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.

Oh, by the way......

That "safe" abortion method that the NARAL people are referring to is 'partial birth' abortion in which a late term baby is partly delivered (feet first) while an instrument is inserted into its skull so that the brain may be sucked out, the skull collapsed and the corpse removed.

Its even worse than a horror movie.

Who said there were no more barbarians? Today they wear Prada or Armani suits.

Choice?

The following is from the NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) explanation of the "Freedon of Choice Act"


Freedom Of Choice Act (FOCA)

Following the Supreme Court’s closely divided decision to uphold the first‐ever federal ban on abortion1, it is clear that the stakes have changed and the right to choose is facing a new level of assault. That’s why the pro‐choice community is working to guarantee the right to choose through the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) – a measure that will codify Roe v. Wade’s protections and guarantee the right to choose for future generations of women.

• Recognizing that a woman’s right to choose is being chipped away both by the courts and state lawmakers, the pro‐choice community – led by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D‐CA) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D‐NY) – is working to enact a federal law2 that would restore the right to choose as expressed in 1973 in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.

• Since Roe v. Wade was decided, a woman’s right to choose has been systematically eroded by anti‐choice legislators in states around the country. In fact, more than 500 anti‐choice measures have been enacted in the states since 19953, essentially rolling back this fundamental right for many women.

• With a woman’s right to choose already in a precarious state, President Bush’s appointment of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court further threatens the constitutional protection for reproductive rights – a threat immediately made evident in the Court’s ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

• In the Carhart decision, the newly reconfigured Court – with Bush’s appointees Roberts and Alito casting decisive votes – upheld the first‐ever federal ban on a safe abortion method – with criminal penalties for doctors.4 More troubling, the decision effectively reversed Supreme Court precedent and rolled back key protections that were guaranteed by Roe v. Wade, including the long‐standing exception safeguarding women’s health.

• Dissenting in Carhart, Justice Ginsburg called the majorityʹs opinion "alarming," and stated that "[f]or the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a womanʹs health."5 Further, she said, the federal ban "and the Courtʹs defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court."6

• By enacting FOCA, we will establish a federal law guaranteeing reproductive freedom for future generations of American women. This guarantee will protect women’s rights no matter who occupies the White House or is in control of Congress.
January 1, 2009 1 Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 550 U.S. 124 (2007).
2 S.1173, 110th Cong (2007); H.R.1964, 110th Cong. (2007).
3 NARAL PRO‐CHOICE AMERICA FOUNDATION, Who Decides? The Status of Womenʹs Reproductive Rights in the United States (18th ed. 2009), available at www.prochoiceamerica.org/whodecides.
4 Carhart/PPFA, 550 U.S. 124 (2007).
5 Carhart/PPFA, 550 U.S. 124 (2007). (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).
6 Carhart/PPFA, 550 U.S. 124 (2007). (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).


It's worth publishing the entire "FAQ" sheet partly because it reveals the psuedo intellectual nature of the far left (note all the footnotes). More important, it reveals how carefully people who do wicked things disguise their actions under euphemisms (basically nice words to cover up ugly actions--another good example being "Final Solution")

In the NARAL "FAQ" sheet the word abortion only appears once, otherwise we hear only of the "right to choose", "reproductive rights" without any explanation of what the "choice" involves and whose rights are denied.

The comfortable, mostly white, upper middle class women who make up the bulk of the NARAL membership would take umbrage to be compared with other (in)famous advocates for mass killing of the past century. Still, that is precisely what they are--advocates for mass murder under the name of "choice".

Now, most Americans are loathe to deny others their freedom to choose--and this is precisely why the abortion lobby cloaks its intentions under the banner of "freedom" and "choice". Who wants to oppose "freedom"--it is enshrined in our Constitution? And who wants to be denied the right to choose for him or herself the basic structure of his or her life?

Indeed, our system of government is based on John Locke's "natural rights" theory that everyone is entitled to life, liberty, and property (or, as Jefferson put it, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"). We are naturally appalled when those rights are infringed upon.

The problem is that abortion involves only one person's choice on a matter that always--always-- involves the violent death of another. Most Americans w0uld not support anyone who would claim such an unqualified "right" over another human being. Thus, the requirement for the euphemism, "choice". Abortion is simply a "choice"--like chosing the flavor of an ice cream cone, or, the color of one's clothing, or one's religion...etcetera. The fact that it is the supreme violation of the first right recognized in the Declaration of Independence--the right to life--is never, ever, mentioned. How could it be? Who would be for it, if the ugly truth were actually told?

It is bizaare that in this country "pro choice" means to be in favor of taking the life of an innocent person (without any choice on his/her part). It is even sicker that, on the rare occasions that the proponents of this "right" actually own up to what they are for, it is to deny the rights of their victims by denying their humanity.

Sound familiar? Over 100 million people died in the last century because evil regimes denied them their rights because they were Jews, or Christians, or members of the wrong class, and so on and on and on. In America nearly 40 million have died since 1973 because they were deprived of their humanity by the fiat of a court and the well financed campaigns of special interests.

The new president, a man of great eloquence and pursuasiveness, is an unabashed supporter of "choice". No one would compare him to the demagogues of the past--Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or, the Interhamwe of Rwanda. It would be unfair and unjust to do so. Germans, Russians, Chinese, and Rwandans who were caught up in the holocausts of the 20th century were deceived by the power of unscrupulous dictatorships and held hostage to brutal political organizations. Things are different here. Our demagogues are, for the most part, men and women of sophistication, well spoken and well educated. They do not have the power of a tyrant behind them. They have proven that euphemisms alone are enough to persuade (or lull) a free people into becoming accomplices of the greatest holocaust in human history. The Nazis, at least, tried to hide what they were doing behind barbed wired and far from the public eye. In America it is being done without shame and for all the world to see.

Let's try this again

A few years ago we at St. Nicholas hosted the first Orthodox blog in Southbridge. It was a bomb!

In recent weeks our sister parish's priest (Fr. Peter Preble at St. Michael's) has shared some great information about the blog he has started up on the hill. Maybe it is time we started again, too!

Of course, Fr. Peter is much more tech savvy than yours truly--so there is no competition here. :)

Our blog this time around will aim to be a bit more--let's say--interesting.

The only theological opinions you will see expressed on this page will be be Orthodox, but as the profile admits, I won't hesitate to be as controversial as possible when it comes to politics and other opinion, in general.

So, let the games--or blog--begin!