The Burning Bush that Does Not Burn
The icon of Mary as the Church
OBSERVATIONS ON OUR WORLD ON THE SUNDAY OF ST GREGORY PALAMAS
Checking the OCA site to address their theme for Palamas Sunday, I didn’t see anything I could pick up on -- but then I really hit pay dirt with Fr. Stephen Freeman’s blog http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/. I think I will prepare the ground with my own experience:
Like Fr. Stephen, I came to Orthodoxy from the Episcopal Church - except that my route included 16 years in the Catholic Church, under the spiritual direction of Dr. Herbert Schwartz, PhD, TOP (Dominican tertiary), a brilliant and charismatic New York Jew who, in the course of doing his PhD on Aristotle at Columbia Univ., happened on St. Thomas Aquinas (who was very much in vogue in the 1930’s through I guess about the 60’s or so when one Fr. Josef Ratzinger started swinging his hatchet at this vogue) and became not only a “completed Jew” -- one of a most illustrious line of Jews who see in the recognition of Christ as Messiah the rightful fulfillment of their Jewish traditions which they continue to reverence (Cardinal Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris until his repose at 80 in 2007 being another such whom I have been very close to) -- but also the Spiritual Father of a community in which the Catholic tradition was revitalized and lived, especially through devotion to the Dominicans, St. Thomas Aquinas and St Catherine of Siena, and the Carmelites, St John of the Cross, St Catherine of Siena, and St. Therese of Lisieux, all these holy women being Doctors of the Church. Herbert even called himself “The Little Flower’s Theologian”, as he explored the theology of her “Little Way”. Please note that the reversal of this process, starting with the dry-as-bones abstract theological tradition which has emerged in the western Church, and vainly trying afterward to graft on something warm and vibrant and pulsing with life - uh, just doesn’t cut it and never will.
From “Glory to God for all things -- Fr. Stephen’s blog”
“This Sunday in the Orthodox Church commemorates St. Gregory Palamas. His work represents the triumph of reality over theory – of true knowledge of God versus scholasticism. This is an article written in 2008, following my pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
“From the book, The Enlargement of the Heart, by Archimandrite Zacharias:
For Elder Sophrony [Sakharov], theology was the state of being in God….theology was for him the description of the event of his meeting with Christ when he was caught up and saw the divine Light. [as described earlier in the text]. (For him theology was the narration of an event.) According to his writings, authentic theology consists not in the conjectures of man’s reason or the results of critical research, but in the state of the life into which man is brought by the action of the Holy Spirit. Theology is then a grace of the Holy Spirit which rekindles the heart of man. Whoever has acquired this gift becomes as a light in the world, holding forth the word of life.
The Archimandrite’s description of the Elder Sophrony’s understanding of theology is similar to the well-known saying in Orthodoxy that “he who prays is a theologian and a theologian is one who prays.” At its very heart there is a steadfast allegiance to the traditional stream of Hesychast theology (as taught by St. Gregory Palamas) which insists that theology must be grounded in reality – in the experience of the Divine reality – and not simply in the creations and syllogisms of human reason. The point of theology is not to speak about God, but to speak with God.
“This is always the difficult (and even frustrating) aspect of Orthodoxy. Unlike the inventions of the human imagination it is, instead, the gift of God, and therefore not under our control. Thus we are counseled to pray, fast, repent, forgive, give alms – all in the context of the remembrance of God. The Liturgy is a mystery in which God is truly among us and truly gives Himself to us – and yet we struggle even there to give ourselves to Him.
“St. John in the beginning of his Revelation greets his fellow believers with these words:
‘I John, your brother, who share with you in Jesus the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.’
“In a very few words he sums up the common experience of the Christian life: “to share in Jesus the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance.” Our individual circumstances can differ greatly – but none of us escape the “tribulation” [he is here referring to the trials we all suffer and not the dispensationalist notion of a "great tribulation"], none of us are excluded from the Kingdom except by our own choosing, and for all of us there is the daily life of patient endurance.
“I thought much about this during my pilgrimage in the holy land. Some places are more interesting than others for someone nurtured in a modern environment. My visit to the monastery of Mar Saba in the Judaean desert, carved and perched on the sides of a sheer cliff, in a sun and heat that clearly belonged in a desert – with a landscape which, though beautiful, is still largely uninterrupted rock and sky – was thrilling for the hour or so we were there. But the American monk with whom I had conversation had been there for 15 years. I found myself thinking back over the past 15 years of my life – 15 years of serious change – 15 years, busy enough in “God’s service” that you can ignore prayer and forget that you are ignoring it.
In the desert and monastic rule of Mar Saba there is prayer, and the chores of the day – but mostly prayer. It is unavoidably part of the “patient endurance.”
“For many of us in our contemporary settings, we find it difficult to stay put long enough to have “patient endurance.” I think the length of Orthodox services is one of the first experiences many people have of Christ saying to us, “Slow down.” Or in Biblical terms, “Be still, and know that I am the Lord.” There is a “patient endurance” that is an inherent part of Orthodox prayer. Some days we endure more patiently than others.
“But the faith does not ask patient endurance of us, or tribulation itself, except for the sake of the Kingdom. God is not a taskmaster – we have been freed from the slave masters of Egypt. But just as the people of Israel traveled through the wilderness for two generations in order to become the people of Israel – so we travel in patient endurance, the Kingdom and the tribulation in order to become conformed to the image of Christ.
“Standing on a ledge of Mar Saba, it is easy to feel the romance of the caves. But the reality of the caves bears more similarity to whatever it is in our lives that we must endure than it does to any romantic fantasy. Saints are real and are forged in reality by the Spirit of God. There is nothing that separates our lives from that of the saints – for we are one body. Their endurance is part of our inheritance as our endurance must become the inheritance of generations to come.
It is in that day to day remembrance of God that becomes our patient endurance that we ourselves become theologians, or at least catch a glimpse of true theology from time to time.”
Back to Laura Jones: A prayer that caught my attention from the very beginning of my fascination with Catholicism was the Memorare:
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thine intercession was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me.
Amen.
I prayed this after each decade of the rosary, and after several years in the community led by Herbert, I added: “O Mother of the Word Incarnate IN ME, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me.” I wrote this in a letter to Herbert -- this was often the best was to communicate with him, especially as the community grew so that private talks became rare, saved for the new comers. Moreover, from early on it was Herbert’s wont to have such talks through the night - as dawn broke, he would catch a catnap and be ready for his disciples beginning to assemble for his morning talk. Herbert never wasted time in sleep!
So after a few days, by which time the note on the Memorare was no longer in the forefront of my consciousness, I was roused about 2:00am with the message that Herbert wanted to see me! It was often the case that such calls came when you were in for a scolding - so it wasn’t exactly a welcome wake-up!!! I sped lickety split down to the main house as fast as I could make it - to be enfolded in one of Herbert’s life-restoring bear hugs, as he whispered that he had just read my letter! Needless to say, if I had wondered if I was on the right track with the Memorare ….... I no longer had any such misgivings!
That was 30 some years ago, and I now pray:
Oh most compassionate Virgin Mother! Before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful, in myself. But I do not live in my sinful and sorrowful self; I live, rather, in you, my Mamaleh, my Mama [I have a very powerfully intimate relationship with my own mama, now reposed], for it is within your most sacred womb that we are perpetually re-generated, re-born, transfigured, EVEN DIVINIZED, through that participation in God’s own TRIUNE DIVINE LIFE which is ours because God the Word has clothed Himself, WRAPPED HIMSELF [as it says in some translations], in ME, in US!!! Oh, MOTHER-OF-GOD-THUS-INCARNATE-IN-US, IN OUR FLESH, you are the paradigm of the whole entire created order, hence you are OUR PROTECTRESS! [I added what follows after the event indicated] And so, Pokrovskaya Bozhe Mater (“protecting Mother of God”) it was you who gave me the prophetic prayer, in 1995 [in the wake of the “Ligonier” - uh, fiasco], in the OCA Primatial Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Washington, D.C., at a time when Pope John Paul II was in the US to speak to the UN:
“Let the Pope become Orthodox, through the prayers of Herbert, for the sake of Bishop Paul!”
It was right after Communion that this prayer came to me, and the marvelous Cathedral Choir sang: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! The prayer just rolled out in my mind, and at first I was like: How can you make any sense out of that!!??!!?? But, on the other hand, I couldn’t NOT believe it, and I faithfully remember it and say it after receiving Communion from that day to this. I shared it with Pope John Paul, (now) Metropolitan Paul, and Pat. Aleksi II who was then Patriarch in Russia.
And lo and behold, we are right on the verge of realizing that prayer today! As I write this, and cast about for ways to make my point, something that happened last night comes into my mind. My daughter Liz, her Jeff and Rose, and I went to a marvelous play, and afterward Jeff chatted at length with a seminarian who sat near us for the play. The seminarian was a very engaging person, and I find what Jeff says of interest, so I listened (yes, I have at long last learned to LISTEN, so take heart, miracles CAN happen!) And as we parted, I introduced myself briefly to the seminarian and gave him my card with my web address, saying I had an Orthodox background - I have found if I tell Catholics that the Orthodox admitted me to Communion, this opens to positive questioning, so as we parted, he asked me which Church I belong to now -- to which I replied spontaneously that there is only one Church! [We say it in the Creed: ONE HOLY ETC. CHURCH] There was no time for further discussion, so as I left him he looked baffled, but I perforce had no time to respond.
So picking up on the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas --- well, please bear with me as I go back to Aristotle and I think you will see what I mean.
For us in the U.S., especially, “democracy” is something absolutely sacrosanct! Since I have been very much a student of Aristotle since I first encountered him as a sophomore in a Catholic college, I am aware that he was HORRIFIED at the very idea of a state ruled by the “demos”, the people - i.e., the uncouth and undiscriminating mob! I saw his point when I first read the Politics, but ours is not “pure” democracy, but a REPUBLIC; the colonists did not envision a direct vote, but the choice of wise electors who would then do the actual voting; our “electoral vote” which already had a spicy history even before the brouhaha over “hanging chad” etc. which - uh, colored Dubya’s putative 2nd election. Indeed, I have long had misgivings about our worship of democracy; when it became an issue re JFK because the Catholic Church is not “democratic”, Herbert said the best form of government would probably be something like Plato’s Republic, with a philosopher-king. However, he concluded, since because of our fallen condition anyone who gets power is likely to abuse it, it is better to spread the power among all the people. Since it was not really a burning issue for me, I was glad to rest the case with that.
But at this point we can compare our farcical political scene with the relative peace and stability which have prevailed in Russia during the election of Putin. Do not read the US press which came out in the run-up to the election and its immediate wake! Newspapers and magazines still have to sell (I see the juiciest articles from Time magazine that appear on the internet Time are now pay-to-read), and the late breaking news of the moments reflects Americans’ biased love and hatred by added (everything CNN puts out on Syria these days ends: “... although these figures cannot be verified because Assad’s forces will not allow observers to enter... whatever area. But by now the reporting is relatively truthful, I see they are keeping Hillary under wraps, supposedly until something really BIG can allow her to, while saving face, again show her face -- I don’t believe for one minute that she is going to resign with Obama on the upswing, she going down in history with the stamp of her own failed vision - no way!
Because look at our foreign wars -- uuhhh, beg pardon, Freudian slip there, I was trying to say “foreign POLICY”, but if you survey the field, our foreign policy consists of wars or (in the case of Russia and -- via our client state, Israel -- Iran) preparation for them, the one war we started that we finally managed to pull out of is Iraq which remains effectively engaged in civil war as all the factions which were there when we invaded still are there, the only difference being that the a-political populace lived in some measure of well-being because Saddam had built the country up, whereas now the entire infrastructure is a shambles, the people don’t even have bare necessities like clean water, plus the place is so rife with every available brand of Islamic extremism, the land in which Abraham received God’s call is effectively ethnically cleansed of Christians.
And, incidentally, Israel would also be cleansed of Christians, were it not for foreign missionaries. I wrote recently of the martyrdom of the Christian Gabriel Cadiz, very active in the Christian community of Jaffa, who attended a Muslim service to sympathize with them because the Israeli’s had confiscated the speakers they used for the Muslim call to prayer. Holy Saint Martyr Gabriel then joined a procession going to evening Vespers at a Christian church, and as he did so, he said aloud “today the call-to-prayer, tomorrow it will be the church bells” and was stabbed to death by someone in the crowd dressed as Santa Claus.
I wrote about this a few e-mails ago, and I described in detail the difficulty I had getting a non-Israeli-edited version of the event, BUT WHEN I WANTED TO MENTION NOW, IT WAS NO LONGER ON MY COMPUTER!!! Frankly, I’m grateful the clumsy Israelis are hacking me, as I can advertise it this way, get the word out when journalists and such can’t do it because no American wants to read about such atrocities committed by our client-state in the Middle East.
This, brothers and sisters, is the bitter fruit of the ME ME ME ME ME -- THE DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST -- AS WE SEE HIM DOING, ALL OVER THE WORLD -- THE POISONED FRUIT BORN BY DEMOCRACY, PRACTISED IN A GODLESS SOCIETY.
CARDINAL RATZINGER, NOW POPE BENEDICT, WAS WONT TO POINT OUT THAT “TRUTH IS NOT DECIDED BY MAJORITY VOTE”. NEITHER IS MORALITY, YOUR HOLINESS. YET IT IS THE WESTERN DEMOCRACIES, WHERE THE CATHOLIC CHURCH PREVAILS, WHICH SPREAD THIS MENTALITY.
AND A FINE, INNOCENT, FAITHFULLY BELIEVING, CATHOLIC SEMINARIAN ASKS ME “WHICH” CHURCH I “BELONG TO”!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jerusalem, please forgive me, a sinner
This Great Lent I sincerely want to do whatever it takes to ask Jerusalem's forgiveness for what I have done to hurt her feelings, so that the RV issue can be amicably resolved, and we can move on as friends, and as belonging to the St. Tikhon's community together. Forgiveness Vespers is there in the services in preparation for Great Lent for this very purpose, and for a moment, it looked like I could come up to get the RV next weekend, and we could be together at St. Tikhon's Forgiveness Sunday. But then we had a death in the family down here in Virginia, and the funeral is the first of next week. So it looks like I am going to have to deal with the matter via e-mail, which, however, does have the advantage of being able to get the whole world in on it!
Herbert used to tell of someone he knew in his early days in the Church who, when they met in later years, said to him, “You know, Schwartz, you didn't bring me into the Church with very much charity!” Herbert replied, “So would you have wanted to wait until I got it???” That's how I learned to take life as it comes to me!
Nevertheless, as I began preparing myself by prayerfully reading the services for the day in the Triodion, it was born in on me how the mutual forgiving encounters with one another lose much of their poignant immediacy when they are long distance! So I followed the practice which was already familiar to me before I learned how dear it is to the Russian tradition - not surprising since God Himself so instructed St Augustine: "Tolle et lege!"
However, when I took up my Bible, it fell open at the book of Nehemiah! I was like, yuck, history, even biblical, is not my thing, even Aristotle says that poetry is more true than history, since any historical event could have been otherwise, which is not the case with poetry: we could have Napoleon without Josephine, but never Oedipus without Jocasta! But over my 80 year lifespan one thing I have learned is the value of obedience. Not that I'm so good at it, but in this case I started in on what lay before me. And what should I come to but:
Nehemiah 8 New International Version (NIV)
All the people came together as one in the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the teacher of the Law to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly; he read it aloud from daybreak till noon and all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law. All the people lifted their hands and responded, “Amen! Amen!” Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.
Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and teacher of the Law, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law. Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them.
They found written in the Law, which the Lord had commanded through Moses, that the Israelites were to live in temporary shelters during the festival of the seventh month and that they should proclaim this word and spread it throughout their towns and in Jerusalem: “Go out into the hill country and bring back branches from olive and wild olive trees, and from myrtles, palms and shade trees, to make temporary shelters”—as it is written. The whole company that had returned from exile built temporary shelters and lived in them.
And so the feast of booths, such temporary shelters, is preeminently an eschatological feast, relating to the Great Ingathering as we return from our exile from God in the foreign land of our self-will; we see this in the Gospel account of the Christ's Transfiguration – in which the disciples with Him also were transfigured: a foretaste of the eschaton.
Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. And Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three booths: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”— because he did not know what to say, for they were greatly afraid.
And a cloud came and overshadowed them; and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” Mk 9:2-7
I had gotten this far in my apology to Jerusalem and my appreciation of her role in the life of the Church, when I paused to relate this letter specifically to her. I begin with 2 salient facts:
that she chose Jerusalem as her name when she entered Orthodox Communion and
her Russian background, which her brother Michael Conrad also shares. It seems the genealogical researches of a relative with the family name “Conrad” led to the discovery that one of Tsar Nicholas II's guards, who was martyred together with the royal family – was a Conrad and their forebearer! I don't want to sully this account with tit for tat – but I can't resist noting how the Schmemmen's pride themselves on having a canonized saint among their forbears on their mother's side; surely this Conrad connection carries at least equal weight!
As my next step, my today's surfing brought up the following :
The Archpastoral Message of His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah at the Beginning of Great Lent 2012
dated Monday, February 27, 2012
The First Day of Great Lent
To the Very Reverend and Reverend Clergy, the Venerable Monastics, and the Christ-loving Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America.
Beloved in Christ:
“Enter again into Paradise!” So the Holy Church sings in the kontakion at Lent’s mid-point. At a time of year that coincides with college students’ “spring break” – an occasion for riotous and prodigal indulgence in the pigpen of the passions – the Church offers us a very different image of paradise. Fasting, vigil, silence and prayer, denial of self and generosity to others: these are the labors by which we are invited and commanded to regain our true, paradisal home.
In the three weeks that have led us to this great and solemn first day of the Fast, the Church has set before our spiritual eyes themes of exile. When our ancestors in the faith were led to captivity in Babylon, they wept; they hung up their lyres and said, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither” (Psalm 136:4–5). The Prodigal Son, at the eleventh hour, was given the grace not to forget his father’s house, and so he set his feet on the path of return. Our father Adam and our mother Eve chose exile and hardship for themselves and all their descendants through their disobedience, and yet they – and we with them – are shown the way home: we see the doors of repentance thrown open, and our loving Father in heaven keeping watch for our return with open arms. ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
This, brothers and sisters in Christ, is what the Great Ingathering, the genuine Aliya – something quite other than what the secularized Israelis tout – is all about. It is also what Great Lent is all about. Metropolitan Jonah continues:
In Holy Scripture, Jerusalem, the heart of the Promised Land and seat of the Temple, typifies the dwelling place of God among men. When the time came for our Savior to be received up, “He set His face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). Making his way to the earthly Jerusalem, He was advancing toward suffering and ignominious death. Yet, “for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). Cast out of the city, suffering outside the gate, He sanctified the people through His own blood. Therefore, the Apostle tells us, we also must “go forth to him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one to come” (Hebrews 13:12–14).
The exiles in Babylon refused to forget Jerusalem. Yearning to return to the land given by God to Abraham, they would not make themselves at home in Babylon. The holy Prophet Daniel and the Three Youths obeyed the dictates of their conscience, even in the face of harsh recrimination from a legal system hostile to righteousness. When opportunity arose, they did not shrink from speaking the truth to those who opposed it and, against all odds, God rewarded their faithful witness (v. Daniel 3 and 6).
If we wish to return home to our Father’s house, we first must face the fact that, no matter where we live, we are exiles. This means that if we strive to follow Christ, if we endeavor to pray and fast, to avoid idle talk, to silence our thoughts and find stillness in our hearts, to love our neighbors and our enemies, and to speak the truth without judgment to a crooked and perverse generation, then we must expect to suffer the same mockery and hatred from the powerful of this world that Christ suffered when He walked the earth. For He is the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” and He gives us the grace we need to prepare for the abuse that awaits us, whether at the hands of men or from the devil and his angels. We must ready ourselves for the fight by laying aside “every weight and sin which clings so closely” (Hebrews 12:1). Great Lent is a strenuous period of training that makes us fit to persevere in a long and arduous trek home. ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
I have been reading a book by the Catholic author, Michael O'Brien, which I believe throws into relief the difference between the western Catholic mindset formed within a philosophically secularized tradition in which many reputedly sane and sound so-called “philosophers -- i.e. lovers of knowledge -- hold in all seriousness that what we actually know is the construct of our own minds, not the reality which is “out there” – in contrast to the direct mystical experience of God Himself LIVED DAILY by Orthodox, and with a special intensity during the penitential seasons – of which there are four: besides Nativity fast and the Great Fast to prepare ourselves for Pascha - the Feast of feasts, Orthodox also observe the Apostles' (Peter & Paul) Fast - June 11 through June 28, and the Dormition (Theotokos) Fast - Aug. 1 through Aug. 14.
As Metropolitan Jonah explains, all fasting has an eschatological framework: “Great Lent is a strenuous period of training that makes us fit to persevere in a long and arduous trek home”: the Great Ingathering, the Aliya. As the Metropolitan says:
But the ascetic struggle of Lent is truly a foretaste of Paradise! The world pretends to offer happiness, but this is deception; in reality it gives us only a foretaste of hell. For too many Christians, though, the spiritual senses have grown so dull that the hellish pleasures of the world are more attractive than the Edenic delights of the Church and the Kingdom. We have lost the memory of Paradise; we have forgotten the spiritual Jerusalem; we have made for ourselves a comfortable home in this foreign land. So how then can we make a commitment to follow Christ to Jerusalem? What will motivate us to continue walking along the hard and narrow path to our true home? ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
I'm sorry if any of my readers are getting tired of my laboring these points – although I am glad to be in good company with our Metropolitan – but, brothers and sisters, at least my ORTHODOX BROTHERS AND SISTERS, don't you see how antithetical this is to the values that govern our so-called “democratic” society, which is really and truly virtually nothing but a gloves-off greed contest, EVERY MAN, AND WOMAN – ALTHO THE SEXES ARE HARDLY DISTINGUISHED IN WHAT HAS BECOME OUR “TRANSGENDER” SOCIETY, A TERM WHICH, WHEN I WAS GROWING UP AND EVEN WHEN I WAS RAISING MY OWN CHILDREN (ALL BUT ONE BORN AT LEAST HALF A CENTURY AGO) WAS NOT EVEN KNOWN TO MOST PEOPLE: NOW IT'S NOT JUST KNOWN TO EVERYBODY, IT BASICALLY IS EVERYBODY!!! EVERYBODY IS SO TAKEN UP WITH THEMSELVES AND INDIFERENT TO EVERYONE ELSE, NOBODY EVEN LISTENS TO ANYONE ELSE; WHAT PASSES FOR “CONVERSATION” IS JUST A GROUP OF PEOPLE EACH WAITING HIS/HER TURN TO REPEAT EXACTLY WHAT THEY JUST SAID THE LAST TIME, AND THE TIME BEFORE THAT, AND THE TIME BEFORE …............ etc, etc, etc.
I hope that at least our Orthodox brethren get the point our Metropolitan is making – but I must wonder if this has heretofore been the case, as his words are so antithetical to the way almost everybody continues to live IN THE SECULARIZED WEST, THE NORTH ATLANTIC COUNTRIES, WHICH MADE UP NATO UNTIL EASTERN EUROPE BEGAN WANTING TO GET IN ON THE GREED; WE NOW SEE GREECE PAYING THROUGH THEIR NOSE, SUCH CURIOSITY KILLS THE CAT AND SATISFACTION DOESN'T BRING IT BACK, BUT RATHER NAILS IT MORE SECURELY IN ITS COFFIN.
Fortunately for the Orthodox Church in America, the Russians got a taste of WESTERN CAPITALIST SO-CALLED DEMOCRACY in the 1990's (in case anyone has forgotten, 1999 was the year NATO, led of course by good old Uncle Sam, or more specifically, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who said explicitly that getting at all that Russian oil would be one of the 'more exciting things we will be doing' – as best I recall the quote – with her in charge (and our perhaps brilliant but nevertheless not very intelligent Pres. Clinton at first distracted and then undone – read: neutered, totally emasculated – by his dalliance with his seductive Belorussian Jewess). To make it all happen, Albright said at Rambouillet, 'we will just raise the bar a little higher than we know Milosevich will sit still for' (as best I recall her exact words), as an excuse to bomb Kosovo to smithereens, the bombing beginning on Vespers of the Annunciation of the birth of God-become-our-flesh-that-we-might-participate-in-His-divine-nature by the Angel Gabriel to her who was, and remains, and ever will be, the perfect paragon of the entire created order, and hence our Protectress – which bombing then continued through Pascha (as celebrated throughout the entire world, whether old calendar or new calendar), targeting only civilians – as against “legitimate” military targets, of which in fact Serbia had none, they put up a few cardboard fakes but neither was NATO fooled by such, nor were they interested; when the NATO Spanish pilots complained to their colonel that they were being forced to bomb civilians, and he accordingly protested to Gen Wesley Clark, the Spanish colonel was instantly fired and a more compliant officer put in his place by Clark.
Russia, therefore, found out at that time how – uh, unhealthy for one's soul and psyche “capitalistic democracy” is, having, moreover, suffered a market crash the previous year, August 13, 1998. I see wikipedia astonishingly reports that “Russia bounced back from the August 1998 financial crash with surprising speed”, proof positive of how unimaginably crass these people's mindset is! In fact, Russia suffered a demographic loss for which I don't see statistics, but it still has not recovered. The OLIGARCHS bounced back, true …........ Don't get me going on them! The last time I was in Russia was June 1998. It just happened in God's providence that I went to Russia every year, from 1988, the Millennial Year of Christianity in Russia, when the Church became free, to the summer of the 1998 crash – so I lived with Russia through the '90's which Patriarch Kyrill so laments today! The vaunted “freedom” of the Church came at the price Christianity in the west has also payed for our death-dealing “freedom, democracy” and all the other self-serving perks which have rendered so much of our once prosperous “middle class” homeless – while our musical entertainers are waking up to the frightening truth that most of them depart this life before they reach age 50, more and more some years before, and most of them by their own hand. WELCOME, LADIES AND GENTS, TO SUCCESS IN NATO-LAND!!! EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY, LEST YOU NOT REACH TOMORROW AS YOU ARE ALREADY KILLING YOURSELF – THE OVERDOSE WILL ONLY FINISH THE JOB.
How do we roll all this back? Listen to Met. Jonah:
“Do you want to be made well?” Our Savior addressed this question to the man who was paralyzed thirty-eight years (John 5:6). A similar question could be asked of us: “Do you want to go home?” The answer is not a foregone conclusion. “Do you want to return to your Father’s house? Do you want to leave the pigpen of the passions? Do you want to be washed clean, filled with light, robed in dignity, and transformed with the glory of God?” Whether we know it or not, we respond yes or no to these questions every day of our lives, every hour, every minute. One moment we may set our face toward Jerusalem – to the cross that awaits us there, and to the joy and glory that come only through the cross – but the next moment we go running back to our comfortable passions and delusions. We waffle and vacillate, reassuring ourselves that before time has run out we will surely have made an irrevocable commitment to Christ.
And we hardly spare a thought for the alternative – it is too fearful to face. The captives in Babylon, the Prodigal, even Adam himself – for all of them, exile came to an end; they returned home; they entered again into Paradise. But last Sunday we were warned of the perilous alternative to repentance: unending exile from God and those who love Him. For no one, neither man nor angel, nor even God Himself, can force us to return from the foreign country against our will. God’s arms are opened wide to embrace us – but He gives us the freedom to turn away. His face is warm with love and mercy – but we may close our eyes. Then nothing will be left for us but darkness, confusion, and never-ending despair. ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
TURN, TURN AWAY, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, AND JOIN INSTEAD THE HOLY INGATHERING, THE GREAT ALIYA – WHICH DOES NOT LEAD TO A GODLESS STATE CO-OPTED BY JEWS WHO REFUSE TO EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE THE MESSIAH ON WHOSE ACCOUNT THERE IS A PEOPLE CHOSEN BY GOD TO BEGIN WITH!
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Gen.12:1-3
John 8:39-59 “Abraham is our father,” they answered. “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.”
“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
The Jews answered him, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?” “I am not possessed by a demon,” said Jesus, “but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.” At this they exclaimed, “Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever obeys your word will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?”
Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”
“You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!” “VERY TRULY I TELL YOU,” JESUS ANSWERED, “BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS BORN, I AM!” At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds. ***** ***** *****
I mentioned above the Catholic author, Michael O'Brien, whose writings I believe throw into relief the difference between eastern Orthodoxy and the western Catholic mindset formed within a philosophically secularized tradition in which many reputedly sane and sound so-called “philosophers”, i.e. lovers of knowledge, hold in all seriousness that what we actually know is the construct of our own minds, not the reality which is “out there”! This was actually a problem from which even Pope John Paul II suffered – at least at the time he wrote his doctoral thesis on Faith in the writings of St John of the Cross at the Angelicum in Rome, his mentor being no less an authority than Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.!!! I read it in book form – in the years after Herbert's repose in 1980. The work is largely quotations from St John of the Cross, to the effect that FAITH IS GOD HIMSELF REVEAING HIMSELF TO US, SO THAT THE GUARANTOR OF FAITH IS GOD , IT BEING DARK BECAUSE OF THE WEAKNESS OF OUR INTELLECT. But suddenly on something like p.140 (of a book of some 200 pages), the future Pope throws out, as if it were axiomatic, something to the effect that the Church is the guarantor of faith, which is dark because it is communicated to us through men! I was so distressed, I threw the book across the room – and I think it lay there for some days before I felt like addressing it again. The future pope at one point expresses some frustration that St. John of the Cross never addresses the issue of the role of Church pronunciamentos vis a vis faith. St. Thomas Aquinas does address this issue, and the young Fr. Wojtyla included a sizable appendix of quotations, all of which, however, say the very same thing, which is that Faith itself is simple because God Who reveals Himself is simple; but faith which itself is simple must nevertheless be expressed in complex formulae because of the complexity of our human intellection.
See: “FOR NOW WE SEE THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY; BUT THEN FACE TO FACE: NOW I KNOW IN PART; BUT THEN SHALL I KNOW FULLY EVEN AS I AM KNOWN FULLY.“ 1Cor 13:12 The Pope's misunderstanding sets up the virtue of faith as ITSELF a weakness, not as the perfection of God revealing Himself to us which is RECEIVED BY US imperfectly because of the imperfection of our intellects in this life. St Seraphim addresses this situation when he teaches that virtues acquired through our efforts are not the end in themselves, but are rather the way we dispose ourselves to receive the gifts of Spirit from God, these being the real gist of the spiritual life.
I first read, by the Catholic author, Michael O'Brien, a long novel (over 1,000 pages), The Father's Tale, dealing with the Prodigal Son, which has been described as Dostoyevian, and rightly, I believe, because he explores biblical narratives in their relevance to the living complexity of our lives. But I happened upon another book by him, Fr. Elijah, which deals with the End Times, the plot is basically that the Pope enlists Fr. Elijah, a Jew who alone in his family survived the Holocaust, became Catholic, and as such a well known thinker, writer, etc., and whom, in the action of the book, the Pope enlists to approach the Anti-Christ and persuade him to confess and repent. I was early on put off by the book just because the “end times” are in the book of Nehemiah just as much as in the swirling visions etc. of what is known in Catholic so-called “theological” circles as the “apocalyptic literature” of the Bible! Like the “wisdom literature”; I mean, like the Beatitudes are not the highest wisdom there is! Besides, we have been in the End Time ever since Christ's Ascension – and plenty of Anti-Christ's have come and gone, some haven't repented (to our knowledge) but plenty have, Madeleine Albright among them, I personally guarantee it.
Back to Met Jonah:
In our Father’s house are many dwellings, and Christ has gone ahead to prepare a place for us. He will come again and take us to Himself, that where He is, we may be also. We know the narrow way He has trod. He Himself is the way, and the truth, and the life (cf. John 14: 2–4). If we are with Him, we have nothing to fear! At the last and great Day, at the end of the age, we will behold the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride for her husband (cf. Revelation 21). With joy we will enter in to celebrate an eternal Pascha – God with us and we with Him. He shall wipe away every tear from our eyes, and at long last we shall be home.
With every blessing for a peaceful and holy Fast, and with love in Christ,
+JONAH
Archbishop of Washington
Metropolitan of All America and Canada
The following are a few recent footnotes on Syria. I should explain that for several months I lived with Palestinians in Israel, in Old City Jerusalem, the entrance to our Arab-style conglomeration of houses was just past the turnoff leading into the Holy Sepulchre – how could I not have a warm spot in my heart for them? I don't buy it that when we kill whomever we find inconvenient that's OK – a mere political assassination (even when the inconvenient person has been, as was Bin Laden, trained to do such dirty work by ourselves) – while they are all terrorists. I think giving Palestinians the responsibility of being the recognized legitimate opposition in Syria to Assad could lead to their rehabilitation and the reorganization of the politics of the Middle East.
The conference called "Friends of Syria" which took place in Tunisia has called for an immediate cessation to violence in the country and for new sanctions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Tunisia, which held the conference, proposed sending an Arab peacekeeping force to Syria and guaranteeing Bashar Assad immunity from prosecution and if necessary political asylum in a neutral country; for example Russia.
Representatives of Moscow and Beijing expressed doubts earlier regarding the conference and its goals and did not participate in the meeting.
In two days Syria will vote on a new constitution that could end the 50-year rule of the Baath Party.
(BBC)
24 February 2012, 10:02
Russian diaspora increasingly threatened in Syria - Patriarch's representative
Damascus, February 24, Interfax - The Russian diaspora in Syria is in danger, said Archimandrite Alexander (Yelisov), the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia's representative before the Patriarch of Antioch.
The diaspora is facing increasing death threats "on the part of armed opposition forces and their religious inspirers represented by the radical Islamic clergy," the priest said at a meeting with the Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch and All the East, according to the representative office's website.
In my prayers I ask for representatives of all religions in Syria to live in peace and harmony, Father Alexander added.
Foreign intervention in Syrian affairs will lead to a civil war and the killing of civilians, the Russian Church said earlier.
"The recent passage, despite Russia's protests, by the United Nations General Assembly of a resolution aimed against the current Syrian government, opened up an opportunity to introduce foreign military forces to this country, as was the case in Libya. In this case, this could lead to a full-scale civil war that will last for many years and be accompanied by tens of thousands of innocent victims," head of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion said during a lecture at the Moscow Spiritual Academy.
Foreign intervention will be associated by many Muslims with the Christian intervention, and local Christians, as was the case during the Crusades, "will have to answer for the aggressors' actions, sometimes with their own lives. Christians will become hostages and the first victims of such a military conflict," he said.
"Already one can talk about foreign military intervention in this country: thousands of militant extremists disguised as opposition forces started a civil war in this country. Groups of extremists, the so-called Jamaats, consisting of Wahabi militants armed and trained at the expense of foreign powers, are purposefully killing Christians," the hierarch said.
Hamas breaks with Damascus
By Kevin Flower, CNN
February 24, 2012
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
"I salute the Syrian people," Hamas prime minister says
Public support for anti-government protesters represents an about-face for Hamas
Militant group has received support from al-Assad regime
Jerusalem (CNN) -- In a change in policy, the leaders of the Syrian-backed Islamic militant group Hamas declared their support Friday for anti-government protesters in Syria.
Speaking at Cairo's al-Azhar Mosque, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, told worshipers, "I salute the Syrian people who strive toward freedom, democracy and reform."
The message was echoed in Hamas-controlled Gaza.
There, at a rally in the southern city of Khan Younis, senior Palestinian leader Salah al-Bardaweel expressed support for the opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Addressing thousands of Palestinians, al-Bardaweel described the Syrian blood being spilled in the fight against the Assad regime as a great loss for the Syrian nation.
Speaking to the Khan Younis rally by phone, Haniyeh praised the revolutions of the Arab Spring and saluted the sacrifices of the Syrian people.
Sermons in Gaza mosques focused on Syria, with imams calling for the freedom of the Syrian people.
The public support for the Syrian protests represents an about-face for Hamas, which had refrained from criticizing the Assad regime since anti-government protests began last March.
The change comes amid intense political pressure on Hamas from various Arab countries and Turkey to break with the Syrian regime, which has been waging a brutal crackdown on anti-government opposition members that, according to the United Nations, has left more 6,000 Syrians dead.
For years, the Islamist group had maintained its headquarters in Damascus and has received monetary and military support from the al-Assad regime.
But Hamas in recent months began distancing itself from its longtime patron. Hamas personnel and their families have left the Syrian capital and the group's leadership has been in talks with other countries in the region about relocating their headquarters.
Hamas is an Islamist political movement based in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank.
It was formed in 1987 at the start of the first Palestinian intifada as an Islamic resistance movement to Israeli occupation. It took control of Gaza in 2007 after failing to maintain a coalition government with the Palestinian Authority, dominated by its rival Fatah.
The group's military wing, Izzedine al Qassam, has claimed responsibility for terrorist operations that have included suicide bombings, car bombings and rocket attacks in Israel and attacks on Israeli settlers who live in the West Bank and previously lived in Gaza. Those attacks have claimed the lives of hundreds of Israeli civilians.
The United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization.
The novelist as theologian, Dostoevsky & - thanks to John Sanders Jones - Michael O'Brien
================================================================
Hi John! To let the world-at-large know where we're at: I'm reading through a second of Michael O'Brien's Dostoyevskian novels, after you gave me his “A Father's Tale” for Christmas.
I just finished the chapter where he is sent to Warsaw, the town of his youth, and ends up hearing the confession of am old, dying Count, who, as it turns out, was inhumanly cruel to the person Fr Elijah credits with saving both his soul and his then young life, in the holocaust that ravaged the city during his adolescence.
This chapter epitomizes, I believe, the prophetic role of O'Brien within the Catholic Church at this time. Correcting the translations in the Mass – which at times were not so much heretical as totally meaningless, such as that the Son is “one in Being with the Father”; capitalizing “Being” doesn't alter the fact that it applies universally to everything that is; the Son is just as much “one in Being” with an ant, or with the piece of dirt the ant is moving to make its home, as He is with the Father, with Whom He is more properly said to be “consubstantial” even if this does not exhaust the mystery, but only eliminates error. So correcting these egregious mistranslations is hopefully only the first step in the revitalization of the Holy Supper which has taken place in the secularized west. I have been attending Mass so as to enter into the world of my children and grandchildren, and I have also been blessed to make friends with several souls living a loving and truly saintly life within the Western Communion. But I also grieve as I am stung by the loss of the Gregorian sung Mass which I was able to at least experience occasionally with my children as I was bringing them up, themes from which I taught them myself. The Orthodox Liturgy is still sung in its entirety – and, as the Gregorian Mass used to do – the musical tonalities which are theologically harmonized with the words engrave themselves on one's very inmost being. And, incidentally, we see how the popular so-called “music” of our times likewise engraves itself on one's very soul, to the extent that, in the wake of the Houston death, it is beginning to be made public, and a matter of concern, that such music is a lifestyle in which one's life-expectancy these days is less than 50! Music carries its message far better than the spoken word! Moreover, I believe Houston started off as a gospel singer, also Elvis' musical incubator, surely a signal that – judging by their lifestyles as also deathstyles -- “How Great Thou Art” can, when so belted out, acquire a different sense from the words alone!
What we learn from Michael O'Brien's account of the unimaginably venal degenerate who nevertheless dies a contrite death is, I believe, that the Church's power to bring souls to holiness is from God sanctifying, not from the sanctity of --- well, anyone or anything else. Herbert used to say with a special glee: “God loves hopeless cases!” Because then especially He shows His power so that we trust in Him and not ourselves.
I believe it is Michael O'Brien's role in the Western Church today to depict, and invite us into, real-life, lived and living scenarios embodying the Church's teachings, at this time when even that which the Catholic Church professes as her sacred “Creed” utterly contravenes the true teaching, the true Church, the genuine reality, she nevertheless remains – well, not THE True Church, as Catholics more often than not proclaim themselves, incontrovertible evidence to the contrary flashing in the news headlines on daily basis notwithstanding – but nevertheless truly the Church.
While Orthodox engaged in “ecumenism”, therefore grieve – genuine Orthodox, that is, there is no dearth of pretenders in this field, just look at some very highly placed persons in the OCA, while it is such genuine Orthodox as Met Hilarion Alfeyev, for instance, who grieve over the Catholic preoccupation with “settling” what Catholics call “doctrinal differences” which are not such at all, but are only the kind of garbled nonsense (surely it is not coincidence that “garbled” starts off as “garbage”!) that gets regurgitated in a so-called Christian tradition in which Gospel singers can no longer expect a 50 year lifespan.
If the Catholic Church cannot give us great theologians, she neverthless is giving us a great novelist! As the Russian Church did at the turn of the last century, when she raised up more martyrs than at any time since the early pagan persecutions of Christians – but even the best theologians of the time, Soloviev, Bulgakov, Florensky, Florovsky, come to mind, but I think they lacked the theological tools hammered out by St. Thomas Aquinas, especially, whose works are a study in how – just for starters – to pose the question properly!!! Herbert stressed that we must first ask the right questions to get true answers, but, just as I did not catch onto how Pauline Herbert's teaching was until I worked on presenting it after his repose (see my website, m4m4leh.l4ris4@gmail.com) I also did not appreciate how St. Thomas teaches us to use our minds rightly until I needed this understanding in order to share it with others.
So John, thanks again for the gift that keeps on giving as we follow and share Michael O'Brian's “theology as experienced in True Life”!!! All my love, Mom
Why did Christ die on the Cross for us?
=====================================
Herbert used to ask the same question as did the child in the class addressed by Br. Raphael Forbing, O.P., see below. Herbert’s typical reply was that our fear that God does not love us is so deeply ingrained in our psyche that such a dramatically sacrificial death is what it took to overcome this misgiving. Already Adam and Eve were persuaded by the devil’s charge that GOD DOES NOT WANT US TO BECOME GODS AS HE IS, and for this reason forebade our first parents’ taking the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: cf Gen 3:5 I find there are still people out there who will do anything to twist Herbert’s words in order to use them against him; during Herbert’s sojourn on this earth, such machinations were a constant barrage, and one of the charges in this matter was that we shouldn’t ask WHY God does anything!!!!! I thought this was about the most stupid interpretation of “living by faith” I ever heard tell of, but the prevalence of such a mentality was the reason I was living in Herbert’s community, and had brought my family there, so I just ignored such attacks on Herbert. It was only as I was working on getting the jist of the Bible into readable and comprehensible form --
(see my site: http://www.mamaleh-larisa.com/bible_orthodox.html)
-- so it was only more recently in this connection that it dawned on me how radically Pauline Herbert’s teaching is! This teaching has been horrendously obscured in the western Christian tradition, which is also pathologically concerned with proliferating misinterpretations and mistranslations to get these lies into the minds of the erstwhile faithful - how unfaithful they have become can be read daily in their news and politics which have the entire globe in a bind, as outlined in an insightful post I came across just today:
Russian Church: Global war almost inescapable
Moscow, February 17, Interfax - The current global contradictions could deteriorate into a global war sooner or later, the Moscow Patriarchate said.
"There are many processes ongoing in the world in which Russia should play a much more active role, since the economic and social contradictions that have cropped up in the world are so strong that they are sure to blow up into serious military operations," head of the Synodal Department for Church and Society Relations Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said in an interview with the Svobodnaya Pressa (Free Press) Publishing House.
"In order to ensure that these military operations not unfold in our territory or in the vicinity of our borders, we need to keep our armed forces combat ready and to participate in settling all situations that may lead to a war, be it the Middle East or Central Asia where the situation is also tense," he said.
"By all accounts, we will not manage to escape a big war," he said.
Father Vsevolod also said that the development track of the civilization may lead to the annihilation of cities.
Given what we are seeing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Syria -- just for starters -- there are hopefully fewer now that formerly who would wag their heads at these “crazy Russians” - altho there are obviously plenty such still out there, or these things wouldn’t be happening.
Well, as my researches were bringing to light that - if St. Gregory Palamas called Paul “Christ’s mouthpiece”, Herbert was most assuredly Paul’s mouthpiece - I came across this passage in Paul’s letter: He who did not spare his own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? Rm 8:32
So I am most gratified -- since Herbert was a Dominican tertiary, and signed himself as such when he wrote, and I myself was a tertiary even before I met Herbert -- that the Dominicans of the Eastern Province, St. Joseph’s, are also on the ball as regards this point which lies at the very heart of our salvation”
“Recently I had the opportunity to speak with a class of third graders about Lent. Focusing on Jesus’ forty-day fast in the desert, I compared it to the Israelites’ forty years in the wilderness and to the “forty days and forty nights” of the Flood. My time with the class was brief, but toward the end I was able to take two questions. The first was, “Why does God allow people to do bad things?” and the second, “If Jesus was God, how come He had to come down to earth and die on the Cross?” Out of the mouths of babes … come tough questions. It didn’t hit me until I had left the classroom that these two particular questions are profoundly connected.
“The first question involves the mystery of free will. God creates us out of love, and He wants us to love Him in return. We know from our own experience, however, that love cannot be forced. Even if the external signs of love are present, it’s not really love unless it comes from within, from the mind and heart, from the whole of one’s being. If God forced us to love him, our “love” would not be free and, therefore, wouldn’t be love at all. In fact, the very idea of forced love is a contradiction in terms, a non-idea, like a square circle or a round triangle. In order to love, we must be free, and, for those of us who do not yet enjoy the Beatific Vision, being free entails the possibility of choosing not to love, of sinning, of doing “bad things.”
“This helps us to answer the second question, “If Jesus was God, why did He have to come down to earth and die on the Cross?” The simple answer is, He didn’t have to. He did it freely, out of love, and in so doing he both showed us the depth of his love and set us an example. After all, the greatest sign of love is suffering for another, sacrificing oneself for another: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13). Indeed, it is not suffering as suffering that has meaning, but suffering for the sake of. Jesus’ suffering was for our sake, and the great sign of this is that, although He was free to turn down suffering, to escape, to save us in some other way, instead He embraced the Cross and suffered death.
“Another way of putting this is to say that, although Christ’s death on the Cross was not, strictly speaking, necessary, it was eminently fitting. And it was fitting in more ways than one. For example, just as, in the beginning, a tree was the occasion of our death through the disobedience of Adam, so now another tree—the Cross—is the occasion of new life through the obedience of Christ. Jesus, the new Adam, true God and true man, makes all things new. No longer are we bound by sin, to labor through this life, only to reach its end in darkness and death. Now we have new life in Christ, if only we choose to live in Him, with Him, and through Him.
“It is true that we do not get to choose the cross that is ours to bear in this life, but whether or not we accept our cross for love of Jesus Christ and for love of the people he has given us, is our choice. We can embrace it or reject it; we can resent it or be healed by it. If this choice makes us sad or afraid, let us take consolation in the fact that a God who has himself suffered so much for us will not abandon us in our suffering. He will be with us and help us, even when we do not perceive it: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you” (Isaiah 49:15). by Br. Raphael Forbing, O.P.
Meanwhile, in the Holy Land, this sacred and seminal truth is being horribly desecrated:
UNKNOWN VANDALS SPRAY GRAFFITI THREAT ON GREEK ORTHODOX MONASTERY IN JERUSALEM
February 8, 2012
A Jerusalem monastery, built on the site where tradition says the tree used in the making of Jesus’s cross once stood, was defaced with “Death to Christians” graffiti on Tuesday.
The words “Price Tag” daubed on a vandalized car parked outside the 11th-century Monastery of the Cross suggested that militant Jewish settlers were responsible and police said they were investigating that possibility as well as other angles.
The term refers to retribution the settlers say they will exact for any attempt by the Israeli government to curb settlement in the West Bank, an area Palestinians seek as part of a future state.
“Price Tag” attacks have targeted mosques, Palestinian homes and Israeli military installations in the occupied West Bank, but vandalism of Christian holy sites in Jerusalem is extremely rare.
Police said “Death to Christians” was painted in Hebrew on the outer wall of the fortress-like monastery administered by the Greek Orthodox Church in a valley overlooked by Israel’s parliament.
“I am a priest and I forgive,” Father Claudio of the monastery told Reuters.
Elsewhere in Jerusalem on Tuesday, “Death to Arabs” was painted in Hebrew on the wall of a playground of a Jewish-Arab bilingual school.
In the West Bank, anti-Muslim slogans were daubed on the walls of several homes in the village of Al-Lubban al-Sharqiya overnight, a Palestinian official said, blaming Jewish settlers.
A similar incident occurred on Sunday in the West Bank village of Al Janiyeh, the official said.
(Source: Reuters.com)
www.pravoslavie.ru/english/51569.htm
I visited this very monastery when I was in Jerusalem; when I saw the photograph of the graffiti message -- it brought back to me another morning in Jerusalem, it was in 1987, when I found, on the large metal double doors of the Russian Mission in Jerusalem, enormous Hebrew letters written in thick red paint that looked like the dripping blood of some huge giant, after our youngest priest had been assassinated the previous Sunnday -- stabbed in the back as he carried water from Jacob’s well, as I later learned.
But such atrocities inevitably entail a message for the perpetrators. This young priest was assassinated on the feast day of the head of the Russian mission, then Archimandrite Paul, my Spiritual Father, now Metropolitan Paul of Ryazan and Kasimov, who has transformed his oblast - and is slated to do the same here in our flailing “New World”. A few days after the tragedy, I opened my Bible and realized that I had some days earlier left a marker in it. I often just open my Bible and “take and read”, as St. Augustine was bidden, and never have I failed to find a very timely message directed to my special need at that moment. But a few days previously I had followed this practice -- but turned only to a passage in the Maccabees’ history in which, try as I would, I could find nothing relevant to my situation. So I read the pages indicated by the marker again -- and they told of the death of a holy warrior for the Maccabean cause who was killed in battle, but who appeared to the Maccabean leader from heaven, telling him to fight confidently despite his paucity of men and resources against the great superiority of the enemy -- as the Maccabees did, and carried the day overwhelmingly against their enemies!
So we have confidence that neither can these adversaries who threaten us prevail -- it will be just as in Russia itself, where the efforts of the godless Soviet regime served only to raise up more martyrs than at time since the early persecutions against the Christians, and where today the first government in living memory (if at all!) which has governed in harmony with the Christian Church and in such wise that other traditional religions, such as Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, native shamanistic religions, and the like, recognize the harmonious agreement of their own traditions with the the direction being taken by Russian civic life - and abjure the efforts of western protesters to scream their way in and reduce everything to chaos as we have seen happen in Egypt, Libya, Syria ….........
Let a word to the wise be sufficient.
How about trying the old tried and true? Carpe diem!
At the moment we seem to be - uh, fighting on 2 fronts, I hate to put it that way, but ……….
On the Catholic Bishops vs Obama front, when Obama showed his concern to accommodate the Church, these prelates who serve no god but themselves merely dreamed up a whole bunch of gobbledygook to maintain their mindlessly partisan political onslaught!
On the Syria front, who should enthusiastically volunteer to join ourselves and the totally befuddled "protesters" -- I mean, do these guys have functioning minds that even think at all? Thus far there has been absolutely zilch to indicate that this is the case.
But, ah, fear not! Who is coming to their rescue but "Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri [who] has voiced his support for the Syrian uprising in a new video message released on jihadist Internet forums, US monitors said Sunday. In the video titled "Onwards, Lions of Syria", Zawahiri criticized the Syrian regime for crimes against its citizens, and praised those rising up against the government, SITE Intelligence Group said. AFP Feb 12, 2012
Yet, fear not, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us seize this propitious moment!
Let us turn to the Maronites, the Christians of Syria and Lebanon, and for starters find a way to save them from currently threatened distinction at the hands of the NATO coalition aided by Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri who I guess has stepped into bin Laden's shoes. I will refrain from commenting further on this development, anyone in his right mind can see the obvious.
The Maronites are possessed of rare treasures and valuable resources. Syrian is actually akin to the Aramaic language used by Our Lord Himself. Even if it has changed over time, it has got to be of a higher intelligent quotient than Americanese!!! How far the native tongue of these atrocious Catholic bishops has deviated from the norms of human logic in our once great land of the free and home of the brave! Pronouns almost alone have retained the declensional endings indicating what part of speech the utterance is - but our speech has so degenerated that gramatically correct pronominal usage actually sounds downright weird, it is so rare and foreign to everyday parlance. I wince every time I speak ungrammatically just because people would be more suspicious of me than they already are if I followed correct usage.
I don’t think I need to labor the point that it would be to our advantage here in North America to capitalize on the gifts and culture of the Maronite Christians among us, just for starters. I had more or less forgotten them myself (that’s what this crazy society will do even to a decently brought up and educated person like myself) until my friend Carlos Nader, a Mexican of Lebanese background, had some recent facebook posts on them. So it looks like Zuckerberg’s folly may be able to make some contribution to civilized culture after all.
Of course I am going to suggest that the effort be spearheaded by my Spiritual Father, Met. Pavel, currently of Ryazan and Kasimov, as he himself has, to begin with, as a Russian, a mindset formed by a linguistically very sophisticated mother tongue. When I find horrifically ghastly translations in the Bible in English, I first look them up in my Russian Synodal Bible, which was translated by the Moscow Patriarchate from the Leningrad Codex (or Codex Leningradensis) which is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, using the masoretic text. Then I compare the text with the Greek, and I consistently find that the Russian is effectively a perfect clone of the Greek. The Synodal Russian Bible has profoundly influenced Russian hymnology, from which Russians learn theology through their liturgical celebrations, not from sterile “theological” tomes a la Descartes et al - something also true mutatis mutandi of the Maronites, making Russians and Maronites intimately kindred brethren.
Metropolitan Pavel’s special role during the past decade or more has also uniquely prepared him for such a role inasmuch as Kasimov was the capital of the Kasim Khanate until 1681 when the khanate was reabsorbed into Russia, so there is a contemporary Islamic presence there, which also stretches back to a more ancient time when Russia was actually under Muslim rule. The oblast he presides over also effectively constitutes a huge suburb of Moscow, rife with both the advantages and the snares such proximity to an urban capitol city affords.
I can think of no one better positioned to deal with the religious complexities that have Syria and so much of the Middle East tied in knots -- and I am sure my Mexican/Lebanese friend Carlos, who was part of the Mt. Hope community gathered around Herbert Schwartz, will be of invaluable assistance, as he is also very close to the Carmelite Convent of St. Joseph in Mexico City, of which Dr. Schwartz was also the Spiritual Father. A Mexican Bishop who later was made a Cardinal intended to ordain Herbert a priest, and in line with that gave the nuns into Herbert’s spiritual care. Herbert actually went to Rome in this connection, but in the end the plan was not realized. He did, however, remain the Spiritual Father of the nuns - two of them, Mother Josephine, the Mother Superior, and Mother Margarita, who is my own special Carmelite Sister, even managed to travel to New York for a visit with us, and stayed in my house!
Hopefully I will be able to host them again, now that it looks like I will be getting back my beautiful RV - when people ask what it's like, I tell them inside it's like a Manhattan efficiency apartment, and outside, just drive to wherever you like! I think we can go on the road and make our case all over this hemisphere, actually! Surely this is a fine way to bring our world together in God!
Is the Schmemen faction within the OCA the current front-runner for anti-Christ du jour? Read more
Posted February 9, 2012
Herbert Schwartz used to say: The only thing the average Catholic knows about love is how fast it can become a mortal sin! Click to read some ramifications of this
Posted December 27, 2011
Did I hear someone say Orthodox are “internally divided”??? Read more
Posted November 16, 2011
“You are the temple of God” has “ecstasy” beat hollow!!! Read more
“And it began at the Greek fair with the Kurdish dancer! Read more
Posted October 9, 2011
In creating man, God gives him the dignity of the image and likeness of Himself. Did Adam say, “Thank you, God, that I even exist, let alone in Your image, and as Your son,” and act accordingly? He did not – and that’s how the all the trouble began. Read more
An Old Testament take on Mary’s Virginity
Posted September 4, 2011
An autobiographical poem by my grandson, Dominic, which came full circle during an experience of Tantric’s “Live Your Life Down
Posted May 5, 2009
Made in the Image of the Holy Trinity: Where Does Sex Fit into this Picture? [PDF]
Posted December 15, 2007
Sin, Confession, and the Immaculate Conception: An Orthodox Perspective [PDF]
Posted December 15, 2007
So we invite all our welcome visitors to browse our pages at your
leisure.
St. Laura of Cordova…………….December 6, 2011
What’s with the Catholic’s brouhaha over CONSUBSTANTIAL in the “new” translation of the Creed!?!?!…………….December 6, 2011
Israel vis a vis the Arab Spring/Summer/Winter…………….November 18, 2011
The Eucharist, the Food whereby God
incarnates Himself in us – shows how precisely this Incarnation of God in
us is the end and purpose of the whole – since precisely this Incarnation of God in
us is the end and purpose of the whole megillah way back to before the beginning.
Solzhenitsyn’s Oak and the Calf, 2010: this time around Putin is
the oak, Khordorkovsky the calf. Learn why even Pope Benedict
has seen fit to take a page from Russia’s currently jailed oligarch/
dissident, once Russia’s richest man – he was literally captured and
imprisoned because of the threat he posed to the Kremlin - Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Nobody imprisoned me, Laura Jones, they just threw me out of their
universities – and all because I found a joke to be the best proof!
