Travels

I’ve been travelling quite a bit these past few weeks. On the very day that school was dismissed for the year (June 11) I caught a plane to Hawaii to see my folks for a little over two weeks. It was a nice break from the stress of the past year, although I often succumbed to the temptation of lethargy towards the end of my stay. It was also very nice to see my old parish again and sing with the choir.

Coming back on July 1st, I had little time to prepare for my next four-week trip in the eastern part of these United States. On the night of July 4th (St. John’s feast day) I caught a red-eye to Philadelphia, with a transfer to Syracuse, New York in order to go to Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, where I am presently located. I’m spending two weeks here learning the ins and outs of church music. It’s a wonderful program: not only has my reading of Church Slavonic improved dramatically, I also feel three times as better a singer than I was just a week or so ago. If you sing in an Orthodox choir. I highly suggest this program!

Well, I have several more weeks to go until my travels end. I would write more, but I ought to attend to more pressing concerns. Until then!

Ah, and also to all of my Old Calendar friends: S’Prazdnikom!

 

Fashionable Orthodoxy?

I’m not sure what to make of this advertisement for a conference in Oklahoma City. While it goes without saying that I think that the people behind this “Try Orthodoxy” campaign have good intentions, I wonder if this is the correct approach to take. Putting aside the warm-and-fuzzy tone, I don’t think that a conference (which appeals to the mind) is the best way to introduce one to Orthodoxy (which is centered in the heart). Anyone with access to the Internet can find out information about the Orthodox Church as well as all the major arguments for its truth. But faith is the product of grace, not arguments. And this grace is produced by love and prayer.

I believe that the revival of Orthodoxy in America will not come about as a result of fancy ad campaigns. The sapling planted by the Church is watered by the good works of the faithful, and tended by excellent pastors. Perhaps we need another Chrysostom that will eloquently put forth the witness of Orthodoxy, as well as sponsor works of love both in the spiritual realm and in the world. May God grant us such as saint!

 

Thoughts on Pentecost

Here are some of my inchoate thoughts on Pentecost. Obviously they shouldn’t be taken as authoritative by anyone.

For a very long time I wondered why Jesus had to ascend into Heaven in order to send the Holy Spirit. Why couldn’t He have stayed on earth with His apostles? It would’ve made it a lot easier for the Church. If anyone tried to persecute Christians, Jesus could’ve come up and showed His wounds and said “Here, see? I’m alive!”

Yes, if Jesus stayed with us we could’ve achieved worldly glory. But we wouldn’t have had the Holy Spirit, because according to the Gospel today, Jesus had “not yet been glorified.” Our Lord was glorified through His Cross and Resurrection, yes, but this glorification was not complete until He ascended to the Father. Through His resurrection, death was defeated and human nature was restored to its original state, but it was not enough. Human nature had to be glorified, it had to be deified. And thus through Christ’s Ascension human nature becomes deified, at least potentially so, allowing for us to receive the Holy Spirit. As someone raised with a Western mindset, focusing on Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, Pentecost made no sense. But now, as an Orthodox, it makes complete sense to me. Hopefully I will go beyond mere words, and be made worthy of the deifying power of the Holy Spirit.

 

Pentecost

O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere and fillest all things, treasury of Blessings, and Giver of Life, come and abide in us and cleanse us from every impurity and save our souls, O Good One.

 

Today’s Patristic Quote

Groan after you have sinned, not because you are to be punished (for this is nothing), but because you have offended your Master, one so gentle, one so kind, one Who loves you so much and longs for your salvation as to have given even His Son for you. On account of this, groan.

–St. John Chrysostom

 

Today’s Patristic Quote

No one would be an idolater if we were true Christians: if we kept Christ’s commandments if we are wronged and our property is stolen; if we blessed if we are abused; if we did good when we suffered hardships. No one would be such a brute, that he would not hasten to piety if we kept this approach.

–St. John Chrysostom, quoted in “Witness to the Ethos of Orthodoxy or Syncretistic Coexistence?” published by the Cyprianite Synod in Resistance.

 

Bless mine enemies!

Bless mine enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitter against me—
so that my fleeing to Thee may have no return;
so that all hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs;
so that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul;
so that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins: arrogance and anger;
so that I might amass all my treasure in Heaven;
ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.
Enemies have taught me to know—what hardly anyone knows—that a person has no enemies in the world except himself.
One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.
It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies.
Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and mine enemies.

From Prayers by the Lake, by St. Nikolai Velimirovic.

 

The Wisdom of Everyday Life

“My brother, if your soul were pure and upright before the Lord, you would be able to profit from all things of this life. If you were to see a wandering peddler, you would say to yourself: ‘my soul, from the desire to earn fleeting, earthly goods, the peddler toils a great deal and endures much, concentrating on things which will not ultimately remain under his domain. Why, then, do you not look after those things which are eternal and incorruptible?’ Once again, if you were to see those who dispute in court over financial matters, you would say: ‘My soul, these people, often having not a single need, show such ardor and quarrel with such shouting between themselves. You, who owe to God a myriad of talents, why do you not implore God, bowing down as one should, to obtain cancellation of that debt?’

“If you were to see a builder making houses, you would again say: ‘my soul, these same, even if they build houses from mud, show such great zeal to finish the work they have laid out. You, why are you indifferent to eternal structures and why do you not struggle to erect the abode of God within the soul, forming and joining the virtues by the will?’

“Now, in order not to be prolix in citing various cir­cumstances one by one, let us say that we must take care to transform our worldly thoughts and observations, which are born of our material perspective on things of the present life, to spiritual ones. Thereby, we shall profit from all things with the help and assistance of Divine Grace” (Saint Ephraim).

–Taken from Archimandrite [Archbishop] Chrysostomos’s The Ancient Fathers of the Desert, Copyright 1980, Hellenic College Press, Brookline, MA.

 

Fr. Justin Popovich on the Corpse of Europe

What is left of a man when the soul is removed from his body? A corpse. What is left of Europe when God is torn from its body? A corpse. With God banished from the Cosmos, has it not become a corpse? What is a man who denies the soul within him and in the world around him? Nothing but molded clay, a walking coffin of molded clay. The result is devastating. Enamored of things, European man himself finally becomes a “thing.” Personality is devalued and destroyed. What is left is a man-thing. There is no whole, integrated, bodily husk from which the immortal spirit has been driven out. Although this husk is burnished and adorned, it is still a husk. European culture has deprived man of his soul; it has made him artificial and mechanical. It is like a monstrous machine that devours men and makes them into things. The end result is touchingly sad and movingly tragic: a soulless thing among soulless things.

–Fr. Justin Popovich, “Humanistic and Theanthropic Culture” in The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism, pp. 103-104, as quoted in “The Life and Works of Our Holy Father Archimandrite Justin of Chelije” in the current (Vol. 53, No. 5) issue of The Orthodox Word, September-October 2007.

 

Metropolitan Hilarion, Many Years!

I can tell you where I was the moment Archbishop Hilarion of Sydney, Australia and New Zealand, the Deputy First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, was elected Metropolitan. It was at St. John’s Academy, in the basement of Holy Virgin Cathedral, San Francisco. Matushka Maria Kotar, the Administrator of the school, was trying to find every means possible to get news from Jordanville about the election. “We need smoke signals! CNN coverage!” (I’m paraphrasing, forgive me) Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps) Jordanville is not the Vatican, and so we had to resort to phone calls and other primitive means to get news. At any rate, Matushka Masya wanted the bells to be rung as soon as word came that a new Metropolitan was elected.

And word came very soon. After all, our humble conclave consisted of eleven bishops. In a space of less than half an hour, a new Metropolitan was chosen. The bells! The bells! I rushed outside to hear those bells, the bells which rang by themselves the night that Vladyka Laurus reposed, now ringing loudly to celebrate the choice of a new leader for our flock.

The seventh graders, clapping their little hands over their ears, nevertheless shouted “More! More!” to the young bell-ringer. I’m sure I’m making a ton of mistakes in my remembrance of things, but the bells were something like this (this being from then-Archbishop Hilarion’s visit to a monastery in New South Wales):

It was truly one of the chief highlights of my stay in San Francisco, to say the least.