Categories: orthodox-life, parish-life
Date: 21 November 2008 03:24:24
John, at Notes from a Common-place Book, posted an entry linking to a collection of articles [PDF] written by the new Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in America, Bishop Jonah. I had planned to take my time in reading them, but after reading the first two I kept going. And going. And read them all. I look forward to reading them again as I am sure I missed a great deal on my quick reading.
I think, even though there are differences, the migration of Orthodox peoples to the US and Canada [rather than a 'mission'] in particular have resulted in many parallels here in Australia. We are in the same situation [overlapping jurisdictions; lack of a monastic presence...] as the US and Canada are, or at least were -- although I would say they have passed farther down the path than we have. I do think we can learn a great deal from their experiences, and I pray we can and do.
The wisdom, charity and love of now-Metropolitan Jonah is clear to see from his writings; and equally clear is the fact he is not afraid to pull punches and lay the facts on the table. But what I was most moved by were some of his comments on the Christian life as well as monastic life [he was a monastic at Valaam Monastery]. I will leave my monastic musings for another day; here are some of his comments on the Christian life.
So what is [the Gospel]?First and foremost that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, trampling death by death and giving life to those in the tombs. It is the message of the Resurrection, the victory of Jesus Christ over death and hell. It is the Good News that the Kingdom of God is present, here and now, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and you can be baptized into it, commune of its grace, and be filled with new life. It is this that we constantly celebrate in church, in the services, in the cycles of feasts and fasts. And what does it do for us? It heals our souls, and raises us up from despair, and enables us to deal with any obstacle that comes in our way.
...
We can partake of His life by eating the bread and wine of His Body and Blood; we are immersed into His life in Baptism, anointed with the Holy Spirit in Chrismation, and made part of His Body. The world itself, matter, is sanctified by Christ’s Coming, and becomes a means of communion with God. And we ourselves, in this body, in this life, here and now, are sanctified and made holy, partakers of the life of God. Salvation is about life here and now, not “fire insurance” for after death! In Christ, all things are made new. “For He has brought us up to heaven, and endowed us with His Kingdom which is to come.” This is Good News!
from Where do we Go from Here?; 'The Only Agenda: The Gospel' section
Our communion with our neighbor is the criterion of our faith. The agendas of power and money, organizations and institutions, by which we isolate ourselves from our neighbors, are ultimately distractions from our real vocation as the Church. Our real calling is the mission given us by Christ, the work of Christ himself: “to preach the good news to the poor, to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to captives and the recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18). Then our religion will be true and authentic: “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27).
As Father Alexander [Schmemann] would remind us, the most essential elements of the Christian life are joy and thanksgiving. When we live a life of faith, overcoming our selfishness by self-denial, doing the works of charity for which we have been recreated in Christ, we can have no other attitude but joy, and we offer all things to God in a sacrifice of thanksgiving. We sin and fall short – but repenting we find joy. We have to bear our cross, whatever it may be; but “behold, through the cross, joy has come into all the world!” We have great and diverse elements within our communities; but we can rejoice in the unity of the Spirit, as one Body.
What is our vocation as the Church but to be witnesses to the world of Christ’s resurrection, to heal by our love, and to raise the whole world as an offering of thanksgiving to God? Then all our life, as persons and as community, is transformed into a Eucharistic celebration of joy, an anticipation of the Presence of Christ in His Kingdom.
from Where do we Go from Here?; 'A Call To Repentance' section
The Liturgy is the locus where the particular community is fulfilled as Church by itself becoming the Body of Christ. The many are united in one by the Holy Spirit, in the great movement of love and self-offering to the Father of the one Christ, head and body. The Liturgy is the focal point of the revelation of the Church as the Kingdom of God; just as communion is the focal point for each of the faithful for their personal transcendence of themselves, and their realization of their true identity as members of the Body of Christ. At this instant the personal ascetic striving and the corporate ascent coincide, intersect, and are fulfilled. It is not the case, however, that the mystery of the Church is only manifested in the eucharistic Liturgy. The sanctification of the life of the community itself, daily life, is also a fundamental element of the Church as the revelation of the Kingdom of God on earth.
The life of each community of the Church is built around the mutual support of the members for one another in their common spiritual process of transformation. This, of course, is most obvious in a monastic community. But it must also be the content of all communities of the Church. This process requires tremendous creativity: learning to deal with one another, each with a different level of spiritual, emotional, and personal maturity and experience, not to mention different characters, bearing one another’s burdens, and sharing a common vision and goal. Each aspect of this has a transcendent, as well as personal, dimension. Every interaction, no matter how mundane, has an impact on the life of the community as a body, manifesting either mutual love in Christ, or the selfishness of the world. If the members are fighting among themselves, what kind of Liturgy are they going to celebrate?
The communities of the Church are made up of people from a particular place and time, with a particular culture. It is pure pretense – delusion – for them to try to be anything else. The task of the Church is to sanctify that particular culture, and those particular people, making their community transparent to the Kingdom of God, and to reveal the reality of God’s transforming Presence to the other people in that particular place and time and culture. A Christian community reveals the mystery of the Kingdom of God in the midst of the world, transfiguring and deifying the particular persons by grace, baptizing the particular culture, language, and forms as means of communicating that grace and the Gospel of the Kingdom. “In the church I would rather speak five words with my understanding, that I may teach others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue” (1 Corinthians 14 : 19).
from Creativity and Tradition
Concretely, [the primacy of the Gospel in our lives] means that we must not surrender ourselves to the world and its values: materialism, consumerism, the desire for wealth and power. More important still, we must deny ourselves the temptation to judge and condemn one another, much less rend the seamless garment of Christ by factionalism and disputes. It means to submit ourselves as an act of self-denial in obedience to our superiors in Christ, as hard as this may be.
Only within this ascetic worldview does the life and structure of the Church, and the very confession of Jesus Christ as the Incarnate Son of God, make any sense, because it is how He lived. “He did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant.” We must deny the world and its values: the constant gratification of our passions, and especially our pride, vainglory and self-righteousness. This is the ascetic task of every Christian, married or monastic, because it is the Way of Jesus, the Orthodox way.
... If we are truly Orthodox, then it will be a whole way of life, shaped by the Gospel, filled with grace, and manifest concretely in human relationships; in a communion of love, unity of mind and heart, patience, understanding and bearing one another’s burdens, and charity towards our neighbors. If we fall short of this, we must blame no one but ourselves, and repent.
from Orthodoxy: Mere Christianity; 'Concrete Implications for Us' section
The essence of the Orthodox Christian life is the healing of our souls. Specifically, an Orthodox Christian is one who is undergoing purification, illumination, and deification. The means of this healing
of the soul are the liturgical and ascetic disciplines as laid down in the teaching of the Fathers. They are what make Orthodox Christianity not a religion, nor simply a way of coping with our problems through ritual and social interaction, but a way of complete transformation and healing in Christ by the action of the Holy Spirit. This is the tremendous power of the Faith, the grace of repentance. The liturgical and sacramental life is inextricably linked with ascetic discipline, for ascetic discipline enable us to receive and be transformed by the healing power of the Church’s mysteries.from The Church as Spiritual Hospital