A quote from St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco

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Metropolitan Anthony on the Beginning of Lent

Metropolitan ANTHONY (Bloom) of Sourozh
Sunday of Orthodoxy
16 March 1997

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

We are keeping today, as every year at the end of the first week of Lent, the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. And every year we must give thought to what is meant, not only as a historical event, but also in our personal lives. First of all we must remember that the Triumph of Orthodoxy is not the Triumph of the Orthodox over other people. It is the Triumph of the Truth Divine in the hearts of those who belong to the Orthodox Church and who proclaim the Truth revealed by God in its integrity and directness.

Today we must thank God with all our hearts that He has revealed Himself to us, that He has dispelled darkness in the minds and hearts of thousands and thousands of people, that He who is the Truth has shared the knowledge of the perfect Truth Divine with us.

The occasion of this feast was the recognition of the legitimacy of venerating icons. By doing this we proclaim that God - invisible, ineffable, the God whom we cannot comprehend, has truly become man, that God has taken flesh, that He has lived in our midst full of humility, of simplicity, but of glory also. And proclaiming this we venerate the icons not as idols, but as a declaration of the Truth of the Incarnation.

By doing this we must not forget that it is not the icons of wood and of paint, but God who reveals Himself in the world. Each of us, all men, were created in the image of God. We are all living icons, and this lays upon us a great responsibility because an icon may be defaced, an icon may be turned into a caricature and into a blasphemy. And we must think of ourselves and ask ourselves: are we worthy, are we capable of being called "icons", images of God? A western writer has said that meeting a Christian, those who surround him should see him as a vision, a revelation of something they have never perceived before, that the difference between a non-Christian and a Christian is as great, as radical, as striking, as the difference there is between a statue and a living person. A statue may be beautiful, but it is made of stone or of wood, and it is dead. A human being may not at first appear as possessed of such a beauty, but those who meet him should be able, as those who venerate an icon - blessed, consecrated by the Church - should see in him the shining of the presence of the Holy Spirit, see God revealing Himself in the humble form of a human being.

As long as we are not capable of being such a vision to those who surround us, we fail in our duty, we do not proclaim the Triumph of Orthodoxy through our life, we give a lie to what we proclaim. And therefore each of us, and all of us collectively, bear every responsibility for the fact that the world meeting Christians by the million is not converted by the vision of God's presence in their midst, carried indeed in earthen vessels, but glorious, saintly, transfiguring the world.

What is true about us, simply, personally, is as true about our churches. Our churches were called by Christ as a family, a community of Christians to be a body of people who are united with one another by total love, by sacrificial love, a love that is God's love to us. The Church was called, and is still called, to be a body of people whose characteristic is to be the incarnate love of God. Alas, in all our churches what we see is not the miracle of love divine.

From the very beginning, alas, the Church was built according to the images of the State - hierarchical, strict, formal. In this we have failed - to be truly what the early, first community of Christians were. Tertullian writing in defence of the Christians said to the Emperor of Rome: "When people meet us they are arrested and say: 'How these people love one another!'" We are not collectively a body of people about whom one could say this. And we must learn to recreate what God has willed for us, what has once existed: to recreate communities, churches, parishes, dioceses, patriarchates, the whole church, in such a way that the whole of life, the reality of life should be that of love. Alas, we have not learned this yet.

And so, when we keep the feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy we must remember that God has conquered, that we are proclaiming the truth, God's own Truth, Himself incarnate and revealed, and there is a great responsibility for all of us collectively and singly in this world, that we must not give the lie to what we proclaim by the way in which we live. A western theologian has said that we may proclaim the whole truth of Orthodoxy and at the same time deface it, give it the lie by the way in which we live, showing with our life that all these were words, but not reality. We must repent of this, we must change, we must become such that people meeting us should see God's truth, God's light, God's love in us individually and collectively. As long as we have not done this we have not taken part in the Triumph of Orthodoxy. God has triumphed, but He has put us in charge of making his triumph the triumph of life for the whole world.

Therefore, let us learn to live according to the Gospel which is the Truth and the Life, not only individually but collectively, and build societies of Christians that are a revelation of it, so that the world looking at us may say: "Let us re-shape our institutions, re-shape our relationships, renew all that has gone or remains old and become a new society in which the Law of God, the Life of God can prosper and triumph. Amen.

The Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

This is a re-post of an entry from February, 2007.

As I have my face to the ground during this Lenten service, the thought crosses my mind, just as you can vaguely hear the priest’s footsteps as he carries the holy gifts: “how beautiful are the feet of him who brings Good News.”
At my first Pre-Sanctified Liturgy, at St. Peter the Aleut, ten years ago this year, I wondered, "how long can I last without peeking?" It's probably only 30 seconds or something, but it seems like a long time. As we were talking about it last week, Krista admitted she always used to peak. Very cute. Even this reminds me that the Apostles were those who had "seen with their eyes." (1 John 1.1) As the Lord said to Thomas, "Blessed are those who have not seen, and have yet believed" (John 20.29).
It is somehow in the singing of the Psalms of Ascent at the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts that I remember who I am. Each year reminds me that I am a member of the sojourning people of God, at search for our Promised Land in God. I grew to love these Psalms first through Eugene Peterson's fine book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.
I don’t know if it is the same melody in all places, but it is that melody which strangely welcomes me to the Lenten pilgrimage in earnest. We are “going up” in the same way Israel's pilgrims ascended up to Jerusalem for the great festivals of salvation. But, even more, “God is the Lord and has revealed Himself.” We are members of his very Body. The fact that our liturgical journey in this particular Liturgy brings us up to partake of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ reveals that He is the ‘end’ of all our searching.

Zealous for Truth

"Someone who has actually tasted truth is not contentious for truth. Someone who is considered by people to be zealous for truth has not yet learnt what truth is really like; once he has truly learnt it, he will cease from zealousness on its behalf."

– St. Isaac the Syrian

My friend, and my son Basil's Godfather , wrote this essay entitled "Zealous for Truth."

At the outset of Lent - at the outset of anything - it is easy to be consumed with zeal, of one kind or another. But zeal, in an of itself, can often be a sort of spiritual adolescence. As a person who experienced a fairly zealous adolescence, complete with Keith Green's No Compromise and Bible studies every night of the week, I can relate.

As David Goa says:

"For St. Isaac, zeal for truth is itself a symptom of a spiritual disease. Or, perhaps, it is a condition that tends to develop at a certain stage in the spiritual life and is itself simply a marker of that stage. It is the spiritual equivalent of adolescence where the young try out all sorts of ideas and actions with the conviction that no one else has ever had these thoughts or feelings and they are exploring them for the first time. How can it be that no one else has ever seen just how important and ultimate these thoughts and feelings are?

Adolescence is not a disease, of course, although some parents may be inclined to treat it that way. Rather it is part of the process of maturation. Similarly, when a spiritual father or mother sees the “zealousness for truth” spoken of by St. Isaac, they recognize a stage in the spiritual development of the person. But just as with adolescence, if the condition persists, spiritual growth is arrested. One is stuck in the adolescent stage of the spiritual life."

I think that we Christians who do not integrate our zeal into the wholeness of our being and personhood - that wholeness being in Christ (Colossians 3.4) - then we remain, in a sense, stuck continually in the first week of Lent. We are stuck in the endless prostrations of Forgiveness Sunday and the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete. If, however, we can move beyond adolescence, to harness and sanctify our zeal, then we can begin to truly await the Bridegroom, and partake of the everlasting Paschal banquet.

"The Lenten Spring Has Come"

Many people are fasting from various electronic media practices, such as blogging, for Lent. I, on the other hand, am returning to it. For some time, Constantly Reading Four Quartets has existed in a state of benign neglect, like some forlorn neighbourhood, furtively visited.

Over the period of Great Lent, I hope to write more here again. There is a returning aspect to the Lenten season. Father Alexander Schmemman, in his Journals describes Holy Week in this way, that it is like a flowing river, to which the Church annually returns us. His words remind me of a text from the prophesy of Hosea:

"Come, let us return to the LORD;
for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us;
he has struck down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.
Let us know, let us press on to know the LORD;
his appearing is as sure as the dawn;
he will come to us like the showers,
like the spring rains that water the earth."

- Hosea 6.1-3

This photo of His Beatitude, Metropolitan JONAH, was taken at the time of his consecration to the Episcopacy. I think it perfectly sums up the love that abides in Christ's Church. This image seems to me like an icon of the Good Shepherd. Metropolitan JONAH has some potent words for us all as we begin this season of repentance.

May God help us all, in practical and concrete ways, to strive for "whole-mindedness" and love. Forgive me, my brothers and sisters.