my own creation makes me a god myself–I become what I fear and so become fearsome myself.

And again, the Church stands in stark contrast to all of this, the real question is how do I leave behind my fear and enter into love?

“How,” St Cyprian asks, will you love your enemies and prayer for your adversaries and persecutors?” He continues:

We see what happened in the case of Stephen. When he was being killed by the violence and stones of the Jews, he did not ask for vengeance but forgiveness for his murderers. . . . [The] first martyr for Christ . . . was not only a preacher of the Lord’s suffering but also an imitator of His most patient gentleness.

One of the great challenges of the Christian life is moving toward the good not out of the perverse self-hatred that Augustine identifies, but out of a real attract to what is good and with a sense, however immature and unformed, of our own worth as God’s beloved child. Taking our cue from Cyprian, maybe we would do well, especially at the beginning of our spiritual life or at those moments when our spiritual life seems to be at a low ebb, if we simply imitated Stephen.

It seems to me that, whatever it might be in full flower, being merciful means to renounce vengeance. And if I can’t quite renounce it? Well at least I should not want to want it. Though often out of fear or pride, I do not want to be punished or humiliated or shamed. No matter how deep my sin, I do not want to have someone take vengeance on me.

The beginning of mercy, the first step of fulfilling Christ’s command in the Gospel is this: Let us not seek vengeance against those who have hurt us. If we, if I, can at least do no harm, I give goodness the chance to be planted, to root itself and to grow in my heart and yours.

In Christ

+Fr Gregory

What Kids Don’t Want From Church

From Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Con:

Via Amy Welborn comes this terrific list of guidelines for youth ministry from Father Philip Powell, OP, who does campus ministry at the University of Dallas. It’s a list specifically for Catholic college students, but there’s lots here that all of us can learn from. A couple of weeks ago some of us young parents from our Orthodox parish were talking about youth ministry, and how we need to structure it. Obviously the needs of younger kids aren’t going to be the same as that of college students. But Fr. Philip gives us a lot to think about.

To read the rest of Fr Philip click here: Kids These Days: What they don’t want from the Church

And now, my comments on Crunchy Con:

As both an alum of the University of Dallas and an Orthodox priest I think that Fr Powell is right on track. Whether we are talking about Roman Catholic, Orthodox or mainline Protestant or Evangelical Christian kid, they need and want a substantive faith. When I arrived at UD in ‘78 I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a “conservative” Catholic. Actually I grew up in a “lapsed Catholic” family. What I encountered at UD was a view of Catholicism that I never even suspected existed. The combination of intellectual rigor and tangible piety has stayed with me all these years and has been a great asset to me as an Orthodox priest.

It is not a question of liberal vs. conservative, but insubstantial vs substantive. If, as Fr Powell suggests, there was a time when insubstantial & conservative converged in the Catholic Church that is no longer necessarily the case. What I think especially the Orthodox Church can learn from Fr Powell and Catholic institutions like UD is the need to raise our own intellectual standards and examine not only what we believe, but how we live as Orthodox Christians. We must also not be afraid of allowing our faith to illumine for us the larger world around us. For the most part Orthodox Christians–whether cradle or convert–seem happy to leave their faith in Church.

After 200+ years in America the Orthodox Church has not produced a Dorthy Day, a Martin Luther King, Jr, or a Billy Graham, to say nothing of an academic institution like the University of Dallas, a Thomas Aquinas College, a Grove City College or a Hillsdale College. If we wish to keep our young people we must, as Fr Powell suggests, be courageous and sacrificially generous in our efforts to help them pour their lives out for Christ.

As in the rest of the spiritual life, we only live by dying, we only receive by giving away–I have seen it again and again, it is only when I help young people discern and live out their unique vocation as Orthodox Christians that I have any hope of keeping them in the Church. Too often our work with youth reflect not a desire to help them be faithful to Christ’s call for their lives but rather the dubious goal of holding them to our (my) standards for them.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

We Need to Serve the Spiritual Seeker in Our Midst

This morning I served at St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Pittsburgh.

Attendance was probably twice what it was the week before. This was due to the fact that the church school program started this morning as well as a memorial service and breakfast after Liturgy for a member of the Cathedral parish who died last month.

After Liturgy I spoke with a couple who have left the Orthodox Church for an evangelical church. While I disagree with their decision, I do understand it. The sad fact of the matter is that Orthodox parish, especially those with a strong or dominate ethnic identity, tend not to preach the need for repentance and a vibrant spiritual life. Or if they preach this they are usually ineffectual in actual guiding people in the process. The reason this is so is that we naively assume that formation simply happens apart from any decision on the part of the individual Christian or the community.

This lack of effective spiritual guidance means that people tend to be rather mediocre in their commitment to Christ and His Church. The sad irony in all of this is that while priests and bishops and seminary faculty have all complained to me about the results of our lack of any intentional spiritual formation of the laity (and this includes our neglect of spiritual formation for seminarians), no one seems willing to actually take up the task of preaching repentance and implementing a program of spiritual formation.

We are often very anxious not to offend, or drive people away. While I understand this concern, the question needs to be asked how attached are the people really to Christ and His Church who we are afraid of driving away?

Absent repentance and spiritual formation how deep is the person connection to Christ and the Church?

And, absent our willingness to preach repentance and offer intentional spiritual formation, what does this say about us that people leave the Orthodox Church for other Christian traditions (typically Evangelical Christian communities)?

Who exactly are we afraid of offending or driving away? The lukewarm or those who desire for a deep relationship with Christ? This desire is so strong, their need for a relationship with a community of faith, with at least some sort of church, that they vote with their feet and walk across the road to the local megachurch.

So the question is really this: Why is it that we are willing to keep the lukewarm Christian at the expense of the baptized spiritual seeker in our midst?

The couple I spoke with after Liturgy had a list of reasons why they have joined a Bible church. I had to agree with their negative reasons–the reasons why they left Orthodoxy are simply true–or at least true enough for government work as my grandparents used to say.

But even their positive reasons attending a Bible church–to learn the Word of God, to develop a relationship with Christ, and to grow spiritually I also agreed with, even if I doubt they’ll find what they want in a Bible church. In any event, what they are looking for, and didn’t find in the Orthodox Church, all reflect rather poorly on their experiences as Orthodox Christians (and it is worth noting that they were both baptized and raised in the Orthodox Church, but in different ethnic traditions. The problem that they brought to my attention is not limited to one ethnic tradition or another.)

Thinking about their experiences, I wonder if it isn’t the case that the Orthodox Church planted in them a spiritual hunger that we then never feed? In effect, we pointed them down a road, but then said, that they (we, and more to the point, I) didn’t need to actually travel down.

In conversation after conversation, in sermon after sermon, in Greek, Russian, Serbian, Antiochian, Ukrainian and Carpatho-Russian parishes, from cradle Orthodox and converts, I have gotten a positive, even zealous, response to the possibility of new Life that comes to us through repentance and the sacraments.

But somehow, and again and again this has been my experience, at just the last moment, people falter. They see the prize, reach for it and then lose their desire and turn away.

And I’ve seen this as well not only with lay people, but also clergy and bishops. We know what we need to do, but we are afraid. And mostly what we are afraid of losing our relationship with those who will not follow Christ with us.

The time has come for God to renew the Orthodox Church. We’ve made little steps forward here and there, but these are not sufficient. We are still too attached to our wealth, our glorious history (as if any of us had anything to do with Byzantium or the “Third Rome”), our different ethnic customs, and above all our “True Churchiness.”

Ain’t none of this going to give us the “good defense before the fearsome Judgment Seat of Christ” that we pray for at every Liturgy. In fact, if we do not repent, if we do not value a deeper life in Christ more than our relationship with lukewarm Christian in our midsts, then all of these things–these real blessings from God that we have come to value more than God Hmself–will stand in judgment of us at the end of our life.

There are in every Orthodox parish lukewarm Christians who are dead set to remain lukewarm (It is odd if you think about it. The only way to stay lukewarm is to decide to be lukewarm. This is the only way I can imagine standing in the Divine Liturgy and NOT responding to Christ’s call to repentance.) Our willingness to cater, and yes it is a catering, to the lukewarm is costing us presence and the gifts of the baptized spiritual seeker in our midst.

We must as a Church turn our attention to these people. It will in the short run cost us members, money and even some of the “grace proof” comfort we have come to enjoy. But if we do not change our ways we will lose our salvation–our inaction we leave us with no acceptable answers before the judgment seat of Christ.

And that my friends is scary biscuits indeed as one of my spiritual children would put it.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Prayer & Work: Thoughts on Vocation

My schedule for the last week has required of me a fair amount of traveling. Since last Friday (the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross) I’ve made three trips to Pittsburgh (twice to serve Liturgy at St Nicholas Cathedral, once for the feast, once on Sunday and then on Tuesday give a lecture on God and Humanity at the University of Pittsburgh), two trips to Cleveland (the first of those then required I travel on to Toledo, twice, for the Called & Gifted Workshop, the second of my two Cleveland trips to begin planning a workshop on sexuality–more on that later). Tomorrow I’m driving to Canton, OH to participate in a parish health workshop. And Sunday it is back to Pittsburgh to serve Liturgy at the Cathedral and then to Cleveland for a party at the home of my friend Fr Michael. Oh, and least I forget, I’ve got a breakfast meeting in about an hour.

Now besides the transparent bid for your sympathy (”Oh, poor Fr Gregory! You work too hard!” is always rather nice) why do I relate all of this?

Simply put, my travels in the last week have brought home to me not simply how much I enjoy writing (of which this blog is only a small part–I’ve got four papers to finish by the middle of November), but how much I need to write.

Writing, studying, teaching are essential not only to my service as a priest but also to my spiritual life. In fact, with the exception of marriage to wife Mary (and she is the most important part of my life and what I am able to do for Christ and His Church), writing, studying, and teaching are the most important things in my life.

For a very long time I had trouble accepting how important writing, studying and teaching are to my spiritual life. You might be wondering, but what about prayer–private and liturgical–aren’t they important for me, don’t the figure prominently in my spiritual life? Why, you might ask, don’t I count these as more important?

Well, for a long time I did–and it made me crazy. Let me explain.

In the monastic tradition–East and West–pray and work are intimately connected. Ora et labora is the Benedictine motto–”Prayer and Work.”

After repentance and our commitment to follow Christ, it seems to me that the real challenge of the spiritual life is two-fold. First, I must come to understand the intimate, and really essential, connection between prayer and work. These are not hierarchically related to each other–it isn’t that prayer is more important than work, or that work is more important than prayer. No, these are not two separate things. Rather they are two facets of the same thing–two facets of our spiritual life.

In the beginning, when we lived in the Garden, prayer and work were a seamless garment. We had both an intimate communion with God, and each other, AND a creative stewardship over the Garden. Prayer and work were for us in the beginning together and this harmony made it possible for us to fulfill our vocation.

It is only as a result of the devil’s envy that prayer and work become separate and in opposition to each other. But, this isn’t how it was in beginning and realizing this, believing this, is as I said, the first great challenge of the spiritual after our repentance.

So what is the second challenge?

The second challenge is this: Having understood that prayer and work are meant to be a harmony, I must find that harmony for myself.

For too many Christians, prayer (if they consider it at all) is simply an escape from their daily work which they see as drudgery. Very few of us it seems love what we do or do what we love. Ironically, though there often isn’t much love in our work, we do love–or at least desire–the material benefits work brings us.

Our work is often materialistic. This being the case means work becomes for us necessarily an event of marked by competition, opposition, anxiety, fear, dread, envy and shame. It has to be like this because materialism means relating to creation in a manner that is indifferent to God. Absent transcendence our life is constricted by increasingly small circles of immanence. If my work doesn’t open up to God and look forward, and indeed participate in, the New Heaven and New Earth, then what I have, I have only at your expense. A world of pure immanence, a purely material world, is a world of ever diminishing resources.

The second challenge of the spiritual life then is finding the work that opens me evermore to the eschatological dimension of my own life. I have to find the right relationship between prayer and work. My work should lead me naturally, almost spontaneously, to prayer, even as prayer should inspire and guide my work.

Private and liturgical prayer in the full sense then are both sources and expressions of work. C.S. Lewis somewhere defends the dignity of those of us who pray best with a book in one hand and the nub of a pencil in the other. I suspect that so often people struggle in their prayer lives, both private and liturgical, because they see this as in someway different from, and maybe even in opposition to, work.

My work might be any of number of things. But unless that work flows out of my heart, our of my vocation, it will always be experienced as an event of conflict, of opposition.

And, likewise, for such a worker, prayer (if it has any meaning at all for him), will be experienced (hungrily) as an escape from work, an escape from life.

This isn’t as it ought to be.

Human beings are stewards of creation, and this includes being stewards of our own lives. We need to exert the effort necessary so that, by God’s grace and our own creativity, we can re-establish in our own lives the harmony of prayer and work. It is this harmony, possibly above all else, that is most lacking not only in the world, but even in our rather worldly minded churches.