Fasting and Giving Thanks

As we prepare for the great American feast of Thanksgiving—and the mania of the “holiday season” let’s think about what we are truly grateful for and Who it is we await as we prepare for the Nativity of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

First, Orthodox Christians prepare for the Feast of the Nativity by fasting for 40 days in anticipation. So, beginning November 15, we are called to withdraw from all those good and tasty foods being placed in front of us by a world that has the whole season backwards (and has basically forgotten what is really being celebrated in the first place). In practice, many Orthodox do not fast over the Thanksgiving holiday. Some do not begin fasting until after it has passed. And in some traditions the fast is not strictly kept until the last couple of weeks (beginning after St. Spyridon’s day---December 12—among some of the Greeks).

The truth is, the Advent Fast can be exceedingly difficult to keep in terms of food. Unlike the Great Fast in Lent, there is a competing general festival within the larger culture. Does this mean that we are given a dispensation from fasting? Absolutely not! But we are called to think more deeply about what fasting is truly about. It is NOT primarily about food. This is made very clear in the Scripture readings that lead up to Great Lent. Fasting from certain rich foods is meant to make us conscious of something far more important—our need to be freed from the “earthly cares” and desires that hold us down and keep us form thinking about the what truly matters, the things of eternal life. Every feast of the Lord is about “ultimate things”, about eternity, about salvation and we need to take time to prepare ourselves to accept and enter into the true meaning of the feast. To do so we need to remove ourselves from the distractions of this world. And this is especially hard during the Advent season.

So, what are some techniques we can use to successfully counter the cultural push to celebrate and spend to the point of distraction? Perhaps this is where the great American feast of Thanksgiving can help us out. After all, what we are grateful for tells us something about our relationship with God.

My list runs like this:

Of course, I am profoundly grateful to God for my family—for Prifteresha Luanne and Emily and for my extended family. I’m grateful for meaningful work—first and foremost as a priest of our Holy Orthodox Church, but also for my work as an educator at the school where I work to support my ministry.

But my deepest thanks is to God for giving me this life to live for Him and in Him as an Orthodox Christian believer. For, in the last analysis, everything I have is from God and must be offered back to Him in thanksgiving and praise and everything that is true and meaningful must ultimately have eternal connotations. Certainly, love does—those whom I love bear His image and likeness and have been made for eternity. And my work, if it is at all worthy, is directed toward the wellbeing of others and has an impact on their eternal destiny.

That leaves out some things, too. There are clearly things in my life that I can do away with—things that distract me from eternal life and tie me to this world. It is those things (some of which are edible!) that I can and should put aside in preparation for the Holy feast of Christmas. And if, in my weakness, I am not completely successful, then I must offer them as well to my God in thanksgiving. If there are truly things that are unworthy of a Christian (thoughts, words, deeds), then not only do I need to fast from them, but I must repudiate them as a matter of salvation.

So, fasting and our national feast of Thanksgiving can and must go hand in hand. After all, this is exactly how the church has always made things that are outside the tradition, but are good and worthy, a part of the living tradition and experience of the faithful. So, lets make our Thanksgiving a truly Orthodox one—not concerned with food and drink in and of themselves—but with the praise of God from Whom all good things proceed. And let’s continue throughout the Nativity season, doing our best to fast rightly from foods that we should avoid in the Advent season, but always, no matter what we eat, giving thanks to the One who became One of us for our sakes and for our salvation.

The Utilitarian Road to Hell, or, Auschwitz with a Happy Face: The Value of a Person

In the New York Sunday Times Magazine this past Sunday (July 19, 2009) there was an article by the famous (or, infamous) ethicist, Peter Singer. Singer is a professor at Princeton University and is well known for his stand on "animal rights". Dr. Singer has stated on numerous occasions that there are times when an animal's rights outweigh those of human beings--for instance in a fire it might be more ethical to save the life of a well trained seeing eye dog and leave a new born infant, retarded adult, or Alzheimer's patient in the inferno to die. The dog, in this case, would have greater "utility" to society than any of the aforementioned human beings.

In his article this past Sunday Singer actually comes off sounding considerably less controversial--at first glance. He does not vent against human "speciesism" and does not mention animals at all. His whole point is to advocate for the rationing of health care (the article is titled, "Why We Must Ration Healthcare". Before I go on to explain why I believe that Singer's rationale is an example of the diabolical nature of utilitarian ethics, I will let him speak for himself. The following quote is taken from the article:

“As a first take, we might say that the good achieved by health care is the number of lives saved. But that is too crude. The death of a teenager is a greater tragedy than the death of an 85-year-old, and this should be reflected in our priorities. We can accommodate that difference by calculating the number of life-years saved, rather than simply the number of lives saved. If a teenager can be expected to live another 70 years, saving her life counts as a gain of 70 life-years, whereas if a person of 85 can be expected to live another 5 years, then saving the 85-year-old will count as a gain of only 5 life-years. That suggests that saving one teenager is equivalent to saving 14 85-year-olds.”

Thus, the value of a human life can be calculated quite precisely in terms of "the value of life years saved". The math makes sense and many people would (are) tempted to accept it as a reasonable basis for making medical decisions.

But, wait, the mathematical value of a human life is not just measured in the number of years lived, it has a quality value, too--which can also be quantitatively measured:

“Health care does more than save lives: it also reduces pain and suffering. How can we compare saving a person’s life with, say, making it possible for someone who was confined to bed to return to an active life? We can elicit people’s values on that too. One common method is to describe medical conditions to people — let’s say being a quadriplegic — and tell them that they can choose between 10 years in that condition or some smaller number of years without it. If most would prefer, say, 10 years as a quadriplegic to 4 years of nondisabled life, but would choose 6 years of nondisabled life over 10 with quadriplegia, but have difficulty deciding between 5 years of nondisabled life or 10 years with quadriplegia, then they are, in effect, assessing life with quadriplegia as half as good as nondisabled life. (These are hypothetical figures, chosen to keep the math simple, and not based on any actual surveys.) If that judgment represents a rough average across the population, we might conclude that restoring to nondisabled life two people who would otherwise be quadriplegics is equivalent in value to saving the life of one person, provided the life expectancies of all involved are similar” (emphasis mine)

Once again, the math makes sense and a lot of people will--perhaps with some discomfort--accept it as a reasonable demonstration of rational rationing of health care. In a few sentences, it seems, Dr. Singer has dismissed two millennia of Christian ethics. He writes off the "infinite value of each human life" as being mere "feel good" rhetoric that has, at best, symbolic value and, at worst, can be "deeply unethical".

To be fair, Singer would be one of the first to admit that the core value of utilitarian ethics--the greatest good for the greatest number with the least amount of suffering--might still cause immense suffering for the few (how ever they are defined). He does not attempt to hide the full impact of his belief system from anyone--himself included. And President Obama, when he suggested that it might be better for an 85 year old in need of surgery to be given pain-killers, seems to have been taking a very similar stand. Of course, we can be sure that such extreme honesty will be tempered in the future with all sorts of qualifications--mostly to pacify the sort of politician who needs to affirm his or her personal value for all human beings while affirming that for budgetary purposes lines have to be drawn to save the tax payer's money. (They are the same politicians who oppose abortion personally, but will vote for appropriations to pay for abortions because they respect a woman's "right" to choose.)

It goes without saying that utilitarian ethics are a great evil from an Orthodox Christian perspective. Our Lord Jesus Christ clearly stated that we will be judged according to how we treat "the least of our brothers and sisters"--not as a class of people, but as unique human persons. On the Day of Judgment we will not be asked questions about "life years" and "quality years"--we will simply be asked how we treated Martha, Kwasi, Timothy, and Maria; in others words, how we treated unique human beings with names and faces.

For Christians, ethics is never about numbers but about people. Human beings can never be reduced to classes and quantities--one would have thought that the monstrous regimes of the twentieth century would have taught us that much. Yes, each and every person is of infinite value which is why every system that attempts to quantify the value of anyone according to his or her age, condition, social status, intelligence, or "utility" (not to mention, race, gender, religion, 'orientation', or anything else) is ultimately profoundly evil.

The sad thing is that this world view is rapidly being eroded even among those who say that they are believers. Decades of indoctrination in the public and private schools of this country, the two faced deceitfulness of our political leaders, and the paradoxical destruction of the value of the person even as we uphold the "rights" of the "individual" has left most Americans very poorly equipped to argue against the rationalizations of men like Peter Singer. And, perhaps the bottom line is few of us really want to when we look at the cost--the price of resistance. For most of us it really is about the money--even if we are too squeamish to say so. That's why Singer's theories will probably win the day and well will continue on our (not so long) march to charnel house.

But...what if we were to just say No? This might all be turned around if one of the biggest voices in our society was to speak up loudly and clearly...and really, just say "NO!"

Stay tuned.

The Utilitarian Road to Hell, or, Auschwitz with a Happy Face: Introduction

This is the first in what will be a series of meditations from a theological, polemical (defense of the faith against hostile opponents), and political perspective on the proposed new National Health Care system and its philosophical roots in a system of ethics called "utilitarianism".

An 18th century philosopher named Jeremy Benthen stated, “It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.” Others have him stating, "the greatest good to the greatest number with the least amount of suffering". This worldview has essentially become the dominant world view in the United States and Western Europe since the end of World War II (at the latest). And it is a world view that is leading us quickly down the road to a living hell for millions of people (who do not have the good fortune of being in the majority). Why is this? Stay tuned and you'll find out!

The Communion of Saints

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

An acquaintance of mine, a Protestant woman, who was well disposed towards Orthodoxy once told me that she had no problem at all with Orthodox theology except in two areas--the veneration of the saints and the kissing of icons. She said that no matter how hard she tried to understand it, it still looked idolatrous to her.

I responded by asking her what she felt when she looked at a picture of her (long deceased) parents.

She asked me, in turn, whether I had misunderstood what she had said. I said, "No, I heard you just fine, but in order to really answer your question I need to know what you feel when you look at a picture of your parents--or for that matter your grandchildren."

"Well, love, I suppose--but what has that got to do with saints and icons?"

"When you look at those pictures do you find yourself thinking about the paper and ink?"

"No, of course not! But what are you trying to say?"

"When you look at those pictures and feel such strong emotions toward the people represented in them it isn't because they are printed on Kodak paper or were taken with a digital camera or whatever. The medium that was used to print them is the last thing in your mind. It is what they re-present that matters. It is the reality behind them that draws your attention and inspires those feelings of love. Well.... that is exactly what icons do for us Orthodox. They remind us of people we love, members of our family who have gone before us but who are still very much with here with us."

"I never thought about it like that before.... That's quite interesting. But still, you pray to those people in your icons!"

"No. We ask them to pray for us. There is a big difference between praying to someone and asking their prayers. We Orthodox pray to God alone, but we freely ask for the prayers of the Mother of God and all the other saints."

"That's not scriptural. You can't expect the dead to hear you....why it's almost pagan!"

"I think Jesus put an end to that when he spoke of in St. Mark's Gospel where He said that God is the God of the living, not the dead."

"But wasn't He speaking of the Resurrection?"

"Yes, but He was also speaking of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--who had not yet risen from the dead. The point is that the dead are alive in the Lord. And I think that it is safe to say that the veil between this world and the next is much thinner than we sometimes think. At any rate, our relationship with the saints and our kissing of their images in icons is a family relationship--a communion between those of us here on earth and those who have gone ahead of us. The saints we venerate are great examples of Christian virtue and faith, but they were--and are--human just like us. We ask for their prayers in the same way that we ask for prayers from one another in this world and we love them in the same way that we love one another here. It is all very real to us. Those icons are not idols--they represent real people--and the God who became a human being for our salvation."

"Well, I'm not convinced...but it certainly puts things in a different light to think of it that way."

"That great cloud of witnesses that St. Paul writes about in his letter to the Hebrews really are all around us--those are the very words of scripture. So, when we paint them on the walls of our churches and put them on our iconostases and put them up in our homes--all we are doing is confirming what the scripture itself teaches."

"Maybe I'm half convinced--but its hard to forget a lifetime of being taught that icons and statues are idolatrous."

"Just look at those pictures of your parents and grandkids when you get home....you'll understand."

Seeing but not perceiving, hearing but not understanding

"Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again: "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn that I should heal them" (John 12:40)



We just finished studying chapters 40-57 of the prophet Isaiah--by far the most quoted prophet in the New Testament. I have also just finished reading the prophet Ezekiel in my own course of readings and what has struck me in both these prophets is their use of blindness and deafness as a willful spiritual quality of human beings when they are confronted with God's truth. It doesn't matter whether we are speaking of the ancient Israelites, or the Pharisees of Jesus' day or the purportedly Christian leaders of our society today--when confronted with an inconvenient truth that goes against the prevailing cultural prejudices they choose blindness. It isn't that they can't see--they choose not to see.

For instance, our self avowedly Christian president chooses to ignore the massive preponderance of pro-life teaching in both the Old and New Testaments in order to support a woman's right to "choose" to destroy her child before it is born. All the prophets cite one of the most heinous crimes of Israel before it was finally punished with exile into Babylon was the killing of innocent children. Why were these murders committed in Israel? In order to assure the well being of a household, a community, a harvest--in other words for the same reason the murders are being committed today (a woman's future, education, vocation, emotional health, earning power, independence--and also for a man's freedom from responsibility, independence, earning power, and so on). The justification for the immolation of infants in ancient Palestine was psychologically and spiritually exactly the same as it is for the immolation of infants today. But our "Christian" leaders choose to blind themselves to the facts and to deceive themselves into pretending not to understand.

But, like the guilty child slayers of Israel, they cannot really get away with it. They must either admit in the end that they support one of the most unspeakable crimes of all--the wanton destruction of innocent children, or they must altogether abandon the pretence of being Christians. The good news, if one can call it that, is that it is becoming less and less important to pretend to be a Christian in this society and I suspect that politicians will soon feel free to abandon such pretences altogether. So we wont have Presidents and members of Congress who fell obliged to tell us they are Christians while defending the most horrifying of all the crimes an adult can commit. It will be safe to just come right out and say that they understand very well what they are doing and can see very well where it is leading and they don't care one way or another about what Christianity and the Scriptures have to say about it. They will then have attained the refreshing honesty of the communists and national socialists of the last century who were willing to say they were hard hearted s.o.b's and be proud of it.

It is better for the Church to have to contend with sworn enemies than to have to endure the wolves in sheep's clothing who have been tearing apart Christ's flock for the past two generations.

Oh, yes, but when they finally go down--as they most assuredly will--you can bet they will say with all the good national socialists, "we didn't know what was happening....we were deceived...we didn't understand where it would lead...."

In the end, God is a respecter of freedom of choice....all choice....and He will permit the wicked to go to the uttermost extreme of their wickedness in order to manifest His righteousness, mercy, and truth. But no one can say--or at least no free adult in this country can ever say, "we didn't know....we didn't see....we didn't understand what was happening around us."

I would rather that the wicked would repent and be saved and that our civilization would turn itself away from the path we are taking. But if we will not repent then I pray that our leaders will stop pretending. One of the gifts of the current regime is that that day is fast approaching. The convenient mask of Christianity is fast being dropped in the face of a revolutionary attempt to co opt what little remains of an overtly Christian culture. The voices of the false prophets of atheism, abortion, euthanasia, and every perversion will finally attain their place as not only acceptable but true. And no one will have to be ashamed to be blind anymore--until the whirlwind comes.

Sacramental Marriage, Civil Marriage & "Family Values"

Marriage and family values. They used to be positive and uncontroversial terms. No longer.



The first thing we need to do is establish that what the Church means by marriage is very different from what the state means when it uses that term. Likewise, we need to make it very clear that "family values" is not a euphemism for "anti-gay".



A great deal of the problem we face in the debates of the decades long "cultural war" that has raged in this country is the twisting of words and terms into euphemisms for things that are very different from what they appear to describe. "Pro-choice" has come to mean "Pro-abortion", "liberal/progressive" has come to mean intolerant and anti-traditional, "adult" can often mean pornographic, and "enhanced interrogation" means torture.



Likewise the matter of "marriage"--a term that has been reduced to mean a sexual relationship in which the partners have legal claims to one another's property and persons--inheritance, medical decisions (under certain circumstances), etc. Now, on one level, this is what marriage has always meant--to the State. But it is most definitely NOT what it means to the Church. The problem is that when believers and secularists get into arguments over the issue, they are talking past one another.



For the state, since ancient times, the venerable institution of marriage existed to establish clear lines of inheritance and authority within a family unit. And for centuries this understanding worked relatively well for Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians whose understanding of marriage was quite different than the State's. The State's limited and concrete concerns and the Church's supernatural and mystical concerns were able to coexist harmoniously within the context of a single term.



The truth is that this coexistence ended a long time ago--long before the advent of "gay marriage".



Since the nineteen sixties, with greatly eased divorce laws in most Western countries, it has become increasingly common for individuals to marry and divorce--sometimes multiple times, or, simply to live in a sexual relationship without even the pretence of "legality". We are speaking about heterosexual relationships here. In many cases the children of two or three (or even more) marriages/relationships might live in the same household with an ever changing kaleidoscope of "mothers" and "fathers". Serial monogamous relationships, with or without legal blessing, have become 'normal' in most American communities--even in purportedly religious parts of the country like the "Bible Belt" of the deep south.

Any complementarity between the State's idea of marriage and the Church's has long since eroded away. The debate over "gay marriage" and the soon to come debate over "plural marriage" (don't believe me--just wait!) is merely the natural result of a deeper crisis that extends back at least a half century.

The best thing the Church could do at this point is to separate itself entirely from the State when it comes to discussing the various forms of civil unions that the states recognize and concentrate on coming up with a clearer explanation of sacramental marriage, which will at the same time clarify our position on the meaning of gender and family structures. To state that we have our work cut out for us is to put it mildly!

The first thing we need to do is to literally divorce ourselves from the State! By this I mean that Orthodox clergy ought to petition their bishops to be advocate a complete separation of the sacramental/mystical marriage that is performed in the Church from the civil union that is performed by the State. Our clergy should not operated as agents of the state! As is common in Europe, let those who wish to "marry" according to the state's notion of the term do so at a local courthouse or town hall. If they wish to enjoy the blessing of the Church, then let them make arrangements with their priests to have a sacramental union. If we were to do this we would move in the right direction of letting the public know that what we mean by marriage and what the State means by marriage are not one and the same. But, if most people continue to get married in Churches by pastors who are also acting as State agents by signing marriage certificates and attesting that State regulations have been lawfully applied, how can we blame anyone for being confused about the difference between the two fundamentally different (an now even opposed) understandings of what is happening? Of course, some religious denominations are in full sync with the State and will be happy to continue to act as its agents. They are not Orthodox.

The next thing we need to do is to educate our own people on the "mystery" of marriage--which is described as an image of the relationship between God and the Church in both the Old and the New Testaments. The "husband" image of the God of Israel in the Old Testament to His (often unfaithful) wife is made even more explicit in the New Testament where the enfleshed God in Christ is seen as the Bridegroom of the Church (Ephesians 5). Understand that human marriage and human sexuality are images of a deeper divine mystery. One of the great crises of our times for the Church is to explain that gender has MEANING and that this meaning is rooted in Divine self revelation. Part of the problem is that the Church has never had to clearly explicate this understanding because it was not under attack. Now it is and, as we had to deal with issues of the divine/human natures in Christ and the Threefold Oneness of God in the past, so now we will have to more clearly explain the mystery of gender today.

Fundamentally, the mystery of marriage in Orthodox Christianity is rooted in the mystery of a paradox--that of otherness and sameness in union. Clearly men and women are equally human (the same), but they are also mysteriously "other". This is not only an obviously physical fact, but a spiritual fact. We are "psycho-somatic" beings--we partake of both matter and spirit--on every level. The current age's attempt to reduce everything to material determinism in one direction and individual choice in the other, aside from being insane, has obscured the mystery of unity and differentiation between creation and the uncreated (God) and among creatures--particularly among human beings. St. Paul speaks of the union of a man and a woman in marriage as a "great mystery" (or, a "great sacrament").

Likewise, the order (taxis) of "headship" in a family--husband/wife; father/mother/children is rooted in the order of the Trinity, where the Father is "first" and "source" while being equal to the Son and the Holy Spirit. This, too, is a "great mystery/sacrament" which is virtually unacknowledged and untaught by most Orthodox pastors when they prepare men and women for marriage. Why? Perhaps because we don't understand it ourselves because we have absorbed the pseudo-scientific theories we were indoctrinated with in the schools and because, like everyone else, we are creatures of the times. The seminaries in this country certainly haven't been up to the task of confronting this issue--perhaps the fundamental pastoral issue of the age.

So, what about "gay marriage", the politics of "gender identity", and "family values"?

Well, the first is simply non-existent within the mystical framework of Christian marriage (like polygamy and other "choices"). We need to stop fighting about it and get out of the business of being State agents. If the State wants to recognize multifold forms of what it calls marriage then we might bemoan the fact that it causes some confusion to untrained ears and get on with the business of distinguishing between Orthodox Christian marriage and state sanctioned civil unions (homosexual, heterosexual, and multiple).

The second (gender identity) is a subject worth and Ecumenical Council! But we need to start challenging the prevailing "science" with some real theology here. Writers like Father Thomas Hopko, former dean of St. Vladimir's seminary have begun to tackle this issue and we can expect more to arise as time goes on.

The third (family values) is intimately tied in with the first two, but the ultimate model for any and all relationships among human beings is that of the Holy Trinity. In no place is this more true than in marriage and the family.

So, in the end, we need to reformulate the debate within the context of our own community of believers and accept the fact that the non-believing (or barely believing) world outside the Church has an entirely different agenda. If we debate the issues on the terms of those outside the community we will always come out looking like fools.

Does this mean that we are to drop out of the public debate? Absolutely not. We simply need to reframe it and be explicit about what we are doing. At this point we are talking about mission and conversion--which is to say, doing the business of the Church. Again, it is a matter of taking charge of the debate using our own terms and norms and conveying this to our own people and to the world at large.

Church & State

The Orthodox Church has a very long history of engaging the state. In the Byzantine period there was a symphony between the secular power and the Church. In fact, there was no such thing as the "secular" as we understand it today--the entire society was "religious"--but there was a definite balance between the political power of the state and the spiritual power of the Church. This symphony continued into the Russian imperial period until the Church was forcibly submitted to secular power under Peter I ("the Great"). After this the spiritual power of the Church was increasingly marginalized. The situation became infinitely worse after the Communist Revolution.

Now, no one in the 21st century United States would ever imagine a "symphony" between the secular political power and the Orthodox Church. We are virtually invisible to the government (and, unfortunately to the majority of the citizenry). Yet, we have the unique freedom to address the state in open and uncensored criticism. In a real sense, it is our duty to do so.

Does this mean that we are always a voice in opposition? No, not always. But I submit that most of the time we will be. And this is the way it should be. Even in the so called "Golden Age" of the Orthodox polity--in Byzantium and Pre-Petrine Russia--the Church was most often a voice "calling in the wilderness". What was it calling the state/society to do? To repent, of course!

The Church always has a political message--but it is not one "of this world". The Kingdom we proclaim is the Kingdom of God, not of any human being or any political party, per se.

That being said, given the position taken by various political parties and leaders, it can be fairly admitted that some parties and leaders are more closely aligned with Orthodox values (family, sanctity of life, etc.) than others. But NO political party or leader represents the Church in its entirety.

In this country, in recent decades, the Republican Party has stood for moral values that are more closely aligned with the Church's values in the areas of sanctity of life and family. That could change in a moment, so it could never be said that the Republican Party is the Church's party. On the other hand, the Democrat Party could one day return its roots as the supporter of the weak and upholder of the common people (weak as in infants and pre-born babies, common people as in the family men and women who make up the back bone of any healthy society). One never knows.

In the meantime, the last thing we can afford to do is to retreat into a "safe" corner and refrain from political engagement. Whenever the Church has become disengaged from politics, either due to laziness or by force, the result has been disaster both for society and for believers.

A Disengaged Church?

Sensible Joe has published a response to my latest political 'rant'. While his lesson on state versus federal constitutional law is correct, it misses the point. We are facing a sudden tidal wave of state and federal legislation and juridical decisions that are very much in sync with the new regime.

Can President Obama be personally blamed? Of course not! No matter how ubiquitous his presence and opinions he can't be blamed or praised for everything that happens. But he, like George Bush before him, is both a symbol and symptom of the times.

As for withdrawing into the "acceptable" Church corner of social welfare, I think not! The Church is called to be present in both the social and political spheres. After all, Jesus was.

Thanks for writing, Joe. I've been away from the blog for awhile and neglected to publish your response.

Dissenting opinions are always welcome!

"Put not your trust in princes, the sons of men"

We have been bombarded lately with the liberal press's "100 days" propaganda, "celebrating" the first 100 days of our "historic" president. It all feels very un-American and the president's own press conference on the occasion was just another reminder that the "campaign" to convert America continues.

What are we celebrating and to what do we need to be converted?

Well, over the last one hundred days the harvesting of human beings for body parts has been once again made legal (fetal stem cell research), several states have legalized 'gay-marriage', euthanasia has been legalized in Washington state, incredibly vast sums of money has been poured into the "Economic Stimulus Bill"--while the regime still pretends that there will be no middle class tax increases, and the list continues.

Oh yes, and there is the swine flu scare--which no one can blame on the President, though one suspects that a lot of his groupies expect that he can fix it, too.

The good news is that men like Arlan Spector (and we can hope women like Olympia Snowe) are removing themselves from the Republican Party and becoming the Democrats they really are. Those are exactly the kind of "converts" that we on the right can rejoice to see join the fold of the Party of "Choice" and Profligate Spending.

The liberal/socialists are making quite a bit of hay over what they see as angst in the Republican Party over its sudden demise. Perhaps they have never read the Mark Twain's response to his own obituary--"The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated". Ditto. We are not dead, yet--far from it. It is only a matter of time before the 52% (not 82% as the left seems to think) who voted for "change" wake up to what that really translates into--death and taxes, and a lot of both.

Oh well, that's just my opinion.

THE "REAL WORLD" AND THE RESURRECTION

Sometimes in the Church we hear talk of the "real world"--meaning the world outside the Church, I suppose. This is a most unfortunate term because it gives a false impression of the Church's teachings about reality--the one we live in currently and the one that will be ours for all eternity.If the "real world" is all about what people do when they are not in church then what is done in church is by definition, "unreal", and thus, unimportant. At best it is a feel good game that may be alright for me but utterly unimportant for someone else. This is, basically, the attitude of most people in the Euro-American "West" today--including many who call themselves devout Christians. It is, for believers, an absolutely disastrous mentality.

Why?

The answer is painfully obvious. It puts the life in Christ on the same level as soccer, yoga, going out to dinner, or having a drink with friends. It is a trite and banal attitude about the meaning of existence—one fit for a consumer society, and you can’t get more banal than that!

The “real world” for the Orthodox believer is, first and foremost, the life we live in Christ which is most clearly and beautifully portrayed in the life we experience in the Church. All of the events we have participated in during the services of this Great and Holy Week, and especially of the events we shall enter into in the Resurrection liturgy tonight, have brought us in touch with “REALITY” as it is on the deepest level.

This is not a matter of opinion—fine for me, but maybe not for someone else; it is a matter of FACT. Otherwise, it is of no matter—no consequence—at all. We have not, over the course of Holy Week, merely joined in playing our parts in a well beloved play, or watched a sentimental seasonal movie in order to get an emotional “high”. Rather, we have entered into reality—true reality, which is as far removed from the pseudo-real world of individualism and consumerism as heaven is from hell. In fact, the events of this week have made it clear to us that the so called ‘real world’ out there is very much hell bent. It is in love with promises that can never be fulfilled—whether those of politicians or, of the merchants of things or, the purveyors of “spirituality” without God. The politicians promise us a brighter future, if only we follow their plan, the salesmen promise us joy through accumulating their ‘stuff’, and the purveyors of “spirituality” promise us cheap salvation without effort. In short, they all promise unreality in the guise of what is real, they promise paradise and deliver an insatiable hell of striving without ever achieving.

The experience of Holy Week and Pascha shows us another way—one that does not make saccharine promises of easy accomplishment and self satisfaction. The Way of the Cross—which anyone who wishes to experience the Resurrection must follow—is a way of sorrow in terms of the pseudo ‘real’ world, but it is ultimately the way to true joy. By following in this way we find that, ultimately, this is the world of ghosts and vapors, constantly dissolving into nothingness, while the really ‘real’ world that is coming is solid and clear and beautiful. It is the Risen Christ who passes through walls and locked doors as if they were so much fog; it is the resurrected world that we Christians long for, a world purchased through earthly struggle and grief but, once won, imperishable and eternal.

Does this mean that we can have no experience of real joy in this world—that it is only about dragging along our cross without any remission from our grief? Of course, not! Through the cross, we are taught, joy comes into the world—this world! So, no, it is not all about tears and sorrow. Holy Friday turns into Pascha; the fast into feasting, tears into laughter. It is because we know that we have become inheritors of a Kingdom that is real in a way that nothing in the creation we now experience can ever be real that we can rejoice. The grief of life in this world, the insatiable urges of our mortal nature, are swallowed up in a joy that cannot die. We can embrace the Lord’s Pascha for the gift it is—not the promise of a politician, as salesman, or a cheap guru—but one that transcends, even as it embraces, the pain of the loss of health, strength, loved ones, and life itself. The unfading light of the Resurrection shines into this ghostly and transient world and promises that someday we shall, indeed, become real and solid and that the very flesh we bear—so fragile and ephemeral—will itself become solid and eternally beautiful in a way we can’t even comprehend until the Day itself dawns on us.

Do not ever speak of the “world” outside the Church as if it were the real thing. It should be our greatest heartbreak that so much of our time is spent under the power of its illusions and delusions. It is the chimera of that world we need to leave behind in order to receive the gift that never ages—the gift of Pascha, the Unending Dawn of the Real World that is even now upon us if we have but “eyes to see”.

The End of the World

As we enter into Great and Holy Week the Orthodox Church considers the "Last Things". In the Western Churches, and in the Orthodox Western Rite, this is the theme of Advent--the Pre-Christmas Season. But, in the East, it has always been the theme of Holy Week.

What will the end of the world look like?

The Church spends very little time discussing the images of an apocalypse--mostly because those images are very much secondary to the real theme of the end--that of Judgment. In a sense, it can be said that we have been living in the "Last Days" since the awesome events of our Lord's crucifixion and resurrection--when the "sun hid its rays" and the moon and stars cloaked themselves in darkness (to use the images found in the Church's hymns and iconography for Great and Holy Friday). Since then the world has merely been on pause between the Lord's first coming and His final return. History, at least from a Divine perspective, has ended. Everything has been accomplished (as the Lord said from the cross).

Seen in this light, it makes no sense to try and read the spiritual equivalent of tea leaves in order to discern how close we are to the final moments. In fact, each and everyone of us is only a few years at most from the Judgment Day. We shall all face our Judge when we draw our last breath. The images of the Bridegroom services which are celebrated at the beginning of Holy Week are a constant reminder of this. We are called to be prepared so as not to be "shut out from the Kingdom".

So, in the end it really doesn't matter whether the stars fall from the sky above us or if an atomic war breaks out or armies meet on the plain of Megiddo. Whether we go in the company of billions or by ourselves, quietly or in the midst of the tumult of war, we all face the Judge of the World and will be held accountable for ourselves.

How odd it seems, from an Orthodox Christian perspective, that so many books are written trying to discern when the end will come. How silly to work oneself up over the predictions of the Mayan calendar or some other such thing! The Lord has already spoken--two thousand years ago--that "NOW is this world judged" and everyone it it, each and every moment of our lives.

If that doesn't compel us to acquire a healthy and holy fear, then all of the books and prophecies in the world are useless.

The message of the coming week is clear: Be prepared, repent, and know that the Judge is already at the door. "Blessed is the one He finds awake and ready" when He comes.

Newsweek's Semi-Annual Anti-Christian Cover Story

We ought to be used to it by now--the Christmas and Easter editions of "Time", "Newsweek", and the rest of the liberal ilk. We can generally expect an article about why the Jesus we proclaim as the Son of the Living God (because He did so first) was instead just a new age guru who arranged his own execution through Judas (the only disciple who truly understood him), or a misunderstood Rabbi who would have been appalled at the very idea of "Christianity", or who faked his crucifixion and married Mary Magdalene(or, his "beloved disciple", John!). and ran off to Paris.

We ought to be used to it, but it still gets under my skin. Perhaps it is just because the editors of those magazines don't have the guts to insult other major religions on such a regular basis (perhaps out of a well founded fear of the world-wide reaction if they did so).

This year Newsweek has proclaimed, through the voice of a self described "devout, though deeply flawed" Episcopalian on their staff, that the final decline and fall of Christian America is well under way. They even have the data to prove it! That's not to say that there aren't a few interesting points in the article-- its just that most of it is silly opinion under the guise of actual news reporting (or, worse yet, research!).

Americans have always been notoriously strong on religious (now called 'spiritual') feelings and short on theological reflection. The old Church as Social Club has been replaced by Sports as Social Club, etc.

Newsweek's obituary for American Christianity is vastly overdone. It might be more interesting and instructive to the reader if they would come out with articles about the thriving religious communities in this country, Christian and otherwise, at the various holy seasons of the year and allow the people in them to express the hope and joy they experience as part of them.

But that would mean an end to editorializing by ignorant (and pretty much uninterested) reporters for the sake of the actual story. Not likely in today's left wing press.

O, Lord and Master of my life....

" O, Lord and Master of my life! Do not give me a spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power and idle talk. But give, rather, a spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Your servant. Yes, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother, for You are holy to the ages of ages. Amen"

The Prayer of St. Ephrem is, perhaps, the quintessential Lenten prayer. When you think of it, it should be the quintessential prayer for each and every day of our life. For, in just a few sentences, it expresses the heart of what it means to be a Christian.

"O, Lord and Master of my life..."

We immediately call to mind that our lives are not our own but that we belong to God. Contrary to the philosophical, political, psychological and ethical theories centered on the needs, rights and desires of the "sovereign self" that one can find in just about any bookstore today, we are not autonomous beings and we are most certainly not the "captain of (our) souls--the master of (our) own destinies". We are always dependent creatures--never independent. Deprived of oxygen not a single one of us can live for more than a couple of minutes, no matter how great our intellect, will, or physical courage. Our 'creatureliness' makes us by nature to be dependent on others, and most especially, to be dependent on God. It is when we finally accept this that we can turn to Him as "Lord and Master" and hope to acquire the treasures necessary for eternal life.

" Do not give me a spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk...."

The Greek form of the prayer (the original--or, at least the oldest version we have) implores that God should not give us a spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk. Some of the later versions ask Him to "take from" us those vices. The original version is more striking because it, (like the famous lines in the Lord's Prayer which ask, "lead us not into temptation"), reminds us that God has made us free and will give us over to our inclinations if we will not repent. Think of Pharaoh, whose heart was hardened against Moses and the people of Israel; he was not a good man whom the Lord led astray, but a vain and prideful man whom the Lord "gave over" to his wickedness until he went down in defeat and humiliation.

In St. Ephrem's prayer we are asking specifically not to be handed over to some very common sins. Let's look at them more closely.

Sloth is the state of spiritual laziness, the ennui or boredom and lack of purpose that seems to have become a hallmark of modern life. We are constantly seeking to be entertained, stimulated, distracted. These are symptoms of sloth, the condition in which a person does not take responsibility for his or her own state of consciousness (and conscience!).

Despair is the state of futility or hopelessness; it is the "I give up" mentality that whines that we are not in control of our own thoughts, desires, and habits. Note that this is very different from the false sense of "being in control" that our society so values. It is an inner, rather than outward, state. Despair allows us to make the excuses we use when we fall into sin, the "I can't help myself. It's just the way I am" mentality (spoken outwardly or inwardly) that says we are beyond change and, thus, beyond all hope. Don't be mistaken, this is no small sin; it is one of the very greatest because it blocks the way to repentance. A despairing person may feel remorse by she or he cannot summon up the energy to repent.

Lust of Power is the desire to "be in charge", the "control freak" in us that demands that we "are the captain of (our ) own ship, the master of (our) own destiny"--and not only our own, but everyone else's too! We often think that this sin is requires a position of great power--an important job as a corporate executive, a political leader, or something of the kind. But lust of power can and often is practiced by the parent who tries to micro manage his or her children's lives, the spouse who must always make the plans and give the commands, the small time manager who cannot leave others to make the simplest decisions. We clergy are very often guilty of this one!

Idle talk is not just gossip, though it is certainly that, too. It is all the wasted, silly, meaningless words we utter in the course of a day--the "conversations" that do more to hide our true selves than to reveal them (though we often have reason not to want our 'true selves' to be revealed!). How many office conversations have to do with sexual relationships (0ur own or someone elses) that in themselves are ungodly and demeaning to both partners? How many mean spirited digs do we get in about co-workers under the pretense of 'discussing' a project or job at hand? How often do we murder the reputations of our fellow parishioners by gossipping about their habits, faults, and human short-comings? The psalmist urges us to 'set a guard' over our lips, but how difficult it is to do!

Now, for the positives, "but give, rather, a spirit of chastity, humility, and patience to Your servant". Just as God will give the wicked over to their desires He will also give those who truly desire to be good over to goodness--though it will come with effort. Both evil and good require work. Our goals and desires are not accomplished without effort. Even despair is a habit of the heart and soul that must be cultivated. One cannot have it without screening out the beauty and goodness of God's creation.

Chastity is very far from being a matter of sexual purity alone. It is certainly that--the purity of refraining from sexual relationships outside of marriage and the unselfish and loving enjoyment of them within a Christian marriage is an essential. But, all too often, our understanding of chastity stops with sex, which is profoundly sad. True chastity is a way of being, it is the 'purity of heart' that Jesus spoke of in His sermon on the mount. To be chaste means to approach all things with a 'clean heart' and a 'right spirit' (Psalm 51). It excludes gluttony, sexual lust and perversion, deceit, gossip, and all the other vices. The spirit of chastity is truly beautiful because it refuses to allow anything twisted or sinful to reside within us. It doesn't deny that those things exist; it simply does not make excuses for them--in ourselves.

Humility is another Christian virtue that is greatly misunderstood. Americans do not hold it in high regard because we often interpret it to mean one must "act like a doormat" and allow herself or himself to be "stepped on". True humility means to have a proper sense of our mortality, our limitedness, our status as creatures. Humus in Latin refers to the earth we walk on, the elements from which we are taken and to which we will one day return. It is the profound recognition that we are not self-sufficient and that our hopes rest not in our own accomplishments and strengths but in the love and mercy of God.

Patience is another virtue that is often honored in the breach by modern Americans. We are a people who want things to happen "yesterday". We don't like to wait for anything; our whole culture is geared toward action. We create "labor saving devices" so that we can find other things to do! But Jesus tell us, "in patience you posses your souls" (Luke 21:19). Indeed, we cannot even begin to make spiritual progress until we admit that we are in it for the long haul, meaning for the rest of our lives. There are no quick fixes in the spiritual path, no easy "enlightenment". Orthodoxy rejects the idea that a simple declaration of faith in Jesus is enough to save us (for, again, as the Scripture teaches, even the devils believe--but to no good end). To be a follower of Jesus is to patiently carry our cross to the end. This means that we accept the fact that our life will be one of constant struggle with many set backs. The only way to make it through is to plod ahead, patiently, day after day knowing that we are never left alone in our struggles. The Lord is with us along with the entire company of saints and our guardian angels. And we are given the great grace of sacramental confession and absolution when we fall. All that is required of us is repentance and patience that, with God's help, we will be triumphant in the end. The greatest danger is giving up (the spirit of sloth and despair).

Love is perhaps the least understood of the virtues. The word is so misused that we have almost forgotten its true meaning. We say we love our car, our house, our various possessions. We confuse mere sexual attraction and fornication with loving another leaving the greatest of the virtues dispossessed of its beauty and depth. Christian love always involves a relationship that requires giving up something of oneself for the sake of another. It is profoundly sacrificial and absolutely never concerned with self satisfaction. Clearly, this eliminates the vast majority of situations that modern people associate with "love". Our contemporary understanding of the term usually involves first and foremost self fulfillment and self satisfaction; love, in this case, is about what one gets not what gives. This is the absolute opposite of what is meant by love in the New Testament. When St. John declares, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" (Jn 3:16), he is declaring what God gave to us in Christ; he is setting the stage for the great mystery of the Divine Self-sacrifice for the sake of our salvation.

Love requires a response--either positive or negative; we can embrace the One who loves us or spurn Him but cannot remain indifferent because the Divine Lover will not go unanswered. Likewise, those who claim to love God must also love their neighbor (which the gospels have shown to mean everyone). Those who don't (or at least aren't trying to) are liars. This commandment is even more powerful when it comes to those who are closest to us. In America today over half of all marriages fail. People who declared that their love was so deep that they wanted to be united for the rest of their lives often abandon each other within a couple of years. Why? Obviously because they understood marriage in terms of what they could get, not what they could give but for what they could get. For when the guaranteed day arrives when they realize that their partner is incapable of giving them everything they desire, they abandon the relationship, (though it is questionable whether any real "relationship" ever existed in the first place). Marriage, as anyone who has been in one for a long time knows, is far more about giving--and forgiving-- than with taking.

Yes, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own faults and not to judge my brother. For You are holy unto the ages of ages. Amen.

The final lines of St. Ephrem's prayer take us back to Jesus'steaching about fault-finding, where are told to "remove the plank from (our) own eye" (Matthew 7:5-7) b efore we go about taking the "speck" from an other's. Orthodox spirituality is very serious about the need for each person to acknowledge his or her own sins. In the prayer before communion we speak of ourselves as "first among sinners" and this is not hyperbole. We are called to believe it! Why? Because we can only be responsible for repenting of our own sins. We can only work out our own salvation and no one else's (Philippians 2:12-18). Our broken nature, however, makes us want to concentrate on "improving" others--our spouse, our children, our students, our fellow workers, the people in our parish and so on. It is so easy to see their shortcomings and so hard to acknowledge our own!

But the gospel makes it abundantly clear that if we do not learn to point the finger at ourselves we, like the Pharisee in the parable of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee, will find ourselves locked out of the Kingdom. Our attitude towards the faults of others must always be to look within ourselves. It doesn't mean that we excuse evil, but we look for the first (and ultimately the only place) where can actually do something about it. And, if we practice the habit of self examination, we will generally discover that what we hate in others can be found in ourselves. Do we call someone else neglectful? Where are we being neglectful ourselves? Do we call someone else manipulative? How are we attempting to manipulate others and so on.

The very last reminder in the prayer is of God's holiness. He is the only truly "good" one and, just as we began the prayer by acknowledging Him as "Lord and Master" we end it by proclaiming that He alone is set apart (the true meaning of 'holiness') from sin. The Christian confession that Jesus is God, the eternal and only-begotten Son, reminds us that there is only One good enough and strong enough to save us from the multitude of sins that we commit both "willingly and unwillingly". The only hope we have for moving from the sinful spiritual states described in the first part of the prayer to the righteous state of the latter part is through uniting ourselves to Christ and His Church, remembering that the Church is the 'school-house of salvation" according to the Fathers. Our lessons are life long and we will not master them completely in this world. Our "homework" each and every day of our life is to keep trying.

Personality Cults

As an unreformed and unrepentant conservative Republican, I don't find it hard to fault the new president's politics. As an Orthodox Christian I am appalled by his stands on virtually all moral issues. That isn't surprising. I expected as much.

But I'm becoming increasingly disturbed by the personality cult that seems to be growing around him. I've lost count of the books and magazines at Barnes and Noble that bear his image. No, not Newsweek and Time (one would hardly expect otherwise from those bastions of the left). Its that he is staring at us from everything else--from gourmet cooking to dog-grooming magazines. And it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all. ESPN fawns over his opinion about basketball, and late night TV talk show hosts vie to have him share his words of wisdom with them.

Granted, the man loves to talk and he can be as eloquent as he is loquacious--even if there really isn't much content to what he is saying.

But this national obsession over him is beginning to worry me. Maybe it goes back to the open air rally at the Denver Stadium at the end of the Democrat Convention--complete with fireworks and a semi-presidential seal. It just doesn't feel American. Mass rallies and post election campaigns to organize the masses remind me of darker times and places where the "leader" became a cult in and of himself.

I hope I'm wrong and it all ends soon. If nothing else Americans have notoriously short attention spans and we can merciless to those in power--witness poor "W". Still, it is all very disconcerting.

A Truly Sad Story

I heard a very sad story on NPR (that bastion of politically correct reporting). It seems that a baby giraffe died while being born at the Roger Williams Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island the other day. A sad story, because it is always sad when a creature dies before it has the chance to live. But what is truly sad about this story is that the commentator referred to the "baby" giraffe.

In NPR's world,a woman having an abortion in the last days of her pregnancy would not be news-worthy (unless there was some "right wing" opposition to the process). There be no sad story about the death of her baby. Instead, she would have exercised her "right" to "choose" and her "fetus" would not be mentioned at all, much less be given the dignity of being referred to as a living creature that tragically lost his or her life before it began. It would, of course, be inconceivable to refer to the victim of such a procedure as a baby of any kind (animal or human).

The death of a baby is a tragedy--even if it is a baby giraffe, or a puppy, or a kitten. A story about someone deliberately killing a baby giraffe, puppy, or kitten would certainly be newsworthy and cause for public outrage (justifiably, too). Killing baby humans, clearly isn't--at least in the world of the dominant illiberal press.

Is there something wrong with this picture?

Why Orthodoxy?

I'm often asked why I became Orthodox. People don't expect a "Fr. John Daly" to be married with a child just graduating college; most Fr. John Daly's (and there are quite a few of them) are to be found in Roman Catholic parishes. Few, if any, have children and, at least if they are in the Latin rite (the one most people identify with Roman Catholicism), none are married.



Thus, it isn't at all uncommon for someone to ask me if I became Orthodox so I could be a married priest. I suppose such a question would seem reasonable to many Americans who have difficulty understanding the venerable practice of celibacy among Western clergy. Personally, it would be a grievously sinful thing to abandon one's faith in order to be ordained in another simply in order to get around celibacy. Only modern Americans could think of such an action as anything other than profoundly dishonest (and dishonorable)!



Others have asked whether or not I wasn't one of those Catholics who had been "turned off" by some of the changes in styles of worship and music since the Second Vatican Council. Again, the answer is, "No". There have been many changes in Roman Catholic practice since the Council that I think are less than healthy, but in recent years there has been a significant movement back towards healthier and more grounded liturgical and spiritual practices. Both Pope John Paul II and the current Pope Benedict worked mightily to restore 'order' to the Roman Church. Again, it would have been reprehensible to leave because I was offended by some of the silly liturgical antics of the clergy during the Mass. As to the far more devastating scandals that erupted over the past decade (long after I had converted to Orthodoxy)--they are heartbreaking reminders of the power of sin to reach into the depths of the Christian community. But to leave one Church for another because of the evil actions of some of its ordained ministers would have indicated a rather shallow and unrealistic understanding of the universality of wickedness. In other words, sinful actions abound everywhere and the scandals that have erupted among evangelicals and Orthodox are no less appalling than those that arose in the Roman church.

So if it wasn't for reasons of marital status, liturgical aesthetics, or moral scandals, why did I leave the West for the (predominantly) Eastern Orthodox Church? The simple answer is that I was searching for the same eternal goodness, truth, and beauty that philosophers have been talking about at least since the time of Socrates. I was looking for the unchanging faith of the Apostles without all the trappings of the legalism and individualism of the West. Neither Roman Catholicism, with its absolutist political structure and juridical legalism, nor Protestantism, with its emphasis on individualism and lack of church consciousness had what I sought. For quite some time I wondered if it existed at all.


First, I must share some of my own religious history. True to my Irish name, I had been baptized and brought up in my childhood in the Roman Catholic church. My family was "mixed", however. My mother had been brought up in a fundamentalist/evangelical home in Oklahoma and my paternal grandmother had been brought up a New England Congregationalist. My grandmother made a whole-hearted conversion to Roman Catholicism when she met and married my grandfather, but my mother resolutely refused to become Catholic for deep theological reasons. She was always respectful of the Roman Church and attended mass with the family on a weekly basis. She simply could not bring herself to assent to doctrines she really didn't believe in. In a way she was a role model to me for making the "good confession". I came to understand that conforming to a belief that one truly didn't accept was in itself sinful. Still, as a child I was deeply intrigued by the beauty and majesty of the high mass we usually attended at our local parish. Even after my parents' marriage soured and we stopped attending church together as a family, I continued to go on my own--right up until my early teens. It was then that the full force of the Post Vatican II reforms hit our parish and, seemingly overnight, we went from a very formal liturgical life to one full of tambourines and guitars. It hit me hardest in Holy Week, when I was fourteen and the old solemn procession of the sacrament to the singing of "Pange Lingua" was replace by a sort of trot around the church to the singing of "They'll Know We are Christians by Our Love". It struck me that if something so profound could be turned into something so silly it probably wasn't all the profound to begin with--at least in the minds of the people who were in charge of worship.


In all fairness, I might well have been able to ride out the "Silly Seventies" and the following decades of liturgical darkness in the American Catholic church had I been less inclined toward theological thought in the first place. Once the door to questioning opened (encouraged by the iconoclastic young priests of the period) it was nearly impossible to shut. The very core elements of the faith no longer made sense to me. How could Jesus really be the Messiah if the world continued to be so manifestly wicked and lost? It seemed to me that Christianity itself was grounded in falsehood. For the next several years I wandered through a spiritual wilderness. I seriously considered converting to Judaism (they, after all, were still waiting for their Messiah); then I tried out various Eastern and New Age spiritualities. Ultimately, I found myself cautiously and very selectively re-considering Christianity. In the college town I was living in there was an Episcopal Church with an excellent choir and a profoundly intellectual rector who gave very compelling sermons. It seemed as if I could have my cake and eat it too. I found the beauty of liturgical worship accompanied by a theologically "free-thinking" attitude to doctrine. It was only a matter of time before I was formally received into the Episcopal Church and not too much longer after that before I petitioned the diocese to send me to seminary. In the fall of 1983 my wife and I found ourselves at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.


If someone were to predict that I would find my true spiritual home in Orthodoxy when I entered the Episcopal seminary back in 1983, I would have thought they were crazy. I was already married, I loved the liturgical richness of Anglican worship, and, while I was becoming more and more uncomfortable with some of the stands the Episcopal Church was taking on issues like abortion and sexuality, I was one of those people who believed that the church was broad enough to include every opinion quite comfortably. In fact, it was life at the seminary itself that led to the crisis that would finally bring me to Orthodoxy.


By my senior year at the seminary, in 1986, that growing discomfort had turned into full fledged horror at what appeared to be a wholesale rejection of the theological and scriptural traditions of the Christian Church. This was a bit of a paradox; I had entered seminary as a fairly liberal Episcopalian (though I was already moving toward more 'traditional' belief). Within two years I had become convinced that the trajectory of the Episcopal Church was dreadfully wrong. And it as all because of the excellent education I was receiving about the teachings and practices of the Early Church and the way that the Holy Scriptures had been read and interpreted at various stages of church history! I faced the same set of questions I had as a teenager in my old Roman Catholic parish--if the foundations of the Church's faith and tradition were one thing and the current practice was entirely different, something or somebody was wrong, either at the start or somewhere along the way. In the past I had opted to believe that the story was flawed from the beginning, but by this point in my life I had become convinced once more that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Only Savior of the world. I could not turn my back on Him a second time. So, the obvious conclusion was that somewhere along the way at least some Christians had consciously chosen to pull away from the true Church.


I had no interest in pursuing the various Protestant denominations--none of them seemed close to the early Church they professed to have recreated 1500 years plus after the fact. Even the most basic knowledge of the liturgical and sacramental beliefs of the real early Church proved that much. When I considered the Church of Rome, I found myself facing the same questions I had before. If all power resided in the hands of one man, no matter how good and holy, there would always be room for confusion and error. The Protestants had had that much right; they simply came to the wrong conclusions about what to do about it. Here is where I felt close to despair. If the early church had held fast to the "faith once delivered" how could it have disappeared from the face of the earth. It was the combination of a research paper assignment given by my professor of theology and the undergraduate courses I had taken in Russian and Byzantine history that led me to my first Orthodox liturgy.


My theology professor had assigned us to write a paper on another religious 'denomination'. Seemingly out of the blue it occurred to me to write about Orthodoxy. I figured that if any Christian 'denomination' had kept the original early Church perspective it would be the Orthodox. That seems self evident now, but it certainly wasn't the case back then. In my courses on Byzantium and Imperial Russia the image of the Orthodox Church was almost always presented as backward, superstitious, and opposed to all things modern. Western textbook writers had pretty much uncritically swallowed Gibbons' ( the famous author of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire") scathing attack on the Byzantines as a virtually irredeemable perversion of civilization. Orthodoxy was at the heart of Byzantine life, so it was portrayed in very negative terms; it was always on the wrong side of every dispute. The same was true for the Russians--merely a northern and even less civilized version of Byzantium. In short, I hadn't been predisposed to look for anything positive in Orthodoxy until I was driven to consider it in despair of hope anywhere else!


It was in the midst of Great Lent that I found myself in St Nicholas Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church on 97th Street in Manhattan. I wasn't sure that I would be welcome and my nervousness was only increased when I entered the cathedral--much darker than the Western churches I was used to. Men and women stood mostly apart in separate parts of the Church. The choir sang beautifully in Slavonic, but the melodies were very different from Anglican or Gregorian Chant. The order of the liturgy (I didn't realize that it was a hierarchal liturgy with a bishop) was virtually incomprehensible to me. But about half way through I remembered the words ascribed to the group sent out by Prince Vladimir to observe the liturgy at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople a thousand years before, "We did not know whether we were in heaven or on earth, so great was the beauty of that place". I did not understand everything that was going on around me, but I knew that I was having a glimplse of heaven and, against all logic, I knew that I had no choice but to become Orthodox. It really was that simple--and that complicated.

I began to read everything I could about Orthodox Christianity. I tackled the writings of Vladimir Lossky (something I wouldn't normally advise a neophyte to do!) and dreamed about the Trinity. I bought Orthodox prayer books and recordings of Orthodox music. My poor wife was in a panic--all this time and expense to go to an Episcopal seminary only to become Orthodox!


For awhile I pretended to myself that I could adapt Orthodox beliefs to fit an Episcopalian existence. I don't think I really believed it. I certainly kept returning to that interior certainty I had felt in the cathedral that I must become Orthodox, but I was afraid of the consequences of actually leaving the Episcopal Church. I had many friends in the Church, there were still things I loved (and continue to love to this day) about it. In my uncertainty, encouraged by my diocesan bishop, who thought I would grow out of my infatuation, I was ordained to the diaconate and priesthood of the Episcopal Church. I enjoyed a very happy three years as a curate at a large Episcopal parish in New England--except more and more often I found myself preaching sermons in opposition to abortion and theological syncretism (the blending of traditional Christian beliefs with distinctly non Christian beliefs). In the process I exasperated the poor rector of the parish who constantly found himself having to explain his young curate's atypical (for a New England Episcopalian) opinions to the more liberal members of the community. In the end, it was clear that there was no place for me in the Episcopal Church. My wife, after not a few tears over yet another disruption to our lives--which now included our infant daughter, slowly came to understand Orthodoxy and find in it the solidity that she had never found in the Episcopal Church (she had never converted).


In the autumn of 1989 we were received into the Orthodox Church and I was soon ordained a deacon and, after a year of "re-tooling" at St. Vladimir's Seminary, to the priesthood. During Holy Week 1992 I was sent to St. Nicholas parish in Southbridge Massachusetts where I became rector and where I have served ever since.


So, in the end, after twenty years what have I found? Why did I become Orthodox? And why have I remained Orthodox? (The first and the second questions are not entirely the same).


I have long gotten over the initial stage of 'convertitis'--in which I felt I had to define my Orthodoxy against everything I had known before. Being Orthodox is far more than not being Roman Catholic or Episcopalian. Indeed, if that were all it was, I would be terribly impoverished. I am part of a community of believers that makes up at most 1% of the population and which is often identified with cultures not well known or well respected by most other Americans. Becoming Orthodox has not been a move up the social ladder!


In becoming and remaining Orthodox I have acquired a new and tremendously refreshing understanding of God's creation--one that really isn't easily accessible in the main line western faith traditions. In fact, I believe that the spiritual groping of many Americans that leads them to various kinds of New Ageism and the adoption of "Eastern" religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) is none other than the desire to find what is already present in Orthodoxy.


Orthodox Christianity is immensely positive in its understanding of humankind and of the meaning of life. It takes very seriously the cancerous power of sin and the fact that no one can be saved except through union with Christ. But, it does not see the human race as a "mass of perdition"--completely lost to God through Original Sin. Indeed, Orthodoxy celebrates human freedom, specifically our capability to freely respond to God's grace. There is nothing imposed on us from outside. The gift is offered and it is for us to accept it or decline. This is a VERY different world view from the strict Augustinian one of the West (and Calvinist Protestantism in particular). On the other hand, we are not at all acceptable as we are--we must repent of our sinful desires and behaviors and the Holy Scriptures and Tradition of the Church is very clear as to what those sinful behaviors and desires are. Orthodoxy is not for libertarians!

The Orthodox world view is deeply sacramental. All of creation (as St. Paul so beautifully expresses in Romans 8) is called to be included in the Resurrection. The entire universe has been created by God and is intended by God to find redemption in His Kingdom. Matter is good and blessed in its original intention and in its final disposition. God uses and transforms the material universe to participate in our salvation. Bread and Wine truly become the Body and Blood of Christ our God (as is clearly attested to in the Scriptures and was never doubted until the schisms of the Western Church in the 15th century). Water is sanctified to become the material means of salvation in baptism. Oil is blessed for healing, and so on. We do not see the world as an opposition between spirit and matter with spirit being good and matter indifferent or evil. In fact, a world view that condemns or ignores the material dimension is heretical.

Orthodoxy truly believes that human beings are made for communion with God; that the created and the Creator can and must have direct communion with one another. There is no other explanation for Jesus Christ. "God became a man", says St. Athanasius and many other Church fathers, "so that man might become god". This teaching of theosis ('becoming divine') does NOT mean that we become additional persons of the God-head (an infinite multiplication of the Divine Persons). We are and forever remain creatures, but we are creatures who are made to share in the grace, love, and goodness of God (in His "energies", as St Gregory Palamas put it).
This is indeed the high calling of the Christian. For Orthodox the "humility" of God in Christ was not a means of paying back the Father for His just outrage at human rebellion, but a means of restoring and healing our alienated nature from within. This teaching, too, is very different from the mainline teaching of the West and very much more positive.

Finally, Orthodox expresses itself through a real COMMUNITY of faith. We do not rely on a central authority figure and most definitely do not believe in any kind of individualistic "me and Jesus" relationship. Our unity is expressed in our common communion with the faithful bishops of the Church (our spiritual fathers and leaders of the local churches). It is their common adherence to the faith and traditions of the apostles that holds the church together--along with the testimony and assent of ALL the faithful people. Yes, there are bishops who abandon their role--but they are rejected and expelled from the body of the faithful. Likewise, there are lay people who reject the faith and practice of the Church, but they, too, are expelled from the Body--either through formal excommunication or by means of apostasy (leaving the Church for another religious or political ideal). The Community of the Faithful, the Church itself, is always unassailable by her enemies. It needs no "reformation" because it is united to the one who is ever "faithful and true", Jesus Christ.

This last understanding tends to inhibit legalism. We have our fair share of people who would like to interpret the Churches canons (traditions and customs surrounding fasting, etc., for example) in a legalistic way, but in the long run they can't make much headway because Orthodoxy is naturally 'holistic'. You can't really take just bits and pieces of it and elevate them to "most important". You have to accept the Orthodox faith as a whole, which means understanding in all humility that it is infinitely more than our own personal "take" or opinion on any particular thing.

Finally, Orthodoxy affirms life. Our God is the God of the living, the God who destroys death and bestows Resurrection "on the fallen"--both the spiritually and the physically dead. There is no place in Orthodoxy for the ideologies of death--be it abortion, euthanasia, war, capital punishment, and so on. We refuse, as a Church, to ever endorse death as a means of promoting life--the obscene foolishness of such a thing is obvious throughout our tradition of worship, prayer, and evangelism.

These are the things that made me Orthodox and these are the things that keep me Orthodox--though I could add a great deal more to them! And this is my answer to those who ask me why I converted. To those outside the Orthodox Church who read this and say they, too, agree with what is written here, I suggest that you learn more about what your own tradition teaches. You will find that, though there may be much in common between your tradition and Orthodox in a number of particular points, in the end it will not add up. Orthodoxy, by definition is the fullness of the faith "once delivered". It is not the negation of everything else, but its fulfillment in Christ.
So, "come and see". You will not regret the journey.

The Real Problem with Stem Cell Research

Our new president and the left wing media (just about the whole show in this country, with a few notable exceptions) is rejoicing in the new-found freedom to harvest stem cells from human embryos--destroying them in the process. Of course, this is a horrendous thing--the destruction of innocent human life for the purported purpose of helping others. Even a child can understand that the destruction of one human being for the benefit of another is always a crime against humanity as a whole.

But that isn't the beginning or the end of the ethical crisis we are facing here. Even those embryos that will not be destroyed in stem cell research (at least for now) are morally problematic.


The fact that there are millions--perhaps hundreds of millions--of human embryos frozen in various scientific and medical facilities world wide points to a much deeper crime, one that most of us are loathe to admit. Human beings are being produced to satisfy the wants of others. For the most part they have been produced so that couples who would be otherwise childless may have children.

Whats wrong with that, you ask? The very same thing that is wrong with any act that turns a human being into a product--whether slavery, or child pornography, or any other form of involuntary servitude to the will of another.

Those embryos exist in a state of suspended animation, their lives on hold until someone else decides what to do with them--whether to destroy them or bring them to term. The latter choice, of course, is better than the former. But the mere fact that they were conceived not for their own value as persons created in the image and likeness of God, but for the desires (often presented as emotional "needs") of others is wrong--profoundly wrong. People are not commodities. Never, ever. And this is the heart of the problem we are facing when we discuss embryonic research.

THE FAITH THAT HAS ESTABLISHED THE UNIVERSE

As the Prophets beheld, As the Apostles taught, As the Church received, As the Teachers dogmatized, As the Universe agreed, As Grace illumined, As the Truth revealed, As falsehood passed away, As Wisdom presented, As Christ awarded, Thus we declare, Thus we assert, Thus we proclaim Christ our true God and honor His saints, In words, In writings, In thoughts, In sacrifices, In churches, In holy icons.


On the one hand, worshipping and reverencing Christ as God and Lord. And on the other hand, honoring and venerating His Saints as true servants of the same Lord.


This is the Faith of the Apostles. This is the Faith of the Fathers. This is the Faith of the Orthodox. This is the Faith which has established the Universe.



Every now and then I will meet an Evangelical or Fundamentalist Protestant who will tell me that the Orthodox veneration of icons is idolatrous. When I encounter such persons I feel, on an emotional level, the same way I would if someone were to make insinuations about my mother or in some other way insult a beloved member of my family. I have to tell myself that these people are speaking from ignorance--ignorance of the Scriptures (which they claim to know so well), ignorance of Jesus Christ (with whom they claim a personal relationship), and, of course, ignorance of all things Orthodox.



I usually take a deep breath and say something like, "We Orthodox believe that Jesus is God. He is God Incarnate, the Emmanuel that Isaiah spoke of in the Scriptures". That usually leaves them a bit taken aback. "Well, what do you mean? We believe that Jesus is God, too." "Then you must believe that it is possible to make an image of Him--since He is also human and had a human body". At this point they usually begin to stammer something about the second commandment and try to shift the discussion to the most blessed Virgin Mary and the saints.

Again, I refer them to the scriptures--especially the Prophet Isaiah. What was forbidden in by the second commandment was the creation of any image of God because He had not yet appeared in the flesh among human beings. Even now, it is not possible to create an image of the Father or the Holy Spirit. Neither of them became incarnate. And for that matter it is not possible to portray the infinite Deity of Christ. What we can show is the human appearance of God--one of the Trinity in the flesh. But the prohibitions against idolatry are always directed against the creation of images that represent falsehood. The idols were images of false gods and demons--snares and deceptions that led away from the worship of the Only True God.

Icons of our Lord Jesus Christ are hardly idols--unless one wishes to say that He is not really God in the flesh. Indeed, if He is not who He said He was, then we are guilty of the worst kind of idolatry! But we believe that He is God-with-us, Emmanuel. And thus we can portray him and offer Him right worship through venerating images of Him. Now, only a great fool would believe that the worship we offer is of wood and paint! We are worshipping the one who is represented by wood and paint--the reality, or, archetype that is portrayed.

Occasionally, one of my Protestant accusers will give a grudging nod to the possibility that there is something to this, even though he or she may find it distasteful. "But what about Mary and your other saints", they demand, "you don't think they're God, do you?" And I immediately respond, "Of course not! Who would ever accuse us of such a thing? We portray the Mother of God and the saints as members of the living Church--as members of the family of believers who have gone before us but continue to live in Christ. We honor their images as examples of Christian holiness."

At this point I will ask them if they carry any pictures of family members in their wallet, or keep some at home somewhere. It is a rare person who does not. Then I ask them if looking at those pictures gives them any sort of emotional feeling. Again, it is a rare person who will deny that looking at a picture of a grandchild or of a loved one who has since passed away raises profound emotions of love, joy, happiness, or sadness or a mixture of all these things. And I explain to them that they understand icons very well--even if they won't admit to it.

Of course, it is possible to "idolize" those images of our loved ones. But most Christians would find such behavior strange and unnatural. I'm not convinced that a lot of non Christians--people who have lost faith in God--don't idolize the images of earthly 'gods'. Witness the idolatry of political leaders--even here in America today, but serious Christians know better. And our Evangelical/Fundamentalist critics know exactly what I am alluding to.

The image, as St. John of Damascus wrote at the height of the attack on icons by the Imperial government of the Byzantine Empire during the 7th and 8th centuries, represents the prototype. If the prototype is Christ, then the image is worthy of 'worship' because Christ is being worshipped. If the image is of the Mother of God or one of the saints, it is worthy of 'veneration' (or honor) because those persons are worthy of honor and love because of their faithfulness to God and His Church.

The key word in all of this is 'love'. We honor the images because we love the ones portrayed in them. They are part of our family and as living members of the Church (because our God is the God of the living not the dead--as the Lord Jesus Himself has taught) they merit the kisses we bestow upon them.

In our churches we are surrounded by icons--each one representing a member of our family. We know their stories and we firmly believe that they know us. For those who say they don't "get it" we say, open your wallet and look at that person you love so well and then tell us you don't understand.

FRAGILITY

Recently a teacher at our school experienced an especially heart-breaking loss in her family. A little girl--three years old--was sick with a fever, a pretty typical thing this time of year. Her parents thought it was a just an ordinary virus and put her down for a nap. She never woke up.

Some years ago, my own brother, a healthy, funny, and fun-loving man stepped out to cross a street on a dark night and was hit by a car. He died instantly. He was just forty years old.

We can all come up with stories like this, stories that cause us to raise our voices to heaven and ask, "Why?"

Who could possibly offer the parents of that little girl comfort in the face of what happened? To this day my mother counts the cards and phone calls her children make to her on her birthday, on Mothers' Day, and Christmas--and she subtracts the ones that don't arrive from my brother. Her heart is permanently broken.

These incidents demonstrate the awful fragility of human life. We are so easily snuffed out, "like the grass on the housetops" we flourish for a moment and then we are gone, as the Psalmist proclaims. One moment we are there amidst our loved ones and the next we are being lowered into the earth never to be seen or heard from again. At least in this world.

And this last remark leads us to the particular hope of the Orthodox Christian people--a hope that proclaims in spite of our terrible fragility we are not merely dust. By becomming one of us God, in Christ, has also taken upon Himself our fragile nature and united it to His own immortal and infinitely powerful nature. In the drama of His Passion, Death, and Resurrection He has shown us that in the end we do not simply wither away like the grass on the housetops. Our voices will one day be heard in the midst of our loved ones again--and then there shall be "no more tears or crying....but life eternal".

Why is it so important to hold to an Orthodox faith in Christ? Because nothing else will suffice. Nothing else will guarantee that we are more than just dirt, food for the worms.

When someone says that it doesn't really matter what you believe they are not telling the truth. If someone says that you can be a Christian and deny that Jesus is God and that He rose bodily from the dead, they are lying. If someone says the body is just a shell and what really counts is the soul, they are preaching heresy.

Why? Just ask the grieving mothers of this world. The only hope they have, the only hope any of us have, of touching, hearing, seeing those beloved, fragile children ("fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters....") who have gone before us is grounded in the FACT that He is Who He said He is.

What those mothers want, what we all want, is to know that our fragility will not last forever; that someday we shall be solid and strong and that nothing will ever separate us from one another or from God ever again.

The Criterion of Truth

What would you think if you heard two people having a fierce argument about addition facts? I mean, a real knock down, dragged out battle over whether 1 + 1 really equals 2? What about a spit flying rant over the multiplication table? Or, (this one is a bit more esoteric), whether e actually equals mc2?

For most of us such an argument seems inconceivable outside the walls of an asylum. People simply don't fight over addition, multiplication, or Einstein's equation about mass and the speed of light.

Why? Because we accept them as facts. Oh, we may ask questions about why and how mathematics or physics work. In fact, if we are good students, it is often because we ask questions. But we generally don't debate the answers once we have learned them. We simply accept them as true.

This is clearly not the case with theological truths--especially in the Post Enlightenment West. Theology and religious dogma are dealt with as something utterly different from mathematics. Math is facts; theology is opinion--at least in the minds of most Europeans and Americans.

Yet in most of the world and for most of history this has not been the case at all. Far from being a matter of mere opinion, what one believed about God was considered to be the highest truth. And if there were opposing beliefs, they were understood to be as wrong as saying 1+1=4, or 5x5=10. Theology was about facts, not opinions. One was either right or one was wrong.

Now, I can hear you saying--"But it is easy to demonstrate 1+1 by counting out a couple of objects and 5x5 by setting up five groups of five. How do you demonstrate the Trinity, or, prove the divine humanity of Christ?"

And, in truth, we are talking about two different kinds of truth--one concrete and easily demonstrated, the other based on faith.

And yet, many if not most "enlightened" people today subscribe to all sorts of "truths" that cannot be demonstrated except by faith.

Let me illustrate this point more clearly. The vast majority of Americans and Europeans believe that without question "all men (people) are created equal". It is a political, social, and moral given. And yet it can be easily demonstrated that not everyone is equal at all in terms of strength, intelligence, wealth, or a whole host of other sets of criteria. People are manifestly NOT equal--except in the eyes of God. Many of the most vociferous proponents of equality are quick to deny the equality--even the humanity--of those who are politically inconvenient. The previous entries on the issue of abortion are examples that support my assertion.

Still, if you ask most people if they believe that "all men are created equal" they will say, "yes". And their "yes" is grounded in faith alone. They believe because they've been taught to believe and it would seem as outlandish--not to say outrageous--to imagine an argument raging between two political candidates over equality as it is to imagine a debate over math facts.

Equality is considered a fundamental fact in our political and social system even when we demonstrate just the opposite in our actual actions with increasing frequency. We do this, by the way, by redefining who is a person. If certain people are not persons because of their developmental status, value to society, or ability to defend themselves we can still pretend we believe that all people are equal; its just that some people are no longer people!

At any rate, our criterion of truth for the equality of human beings like our criterion of truth for theology is based on faith. In the case of human equality this faith was originally based in a divine revelation. That all human beings are fundamentally equal is a faith statement grounded in the Christian belief that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God and that God became a human being Himself to reveal their full value. Once the foundation for believing that all people are equal is no longer accepted as a fact (meaning, once what we believe God is reduced to mere opinion) then all the beliefs that are based on that foundation begin to totter. This is why it is possible to assert the words, "all people are created equal", while at the same time depriving whole classes of human beings of their most basic rights.

As Jesus taught, a house built without a foundation (or which has been moved off its foundation) will be easily swept away in a flood. In the case of this society, the deluge has already begun.